Why Nice Is Not Enough with Amira Barger, EVP of DEI at Edelman

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

Kristen: \ Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen 

Mike: and I'm Mike, 

Kristen: and we have an incredible guest today. I'm so excited. We have Amira Barger here. She's executive vice president of health communications and DEI advisory at Edelman, which is the largest communications firm in the world, I believe.

She's also a professor of marketing communications and change management at Cal State East Bay. And she's a contributing writer for MSNBC, Fast Company, and many other publications on topics like DEI, Black Women in the Workplace, and Practical Steps for Individuals and Institutions to Promote Black Liberation.

And she also has a book coming out that we'll talk about a little bit as well. Thank you so much for being here, Amira.

Amira: Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure and I'm excited just to have a conversation. 

Kristen: Yeah,

So I'd love to talk a little bit about your background before we get into the many topics and things that we want to hear your perspective on. But one thing I saw that's actually really cool is you grew up in Guam., I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience growing up there and kind of how it's helped shape your worldview and approach to leadership.

Amira: Yeah.

So Guam is a little island that not many people have heard of. It is a U S territory, one of our many. And so I grew up there during the formative years of childhood. I was there all throughout the nineties. We were there for 11 years total. And I was one of eight children, the second oldest. But the oldest girl and my parents were actually, back in the nineties, they were actually missionaries.

And so that's why we lived in Guam. And so they were there to really help the community with, a bevy of needs, not just people and their faith. But, when you're a missionary, you're there to help people with everything they need, everything from housing to food to health care. And so that's what we were there doing.

Just living alongside people in community to meet their needs. And it was a beautiful upbringing and childhood. It's one of those things I look back now and, I wish I had appreciated as a kid that I lived on a tropical island where it was summer, basically year round. And we had the beach and sand and fun, right there on our doorstep.

And so I think back on it fondly. Now that it's winter right now in this moment, I'm missing the an island and the warm weather. So it was a beautiful upbringing. It's definitely helped shape how I approach work, how I approach leadership, and just how I think about being a member of community.

And so much of that is because, like I mentioned, there were a lot of people who had needs. In the community where we were, Guam is a very small, tiny place. And so we saw a lot of challenges that people had. And, you know, I remember whether it was helping to provide food to people or even helping the connect them to resources around their health and healthcare.

And that's actually what influenced me to take on the career that I have today. I, Originally thought I wanted to help, people and put good in the world by being a physician. So I spent a lot of my undergraduate career as a pre med student and in my junior year, so right near the end, I actually changed majors and I had a professor who actually noticed that I had a knack for communicating and really influencing people with words and ideas.

And so I switched to communications and marketing and found a way to enter the space of healthcare nonprofits to help people in communities. And when my parents were, on the Island and I grew up there, one of the hardest things to get people help with was in fact, healthcare. It was hard to come by.

It was expensive to come by and so it was always in my mind that this is a real need and there's a gap here And that's how I want to help change the world and how I want to help people and so today that's what I do. I use the power of communications and behavior change and change management to help people all across the health ecosystem In terms of how they reach their employees But also how they reach patients and all of us are patients at one point in our lives right.

And so I get to help people all across the world by using communications in the realm of healthcare.

Kristen: That's amazing. I love that. Has there been any particular like moment that really stands out when you think about what has shaped you as a leader today?

Amira: Oh, so many moments. I think it's a collections of moments over time. I'm an elder millennial and so So I think we've lived through quite a few things that have shaped many of us in terms of our leadership from the economic crash in 07, 08, Y2K. That's actually why my family moved back to the mainland from Guam when we thought the world was ending the first time, the computers were going to shut down and revert back to zero in the 1900s,COVID and the pandemic, 9 11, right?

So I think there are so many things that we've lived through over the last, you know, 30 years in our time that have shaped how I think about the world. And for me, it comes down to remembering that we are whole humans, right? We're not just working humans. We're whole humans. And so when I show up in the workplace, when I show up in my community, that's what I think of is that for a long time, we were told to compartmentalize, our personal life, our professional life, politics, right?

All these things had to be separate buckets and they could never touch one another and we couldn't talk about them in different spaces and places. And I think that's less true today. And I think there are so many people who understand now that just because I crossed the nine to five threshold doesn't mean that the policies of our country and our politicians and how they impact me.

You know suddenly don't it doesn't mean that what's happening with my kids at school or my family members or my mental health stop impacting me. These things absolutely bleed one into another and that's what I mean by we're not just working humans. We're whole humans and we bring our wholeness cells into the workplace and into our personal lives and all of those things make up who we are.

And I like to show up as leader in that way to recognize that people are whole humans. And it came up a lot in the middle of the pandemic. I think about how we had to be much more thoughtful about people who are caregivers. Whether you're caregiving for a child or caregiving for a spouse or an elderly parent, right?

There were needs, whether it was a hybrid work schedule, a remote work schedule, or just different hours of the day. That's what, that is a, a real world example of what I think it means to be a whole human is as a leader, remembering hey, so and so might need to come in two hours later than most because they're caring for an ailing parent who's elderly.

And so what they need to do today and their productivity is going to look a little bit different and that's okay. And making space for those conversations and making space for those people to feel like I still have a place here and the people around me understand, and they're going to show up for me so that I can still be a part of this team.

Mike: Yeah, I was, I saw on your website, you said, what world event has had the greatest influence on your life? And you said, Y2K. I was very curious about that for me. It was kind of a non event, you know, but I guess you said that spurred your move back to the mainland. So that makes sense that would be a

Amira: Yeah. And you know, we were right.

Mike: Nothing, it was, 

Amira: We were on this tiny island. And so at the time, when,ordering things on the television and the 800 numbers was still big and popular. And so we had like canned goods. Yeah, we had canned goods and, flashlights and batteries and a generator and all these things sort of stored it up in anticipation, that we wouldn't be able to get it. And then my parents were thinking, this island's very far and very remote. We might not want to be so far and remote if the world is about to end. So it might be safer to be on the mainland. So it was a bit more hairy and I think a bit more of an event for us.

Like you said, it was a non event for many people. And thankfully it was a non event. The computers didn't revert back. But it was this defined moment because that was right in the middle of high school for me in the early 2000s when we moved back. So it was sort of a pivotal time of life in general and then a pivotal time of moving from this tiny little place, much like if you're someone who's grown up in a small town to big bad California where it's massive and it was so different to be dropped into the middle of California in the middle of high school in the midst of Y2K and that happening. And it really changed, I think, the trajectory of what my life would have been had we stayed on this tiny island in the middle of nowhere.

Mike: Sounds like the, in the location and your parents being missionaries, it influenced you a lot to be, a giver, service minded, that to help people.

Amira: That's right. It's shaped how I've made decisions about my career, even about where I've gone to school and what I do today in my community with my family and with my daughter, it's about, service. I really live and believe this idea of, in community, for community, by community. And to me, that means, you know, remaining as local as possible and volunteering locally, working locally, really pouring into our local school district where my daughter is enrolled.

And it's all with this idea of service, to the other fellow humans around me who are, doing their part to shape the world that we get to live in together.

Mike: That's awesome. I love that. 

Kristen: Well, moving a little bit into, to DEI,it's been a challenging year for DEI initiatives,

Amira: That's right.

Kristen: What's your current outlook right now as we move into the beginning of 2025?

Amira: No, I remain hopeful. That's a posture that I take at all times.Hope is a discipline and something you have to practice. And there's been a lot of backlash this year, in particular, a lot of pushback on DEI. And I think part of why I remain hopeful is just this reminder that while this field of work may be new to many people, and I think a lot of people became new in 2020 around George Floyd's murder.

It's not new to those of us who have been practitioners and been doing this work. This is a field that's been around, we can trace it back many years. I think a lot of people would peg sort of the civil rights movement as the start of the D. E. I. Industry with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

And so we've been here. We've been here stealthily and sometimes quietly doing the work, and we've seen this pendulum swing back and forth of praise for it and backlash against it. And so this feels like,just another thursday, right? Uh backlash because we've seen this before and we continue to prevail because what's true is I think there are a lot of headlines and noise about the backlash. And there's a small cohort of people who aren't interested in people feeling a sense of belonging who are really good about getting headlines, who are really good about getting interviews?

But that doesn't represent the everyday person, employee, or community member. We know that's true. You can look at any survey from that edelman Trust Barometer to Gallup, to Pew, that everyday workers, employees, Americans actually value DEI. They really understand how diversity, equity, and inclusion shape their experience as an employee.

And that's true across age, it's true across race and ethnicity, and it's true across political lines. So Republicans, Democrats, black, white, Hispanic, Gen Z, Millennials, boomers. They understand the value of diversity and inclusion. And they're saying, I do feel like I belong more. I do feel like I'm heard. I do feel like I have psychological safety, meaning I feel like I can show up as me with my thoughts, my ideas, my opinions, in the workplace more and more.

And so I think about that, that when you go into people and you have real conversations, one on one, two on one with people that you know immediately. People understand the value of diversity, equity, inclusion, and they also understand that it's for all of us. And that's something I talk a lot about is too often diversity, equity, inclusion is seen as that stuff over there for black and brown people, for women, for the LGBTQ plus community.

And I talk a lot about the definition of diversity. Diversity is literally the collection of all of us. Meaning it's going to take all of us to create workplaces that are diverse and inclusive. And that includes white people and white men. And that's something people forget a lot is we're not doing DEI programs only for this group of people and to exclude others and create another way of excluding.

That's not the case at all. And so I think about an example. That is very close to home because it happened right down the street from where I live. So I'm in the Bay Area in Berkeley, California, not too far from me in the 1940s. We had veterans who were coming back from the war who were now disabled.

They were injured and they had wheelchairs or walking sticks or they were missing limbs and they got together with some students from Cal or University of California, Berkeley, and they asked the city to install what we now know today as curb cuts. You know those little yellow divots and cutouts in the sidewalk that help you walk and move through the city and experience your environment?

The city was taking too long, and so these students and these veterans just went out and cut them out themselves. And the idea with curb cuts is, it was a solution to help a very specific population of people, veterans who had mobility issues or were now disabled. And it ended up helping so many more people, kids on bikes and scooters, parents pushing strollers.

Elderly people with walking sticks, and that's the idea with diversity, equity, inclusion, right? Is we look to the margins, right? Who's most impacted by not having a level playing field. And if we can solve for their needs, it's that idea that all ships rise with the tide. And today, most people, when I ask this question in crowds or in trainings, I'll say, who knows what a curb cut is?

Most people don't. And that's actually, I think, a good thing in that, that's what we want diversity and inclusion to be. It becomes so second nature and it becomes so embedded in our organizations, in our country, in our policies, in our systems and in our minds. They don't even have to think about it.

But here you are walking around the streets, experiencing these curb cuts that help you walk better, help you experience the environment better. And you don't even know it. The level playing field is there, it exists, you experience it, and it's not harming anyone, it's in fact helping everyone.



Mike: I mean, it's such a big subject. I saw on your website, you said, what widely held belief do you reject? And you said, treat others as you wish to be treated. We should be treating others as they wish to be treated. And that's something,you know, I am a little older than you. I'm Gen X, and in the nineties, the version of DEI that we got was just treat everyone the same, be colorblind, like everybody's the same.

And And now it's, I think the message has changed. And that's something that I talk about when I have to deal with these matters. And it's like, we want to respect people the way they want to be respected.

Amira: They get to choose, they get to choose that.So have you seen these practices and in businesses change over the years and where do you see them going now? Yeah, the platinum rule is my preferred, as opposed to the golden rule, which we all learned as kids. So the platinum rule, which is treat people how they want to be treated, and I think that's so important and part of the change that we're seeing with businesses and with, communities and just everyday people is understanding that look, different people have different needs and that's okay. I work in the world of health and we call them the social determinants of health. It's all those things from your zip code to where you went to school, what family you were born into, which country you were born into. There are all these factors that you don't have any control over.

Right? You're just a kid. You're born into the world. You don't get to choose your zip code or your parents, right? Or your skin color or your hair texture. These are just things that you inherit when you come into this world. And we all have different needs because of those things we inherit, right? If you were born in the big city of New York versus maybe a small town in Iowa, you're going to have different needs.

You're going to have different access to teachers. Different access to, ideas about what you could be when you grow up and different fields of industry that you could go into. And so I think there's a recognition and a realization across people and companies now that people have different needs and it's okay for us to think about how do we solve for meeting people where they are. And that's what I love about this work that I get to do in communications and DEI It's about okay. What are the specific needs of Kristen? What are specific needs of Mike and how do we create a system that can account for your specific needs for you to be resourced in the ways that will help you thrive, that will help you be powerful and show up as your, I don't like to say best self.

I like to say chosen self to show up as your chosen self in the world, in the workplace, in your community. What do you need? And I don't think that's exclusionary. And I don't think that's harmful to anyone. I think if we take that approach to things, more people can thrive in the world with their talents, with their, their unique and distinct personhood that they bring into the world.

Mike: I don't think anyone's ever asked me that. What do you need to show up as your no one? I mean, I'm sort of shocked. Like

Amira: it.

Kristen: There's okay. So that's pretty awesome. Actually. That's pretty powerful to say that to anybody, you know? Yeah. I love that. That's a great, that's very touching. Yeah.

Amira: For people to now be able to pause and think actually what do I need? Because we're so we're not used to

Mike: I, nobody, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of gobsmacked. I need an English, English word. So I, no one has ever asked me that. A little bit. They're like, what do you need? And they don't mean it, like you, when you, they don't, you actually mean it on a broad sense, as a person, like even you're talking about, like, I always try and be super understanding and flexible.

Do you have a parent at home that you're caring for? Can we be flexible? Can we change your,that kind of kindness and consideration for people is just entirely absent in, in our American system of the corporateocracy we're running. It's like, get in, get on the machine, get with what, or we're going to grind you up and throw you away.

And that's terrible.

Amira: Yeah, and not acceptable more and more. I feel like more and more leaders, employees, everyday people are speaking up to say, look, that kind of thinking, that kind of culture, we're getting burned out. It's eroding our mental health and it's just not sustainable. It's not sustainable to be running rat race.

Like, we've got to rest. We've got to be whole humans, not just working humans.

Mike: I love that. 

Kristen: So important. Yeah, I love 

Mike: it. You can come and speak at my new company. That would be great. No, I haven't started yet. But these are people are demanding that and they can demand it. When enough people get together, they can demand change. They can, Employers need employees more than the employees need the employees.

You can find it. I'm not saying it's easy to find a job. I know a lot of people are struggling to find the right fits. But we need our teams more than they need us. They can find a me quicker than I can find a them.

Amira: And I think that idea that we have collective power and we should remember that we the people have collective power and a voice and when we realize that and when we come together and support each other in what it is that we need, that's where the change happens.

Kristen: Yeah, well, I love that. I love the stuff that feels actionable for leaders at all levels. Right. Because you know, our listeners come from a variety of levels and their leadership experience. And yeah, if you're a director at a large company who eliminates their DEI function, like it. It's hard, right?

Cause you're like, what, what can I do as a leader to help make sure this is happening? And I love that starting point of like, what do you need to show up as your chosen self, not even self. That's awesome. 

Mike: You know, you get to invent yourself.

Amira: Yes, exactly. And because I also think about depending on who you are and the different, layers of your identity, sometimes chosen self is safest and best, right? There are some reasons where I, for example, as a black woman, maybe it's not always safe for me to show up as my full self, right? People say full self or authentic self.

Sometimes, I, a term we use code switch, right? or I change the way that I show up depending on the audience. And that's a choice and it's sad that I have to do that. But sometimes that's why I say chosen self, right? Who do I choose to be in this room with this group of people? Because sometimes that's what's safest in our current reality and in our current world, and I think that's important because it's that idea of autonomy, right? That you have the right to choose where you are and what rooms you're in and who you are in that room in that moment

Mike: That's very beautiful. I just, I love it. I mean, you know, I grew up in the the seventies, eighties, like school, all of it. It's trying to make you fit into a very narrow, even as a white man, a very narrow create square pegs for square holes and everybody's a square peg. And this is the topics that you have to memorize and we're going to shove it into you and we're going to try and get a good person out of that.

And it's not really,honoring the differences that we see in kids, one's good at math. One's good at music. One is good at things that you don't know until you let them find out. And you're just trying to,you know, get everybody into the same,rubric of skills that I think are really just needed for the workplace or, subconsciously, I don't know, subconsciously, but,like public school was developed in response to the industrial revolution

Amira: Right.

Mike: And to, get people functioning in that, productivity driven workspace. And like you said, we're whole humans and nobody's, they may talk about it. They may post the thing on the wall, but their action is not there. And,

Amira: And we know we, there are so many avenues of, work and how we provide for ourselves that are different than what we knew in the industrial revolution, right? There are so many, new like creative outlets for the kind of work we do. I think about the work I do in communications. We have whole creative teams.

It's their whole, job every day to think of great ideas and visuals and to draw and to create.. And you're right. Our school systems and all of our systems aren't always set up for those kinds of creative thinkers who use a different side of their brain to thrive in the workplace. But our workplace needs those people.

We need the writers and the creators and the thinkers as much as we do the doers. And so I think we have to reimagine, the world that we've created and how we educate people and what is considered a viable career path, right? That artists are revolutionary and it's important to the world that we live in, right?

Societally, but even in our workplaces that,those are valid paths for people to choose and to walk.

Kristen: Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Yeah. And one of the things you, you talk about a lot in your work is this notion of nice is not the measure. Which is such a powerful statement. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what that means to you?

Amira: Yeah, so many things. It's something that I can, track back to even before my daughter was born, she's 11 now, but it was a phrase that I'd been saying that sort of was born out of a personal awakening of many things, whether it was, what it meant to be a employee in the workplace. There was a lot of societal stuff that was happening.

In particular, I think back to 2013 there was sort of the start of the Black Lives Matter movement. And there was a lot happening societally for my community as a black person. And Trayvon Martin was a young man who was killed. And it was around that time where there were so many people around me.

You know, In the workplace in my community and my neighbor who who were asking, what can we do? How can we support? How can we help be a part of the solution? And there were these really wonderful nice, well, meaning people who were taking a lot of actions, but they weren't always necessarily.the actions that would create long term change. And that's when I started saying nice is not the measure, because people would say nice things like, give thoughts and prayers or say, I'm sorry. And so there were a lot of nice words. And I even think about the world of corporations, right? The world of work where we can go back and think about corporate statements about societal issues.

Temporary logo changes, even for pride month, for example, one time donations to organizations and nonprofits that help communities, book lists or book clubs. Movie recommendations and things came out about how people could learn how to be, better allies to all kinds of people from black people to allies to women, to allies to the LGBTQ plus community, allies, or just, advocates for what their children needed in communities.

And so all of these things were happening of social media and donations and book clubs. And those things are really nice. I'm not saying they're not necessary, but I kept saying to people, those are really nice things. It's nice that you have a book club and you're reading this book, but what I need is your voice.

What I need is your vote. What I need is something that's going to cost you a little bit more. Because people really wanted to show up and be allies to others. And so that's sort of where nice is not the measure was born from is that some of these actions people were taking revealed a gap between sort of surface level allyship to people around you and the type of committed disruptive work that is needed to address inequities in the world in our workplace, things like the gender pay gap, the glass ceiling, disability discrimination, hiring biases or misogyny against women, racism, xenophobia, all these isms and phobias that need to be addressed, require a different level of commitment and action than justa book club or a one time donation. And so that's what I would say to people is that's really nice what you're doing. But nice is not the measure. And I tell people all the time, I actually don't even like the word allyship. I prefer, co conspirator. Or accomplice because I want somebody who's going to get in trouble with me.

I've been a lot of people, in, in the space of societal issues, choose those words too. And I tell people all the time that if you're interested in being an ally, a co conspirator or an accomplice, it's going to cost you something. And I think that's the realization people need to come to.

And that's what I meant by nice is not the measure. And that cost looks different for everyone. Some people using your voice. They're using your vote. Sometimes it can cost you reputation. It can cost you a friend or family member. It could cost you your job to stand up for what you believe in. It can cost you actual money.

Right.And in very extreme circumstances that, we don't always know here in the U S it could cost you your life. To stand up for what you believe in, and that's what I mean by nice is not the measure that true allyship, true community building, truly caring for the other humans around you, it's going to cost you something, and you have to know and understand what that cost is, and you have to decide for yourself how far you're willing to go for the things that you believe in, and that's the measure.

Nice is not the measure. But But having nerve is sort of how I talk about it. The nerve to truly be an accomplice or a co conspirator, people having the nerve to truly stand up and take action for what it is that you believe in this world. That's the measure.

Mike: Yeah, I love co conspirator. I like how you say you want to be as inconvenient to the system as possible.

Amira: Always, always. And that's what I teach my daughter is, a lot of the things that, make up our country and our workplaces don't work for everybody anymore. And some things weren't created with everyone's needs in mind. And so let's, be inconvenient to the system and ask more questions and disrupt and reimagine what these things could be together and let's recreate them.

And I think that's okay that we've got a lot of wonderful, creative thinkers and minds who are willing to put in the work and roll up their sleeves, to disrupt the system that we have today that doesn't work for everyone. And to recreate something new that will meet people where they are and answer that question of what do you need you specifically, what are your specific needs and how can we meet those?

Kristen: Yeah. I think that provides such a strong tool for self reflection and introspection on what is it, what is the cost, right? What is going to have more cost to you? And like, what does it take to have nerve? I think especially it can be much easier to stay silent, especially if you're afraid of making mistakes.

Right.And it's the nerve part of that is so important and so true.

Amira: Yeah, and to have the nerve to make those mistakes because I think that's something that comes up a lot right now is there are people who want to be a friend and advocate to others. But you're right. There's a fear of getting it wrong. And so that fear turns into inaction and part of nerve is you're going to fail.

We're all going to make mistakes. I still make mistakes even as a DEI practitioner, right? In this space, I make mistakes all the time and I learn from them. That's the, that's the difference, right? That's what makes a leader is willing to say, I made a mistake and here's what I learned and here's how I'm going to move differently.

Now that I've learned that lesson, you have to have the nerve to do that. You might fall flat on your face. Right? And it's gonna hurt. You're gonna make some mistakes. And I tell people that's part of the work. This work is messy work. The work of being a human. The work of being a DEI practitioner. The work of being an ally, a co conspirator.

It's messy work and that's part of the work. You're gonna get messy. Your hands are gonna get dirty. Your face is gonna get bloody. Figuratively speaking, right? That's part of the work. You have to have the nerve to make mistakes and then stand back up, dust yourself off, and keep going.

Kristen: Yeah, that's very powerful. And yeah, it absolutely it's taking accountability is scary and knowing. Yeah. Knowing that you're going to if you're speaking up enough, if you're going to say the wrong thing, 

Mike: it's very scary. I think a lot of leaders in business and, you know, white guys like myself, we're afraid to talk about anything at all because

Amira: I hear that.

Mike: we're just afraid to talk about anything.

You, I think knowing that I'm not saying I'm good at this at all, you have to, you're going to make mistakes, right? You're definitely going to make it.But not talking about it is probably way worse

Amira: Exactly. The silence is deafening. And I think that's where community comes in. As I tell people, we also don't do this work alone, right? Especially if you're a member of the majority group, meaning, a white male, right? As you don't do this work alone is who are the people that you're surrounding yourself with who are your I like to call it the kitchen cabinet, right? Do you have a group of people that look different from you believe different from you who you can ask these questions, who you can fail forward with, right? Who help you learn those lessons and to make those decisions. We don't do this alone. So yeah, you're going to make mistakes, but you're going to have that kitchen cabinet who can help you see around corners that you may not have, who can help you understand the durable lessons that you can learn from a mistake that you made.

We do this together. We do this work together.

Kristen: Amazing. 

Mike: something. You said I found interesting, you show up how in different ways in different rooms and you choose how you're going to do that. One book we did,in The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier talked about how he,as someone for the majority uses power, which is as much as possible to give it awayas a leader.

And I was thinking, and I advise people differently and I'm, I'm also, in the majority and I. That is my style. I always want to give away power as much as possible. But then I coach people that they may not want to follow that same, and they're going to be treated differently in the workplace based on, on, on how they do that.

And maybe they want to, hold onto that powerful persona, maybe a little bit, and you have to choose that and intentionally create that for yourself. I think that is is important that we're, we don't all have the same experience.

Amira: Exactly. Or the same access to power. And I think that speaks to your point is right. Some of us have more power than others. So, you know, choose how you spend it very, very wisely. And, you know, use it for good when and where you can. And, because, yeah, we all show up with different, like I said, different layers of who we are.

And that really impacts how the world sees us and how different rooms are going to interact with us and to treat us. And one thing that I say to a lot of leaders is you've got to figure out how to spend your privilege and, spend your powers another way that you could say that, but how do you spend your privilege?

And each of us has a different level and amount of privilege in the tank. And it really depends, right? A straight white guy's going to have a different level of privilege than I have as a black woman, right? And so we each choose how we get, how we show up and how we spend that privilege for the people around us who have a different level of access to privilege and power, and that's part of the work.

And that's what it means to be an accomplice, a co conspirator is to, go out there and get in some good trouble with the power and the privilege that you have on behalf of others.

Kristen: Amazing. Another thing I like that you talk about in your work is like how the middle manager comes in to all of this. Right. Because I think so often. DEI is like this much like higher level topic and I don't hear that as much like what do you think is like really important for companies to be doing to really equip middle managers with this?

Amira: I think the first thing is the recognition of the power that they have to shape the culture of our organizations is, you know, a person's direct line manager has the most power to shape their experience within the company. We focus so much on the top leadership, the most senior leaders or the board of directors, but really people's day to day experience is shaped by their relationship with their direct managers, so we talk about the powerful middle and how do we give power to the middle? And so I think the important thing is first acknowledge that the middle managers are powerful and you have to equip them and I ask people this question all the time like when I'm doing sessions or trainings I'll say If you had to guess across the world, how many hours a year do you think managers are provided training, any training at all whatsoever?

And I'll tell people you can answer the question with the digits on one hand. It's two. It's two hours. And I think about that and how wild it is, because I live in California. In California alone, I'm required to do at least two hours of sexual harassment training. So then I ask, how many of those two hours that every manager gets on average across, all these companies do you think is dedicated to things like managing people or diversity, equity, inclusion, not very much.

We're not doing a lot as companies to equip the powerful middle with the skills that they need. And most managers of people in our companies are accidental managers. There's just a report Fortune did this year. Over 60 percent are accidental managers, meaning they were a great individual contributor, and so they were promoted into a role where they're now responsible for other people's day to day work and a budget or a P and L.

And that's wonderful to see people rising, but being an individual contributor doesn't mean that you show up with the skills that are needed to really shape the experiences of other human beings in the workplace. That is something that is learned. And in order to learn it, you have to then attend something where you're going to learn it.

You can learn it through osmosis. Of course, a lot of us have had great leaders and bad leaders that have taught us how to be the leaders that we are today. But it also means the company taking accountability for the fact that you are trusting many people's experiences to their managers. So equip them and so that's what we need to do is we really need to take a look at our learning and development structures, right?

And how are we helping all of these accidental managers? And by the way, accidental managers are the ones who are raising their hand saying, I know that I'm an accidental manager and I need training to help these other humans. That was also the report that Fortune did. They're raising their hands.

They're saying, I know that I need help. I want to do this thing well, give me the training that I need, equip me with the tools that I need. And so I also talk a lot to companies about this idea of capacity building versus training, because those are two different things in my mind. And so training, it's a lot of, imparting things to people.

When I think about capacity building to me, what's different about that versus training is with capacity building, you're meeting people where they are. Right. Every person, Mike's ability to manage people, Kristen's ability, Amira's ability. We all have different experiences. And so our managerial skills are going to look very different.

And so to meet each of us where we are and to equip us with the tools that we need to be better managers, that's capacity building. And that's really what the powerful middle need some are more well versed than others. and so we need to think about this in terms of capacity building for each of the managers that is entrusted to care for other humans in our organizations.

And that's really what it is to me. It's more than just being a manager. Try to think of it as I am entrusted with the care of these other humans, and that's a big task. It's a tall order and I need to take it seriously. And that means I need to have the right tools to give them the best experience possible.

I take that responsibility to heart

Mike: It's so good. I can tell you as having watched so many videos, you can fast forward through and it's checking a box. It's compliance more than it is building skills and capacity. I, I don't mean to call out everyone that I've ever worked for, but no one's, no one's, no one's had a, like a quarter of leadership program or something. We learned on the job with experience. I invested in the time to read, hundreds of books on, on a leader for sure. But like most people are not going to do that. And it, the way you describe it is on point. You are entrusted with caring for all these other people.

And you as the middle manager are going to shape the experience that they have day to day far more than the CEO is. Like, yeah, he can, he can drive culture down the chain for sure, but they see you all day long, the vibe that you said, the tenor, they'll say it the way you treat people, the way you demand that everyone respect each other in the workplace or allow, intolerance and, and bad behavior.

That's you're spot on with that. So that's awesome. 

Kristen: Yeah. This stuff is, this is so good. Amira, this time has flown by. I feel like,

Amira: I know, we could keep going all day.

Mike: Wait, I have more questions. No, I really do. What did we talk about? Behavioral communication. Can you explain that before?

Amira: Oh, yeah.

Mike: I need to know.

Amira: Yeah. So I love this work. People ask me all the time why I practice diversity, equity, inclusion and communications. I'm a dual practitioner and they asked me why I do this work in the structure of a communications firm, and it's only confusing if you don't understand my why. And so I talked to people a lot about, this idea of framing and, framing is really, what you choose to emphasize, what you choose to say, how you choose to say it and communication.

All behavior is, communication. Thing one, all behavior is communication. All communication is about influencing behavior.. I think about whether it's a press release, an ad,sit down with your manager, all that we're doing to communicate, to talk to one another, to, relay messages. It's about influencing behavior, whether that's to get someone to do something.

To take an action to stop doing something, to ask a question, that's what we're using communication for. And so I think about this work that I get to do as influencing people to take actions. And sometimes that action is changing your mind about something. Right? Sometimes that action is choosing to buy a certain thing, vote a certain way, it's all about these choices that people are making every day that make up the world that we all get to live in.

And so communications is about behavior change. That's why we do it. There's a science behind what we say, how we say it, who we say it to, who says it. I think a lot about the message, the messenger, and the mechanism it comes. And we say, the message doesn't always have to come from the CEO.

Sometimes the message is best from someone's manager. Sometimes it's best from a peer. Sometimes it's best from the intern, right? Who is the messenger? Who do people trust? And I think about, large scale behavior change communication. For example, I bet you've both heard the phrase, don't mess with Texas at some point in time,

Mike: I grew up in Texas.

Amira: Oh, so then,

Mike: There's a song too. You know the song?

Amira: I didn't know there was a song that's wild.

Mike: with Texas. Don't you. There's a whole song. We got to link that in. I can't sing. We got to link that in the show

Amira: Do you know the origins of don't mess with Texas.

Mike: I believe it was an anti litter campaign.

Amira: It was. And so I talk a lot about this in communications is the Texas Department of Transportation paid for it. They were spending, I think in the 70s was over 20 million on litter pickup, which in the 70s was a lot of money, right?

If we think about inflation. And so they reached out to a communications professional like moi, right and we did what we do best. We started with research and what we was determined by the comps professionals then was that we needed to target young men. I believe his age is 15 to 34 somewhere in there.

Not because they care about littering or the environment, but because they care about pride in their state. And those were the people we needed to influence to change their behavior and to speak to other people about changing their behavior. And it worked, right? The amount of money, the millions we're spending on littering definitely changed and it became this rally cry.

And there are other examples. I think about, in America, we think of bacon and eggs as this iconic duo for breakfast, right? 70 percent of the US's bacon is eaten at the breakfast table. And many people believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Now there's a lot of controversy about whether or not that's true.

So way back in the day, Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, he actually did a, he was working with the Beech-Nut Packing Company who wanted to sell more bacon. And so he went to this famous doctor in New York and said, If we were to tell people that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and they need more bacon and eggs, a hearty breakfast, it will help them with these, at the time we had like these 16 hour work days, right?

It would help them be stronger for longer. Is that something you could say is like, yeah, sure. So then he took that from this famous doctor and he did a survey to 5, 000 other physicians and asked them the same question in a letter. They all responded about 4, 500 responded. They said, yeah, sure. That sounds great.

Breakfast, you need a hearty breakfast, the most important meal of the day. And so they did this campaign about how breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and you needed more meat and eggs in your breakfast. And so to this day, we use communication to influence people's behaviors and their mindsets, and many of us still believe today that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and we shape our day around that truth, and we still eat a lot of bacon, and we still eat a lot of eggs.

Right. And so communications is a powerful tool that can be used for good. It can be used for positive. And we use it for positive even in the midst of the pandemic. We reminded people how to wash their hands. Right. If you heard, sing the happy birthday song. That was us using it to change people's behaviors and remind them using good communication. So that's what I mean by behavioral communication is getting people to change their mindsets to act differently or to move through the world differently as a member of society.

Mike: So you're, you're telling me diamonds are not a girl's best friend.

Amira: No. For sure,

Kristen: That is a classic. 

She has 

Mike: Morganite. No, and diamonds are not actually any, anyway, that's what I'm going on with the hands. They're not even that rare. It's a De Beers slog. Okay. Yeah. And Texas. Texas has very good branding. They have very good branding.

They're the Lone Star State, even though the word Texas, Tejas means friend, they tried to do the friendship straight and generated the, on the, on the license plate and generated the largest, angry mail campaign to say that has ever been there. Like there's no way you can call Texas a friendship state.

So it's the Lone Star state. They have very good branding. They have a very good PR department.

Amira: Love it.

Kristen: That's amazing. Yeah. There's some, those are some good, like marketing communication stories in there too. I did not know that don't mess with Texas. Like

Amira: Oh yeah.

Kristen: have a shirt.

Amira: that in

Mike: We're going to, we're going to get the shirts.

The Love and Leadership, don't mess with Texas, brand shirt.

Amira: There you go, there you go.

Mike: They love that. And that, that capitalized on the independent Texas spirit. And it, it really did. And I can see like at first when you said that they picked like 15 to 30 year old males, I was like, they're throwing stuff out their pickup truck.

Amira: Exactly.

Mike: They are, but you know,they tapped into their pride and their pride in their state and their individualism and they generated

Amira: 1000 percent and that because what we need for behavior changes, you have to understand two things. Who do people trust and what motivates them, right? And so we knew those young men people were going to trust them and what motivated them was pride in their state. And so who do people trust and what motivates them?

If you know those two things, you can use communication as a powerful tool to influence how people show up in the world.

Mike: That's some Bene Gesserit kung fu. 

Kristen: It's so, it's so good. Yes. For any, any Dune fans and the She knew. 

Mike: She knew. Yeah. I saw the recognition. Yeah. She got the, yeah. They're trying to figure out how Feyd- Rautha can be manip Okay. We know what is, we know what his trigger points are. Perfect. Well, that's so smart though.

You have, that's leadership is you have to know what people's background is, what their motivations are, and what their levers are, and then hopefully you're using that information for good.

Amira: Exactly.

Kristen: Amazing. Well, Amira, before we bring this to a close, I would love to hear a little bit more, you recently announced that you are going to have a book coming out in fall of 2025, tell us a little bit more.

Amira: Yes, please. Oh, my goodness. this is the first book under my own name. I co wrote one last year, but this is my book with Berett-Koehler. It is called, The Price of Nice, Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck, and Four Tactics for Real Change. And it's a book for anyone who fancies themselves a change agent.

And, whether you're a communications professional, a teacher, a parent, just a human. We're all change agents. We're all navigating change in some way, shape, or form. And the community actually helped me pick the name. The Price of Nice. I did a survey. The And so it's going to be some of those things I talked about in around nice is not the measure and what you can do to really help show up in your workplace, in your community and in the world to create change so that all of us live in a world where we can thrive.

And it's coming out in October of 2025. So it'll be ready for your holiday stocking stuffers just in time. And I'll be, you know, touring and talking about the books. So more to come very soon, but I'm very excited to put this out in the world and just give people some more tools to, again, create change and reimagine the world we all get to live in and create together.



Mike: So we'll definitely do a leadership book club. And it's awesome. We need tools for that. People talk concepts all the time, but it's like, what are the tools?

They can't be, they shouldn't be that complicated. They're definitely there. Give me the training or the capacity building, as you say, like, somebody give it to me.

Amira: Yeah, people want it.

Mike: They want it. They are hungry for

Amira: what

Mike: They're hungry for it. 

Kristen: Absolutely. Amazing. That's awesome. And for our listeners, we'll include links to Amira's LinkedIn, Instagram, and her writing portfolio as well, which has so many good pieces in there. So you can follow her and keep up on everything that's happening with the book in 2025. 

Mike: And the recording of don't you mess, don't mess with taxes, please. 

Kristen: It's a great tune. It's 

Mike: I can still hear it in my head. 30 years later.

Amira: I'm gonna go download it to my iTunes.

Mike: Don't worry, you're, the algorithm will suggest it to all of us now.

Amira: Exactly. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Absolutely.

Mike: you, Amira. so much. Yeah, this has been amazing. I hope we can talk again. This

Amira: Me too.

Mike: stuff. 

Kristen: Amazing. Well, with that, we will go ahead and bring this to a close. Thank you again, Amira, so much for being here. I'm sure listeners have gotten a lot out of this and thank you everybody for listening and we will see you guys next time. 

The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.