Celebrating Diversity: Author Minette Norman On How To Build Inclusive Communities
An Interview With Vanessa Ogle
Focus on listening. Everyone wants to feel heard and understood. When you truly listen to another human being with curiosity and the desire to understand, you can completely transform your relationship with them. You can get to know people with radically different backgrounds and ways of thinking. You can start to appreciate other perspectives, even if you don’t agree with them. And you can make the other person feel safe, cared for, and recognized as a unique person with something to contribute.
In a world where diversity is often acknowledged but not always celebrated, we are taking a step forward to highlight the importance of inclusivity in building strong, vibrant communities. This series aims to explore the various facets of diversity — be it racial, cultural, gender-based, or within the differently-abled community — and understand how embracing these differences strengthens our social fabric. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Minette Norman.
Minette Norman is an author, speaker, and consultant who previously spent decades leading global technical teams in the Silicon Valley software industry and realized that we needed a new, more human model of leadership.
As the author of The Boldly Inclusive Leader and the co-author of The Psychological Safety Playbook, Minette is committed to helping leaders unleash the full potential of the people in their organizations.
Minette knows that when groups embrace diversity in all its forms, breakthroughs emerge, and innovation accelerates. Her most recent position before starting her own consultancy was as Vice President of Engineering Practice at Autodesk. Responsible for influencing more than 3,500 engineers around the globe, she focused on state-of-the-art engineering practices while nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about celebrating diversity, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
My original career aspiration was to be a professional actor, but after moving to New York City shortly after graduating from university, I realized I didn’t have thick enough skin to face the innumerable rejections that are part of an actor’s life. I fell back on my fluency in French and got a job at the French Trade Commission at a time when they were transitioning from typewriters to computers. I found I was a quick study and enjoyed explaining things to my colleagues who seemed intimidated by the new technology.
It was this previously undiscovered skill of being able to explain technology in simple terms that led me to my career in the software industry. After five years in New York, I decided to move back to the San Francisco Bay Area where I’d grown up, and a friend suggested I would be good at technical writing, so I researched the few software companies around in 1989 and sent out a handful of resumes. The company that hired me was Adobe when they were developing Photoshop version 1.0, and my first assignment was to write the Photoshop 1.0 tutorial.
To fast forward from that first job in the tech industry, I’ll summarize by saying that I spent about 10 years in various technical writing jobs at five companies. In 1999, I was hired by Autodesk as a senior technical writer where I thought I’d stay for a few years and ended up staying for 20 years.
My last role in the company was as the Vice President of Engineering Practice with the charter to “transform software development,” which initially seemed like a technical challenge. I had to get thousands of software engineers to adopt a common set of tools and technologies — no small feat considering that historically every product team in the company selected their own tech stack and was convinced they had the best system. Before long, I understood that my biggest challenge was not a technical challenge; it was a cultural and behavioral challenge. I needed to break through the long-standing silos across the company. I had to get teams to collaborate across product and divisional groups, to listen to divergent viewpoints, and to find common solutions rather than creating custom, one-off solutions.
It was while I was in this role that I started to explore the topics of empathy, diversity, equity, inclusion, and psychological safety. I became increasingly aware of the prevalence of insider and outsider groups. Even in a position of relative power and privilege, I often felt like an outsider. I didn’t quite fit the dominant model of leadership, and I was far from alone in feeling I was not part of the in-group. After almost five years in the role with some big wins to feel proud of, it became clear it was time for me to leave. My perspective and voice were no longer appreciated, and I found myself being silenced. But what was next after a 30-year career in software?
I realized I had learned so much about leadership in the two decades I led organizations, and I felt compelled to help others learn to be better, more human, more compassionate, and more inclusive leaders. I started my own speaking and consulting business, wrote a book, The Boldly Inclusive Leader, and co-wrote another book, The Psychological Safety Playbook. And that brings us up to the present day!
Can you share an interesting or hopeful story where spending time with someone who did not look like you or who was different from you taught you something that has been useful to you?
Early in my management career, I had a staff member I had a hard time connecting with. We were opposites in many ways. He was very quiet and generally didn’t speak in group meetings while I’m more outgoing and comfortable speaking in groups. His face was often expressionless; I’m highly expressive. My naïve and biased assumption was that this member of my staff didn’t have much to contribute to the team.
My perspective changed when I made a deliberate effort to get to know him better in our one-to-one meetings. I learned that if I asked open-ended questions, stayed silent, and gave him plenty of time to reflect, he was the most creative thinker in our whole group. He had inventive ways of solving problems, and I just needed to provide the environment where he felt safe enough to share those ideas.
I’m grateful I had this experience early in my years managing people because it was an important lesson in challenging my own assumptions and biases. I learned that the people we don’t easily click with or relate to are often the people we need to surround ourselves with as they think differently and bring valuable perspectives to a team. I learned that however tempting it is to build teams of like-minded people, what we need are differently minded people.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I believe that curiosity, empathy, and courage were the traits that served me the most in my decades of leadership.
Curiosity: I’ve been insatiably curious my whole life, and this quality has served me as I’m truly curious about understanding the people I work with. That means getting to know them first as human beings, not only as co-workers or employees. People want to feel seen and heard and appreciated for who they are, and I noticed that the more I invested in getting to know people, the more they trusted and appreciated me as a leader. When I left my VP job, I received a note that touched my heart, saying “You’ve always made me feel seen and appreciated even though our interactions have mostly been limited to short hallway chats the past few years. But remembering my name, showing genuine interest in what I’m doing now, and just making a few minutes to catch up has always meant a lot to me.”
Compassion: I know that my genuine care for others’ wellbeing made me a leader people wanted to work with. I learned that even when delivering tough feedback, I could do it in a compassionate way so the person could hear it and know that I wanted to help them succeed. For example, I had an employee who was struggling to meet his goals and rather than berate him, I asked him what was getting in his way and asked him if he was doing the work he wanted to do. I sensed that he might be in the wrong job, and we ended up having a deep conversation about what he might explore in the future while also getting clear on what he needed to deliver and where he needed some help.
Courage: I believe courage means pushing through in the face of fear; it’s not about being fearless. There were many times in my career when I felt I was out on a very scary limb, but I persevered because I thought something was important enough. For example, when I was the executive in charge of a large, internal engineering conference and had the opportunity to deliver a keynote, every year I picked a challenging topic that I believe we all needed to engage in rather than take the easy route and talk about the technical work my team was doing. The night before I gave a keynote to 1000 engineers about empathy, I envisioned all the ways it might go wrong and wondered if I was making a terrible mistake. Relieved that I was not booed off the stage, I was surprised and delighted that so many people thanked me for talking about topics no one else seemed willing to talk about.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Can you share a personal story that highlights the impact of diversity and inclusivity in your life or career?
When I applied for the VP of Engineering Practice role, the SVP who was hiring for the role told me that even though I had a great track record of leading transformation in the company, he had some concerns: first, because I had not been a software engineer myself, he wasn’t sure I’d have enough credibility in the role, and second, the engineering leadership in the company was a “boys’ club,” and he wasn’t sure I could break into the club.
Rather than getting the role right away, I was offered a 90-day “acting” role to see if I was a fit for the position. I spent those 90 days meeting with all the engineering leaders, who at the time were all men. I asked them what concerns they might have about me in the role. What I heard multiple times was that what was needed was someone who thought differently, who was willing to shake things up and challenge the status quo, and they thought I was the right person for the role.
I did get the job at the end of my 90-day trial, and I stayed in that role for almost five years. I have so much gratitude and appreciation for all those men, including the SVP, who recognized that it was important to hire someone who wasn’t part of that insiders’ club, who didn’t think the same way everyone else did, and who might just be the catalyst for substantive change.
How do you approach and manage the challenges that arise when working towards creating more inclusive communities?
I believe that many of the challenges that arise in trying to foster a more inclusive environment stem from fear. It’s easy to get paralyzed by discomfort, knowing you want to be a more inclusive leader but being afraid of doing something wrong. The first thing to realize is that you are not alone. Almost everyone I know who is embarking on this journey feels apprehensive and uncomfortable. Even if you’ve been working on diversity, equity, and inclusion for years, you will encounter a new situation that will make you uncomfortable. Discomfort is part of the work.
As humans, we are drawn to other people who are most like us. We are most comfortable with people who look like us, who have the same level of education, and who have a similar personality type. Therefore, the idea of surrounding ourselves with people who are different from us and figuring out how to be inclusive to everyone can be overwhelmingly uncomfortable.
It’s important to acknowledge the discomfort while at the same time commit to the work of being an inclusive leader. I’d suggest that rather than try to be perfect and get it “right,” decide to be curious, open-minded, and ready to learn. When you meet resistance, ask questions to understand what’s behind the resistance. When someone corrects you or tells you that you’ve offended them, offer a heartfelt apology, and make sure you understand their perspective.
What innovative strategies or initiatives have you implemented or observed that effectively promote the importance of diversity and inclusivity?
The effective initiatives that I’ve seen are ones where there’s an ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusivity and an acknowledgment that there is no quick fix. The most senior people in the organization are the champions of the initiative, and their behavior is congruent with their outward-facing statements. There must be a real investment, which means budget is allocated, time is dedicated, and systems are reviewed and changed to promote a more equitable and inclusive organization. Finally, metrics are tracked, and leaders are held accountable for continuous improvement.
In your opinion, what are the key elements that make a community truly inclusive, and how can these be fostered on a larger scale?
An inclusive community is one where differences are embraced and celebrated, where no one feels like an outsider. Cultivating this level of inclusion takes open minds and hearts. It requires us to be curious about others rather than threatened or hostile to them because they are different.
To foster inclusion on a large scale, we can’t rely only on the goodwill of individuals, although that’s a starting point. We need to develop systems that challenge bias and exclusion and instead reward inclusion and equity.
Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways We Can Build Inclusive Communities”?
1 . Embrace the discomfort. Because of our affinity bias, we are most comfortable with people who are the most like us. We tend to form cliques with people with whom we connect easily, and these are often the people who think like us, who have similar backgrounds, education, and life experiences. To build inclusive communities and cultures, we need to get out of our familiar comfort zones and get to know people with whom we may not immediately or easily connect. We need to seek the common ground we have as fellow human beings, even if we see the world from wildly different perspectives.
We also must acknowledge that doing the work of being a more inclusive leader or community member will inevitably make us uncomfortable, even if we’re strongly committed to the work. I experienced this discomfort when I was an executive. I was strongly committed to being an ally, a sponsor, and a DEI activist. I was asked by the head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion if I would be willing to be an executive sponsor for one of the Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). I immediately said yes and then had to say which ERGs I would want to sponsor. The most obvious and most comfortable one for me would have been the Women’s ERG. I had been a long-time mentor for the Women’s group.
The ERG that needed attention and care was the Black ERG, as the Black population was probably the most under-represented group in the company and there were no Black executives. I hesitated. I was uncomfortable as a White woman to volunteer to be an executive sponsor for the Black ERG. How awkward. Scenarios of how I would fail flashed through my mind. I envisioned how the group might reject me. But then I asked myself a few questions: Who will do it if you don’t, and will they commit to spending the time and energy listening, learning, and supporting the group? What if you volunteered and did everything you could to support the group? What if you decided to open your heart and your mind, to be willing to be uncomfortable and still do it?
Despite my worries and discomfort, I decided to volunteer to be the executive sponsor for the Black ERG. The discomfort did not go away after making the decision. It did not go away after the first meeting I had with the ERG members. Maybe the discomfort never fully went away, but what did happen was that I gradually established relationships with members of the ERG, and they got to know me as a person. I listened. I helped find funding for events. Some members asked me for advice on difficult situations they were facing. And I believe that the ERG members saw me as someone who saw them, heard them, cared about them, and was willing to take action in partnership with them.
2 . Focus on listening. Everyone wants to feel heard and understood. When you truly listen to another human being with curiosity and the desire to understand, you can completely transform your relationship with them. You can get to know people with radically different backgrounds and ways of thinking. You can start to appreciate other perspectives, even if you don’t agree with them. And you can make the other person feel safe, cared for, and recognized as a unique person with something to contribute.
We don’t often think of listening as a skill to be developed. Instead, we instead think of it as something fundamental that we all know how to do. And yet, how often do we truly listen without getting distracted and without preparing a response while the other person is still talking? When we’re challenged by a perspective we don’t agree with, how often do we respond constructively instead of defensively? Even if we say that we strive to be open to being challenged, hearing divergent viewpoints, and welcoming feedback, are we able to listen with curiosity?
My own experience of being a woman in the engineering departments of several software companies meant that I often found myself feeling like an outsider. I frequently struggled to have my voice heard, even when I was in a senior position. The times that I felt included were when people seemed interested in my point of view and were willing to listen, even when we had very different perspectives.
Creating an inclusive environment requires all of us to become better listeners. For anyone in a leadership position, it’s especially important to notice how you’re listening and ask yourself if you’re listening to the people who agree with you and tuning out the voices who don’t share your perspective. If you catch yourself doing this, you can recommit to curiosity and to understanding everyone’s perspectives, even if you don’t agree with them.
3 . Practice empathy and compassion. To cultivate an environment where everyone has a sense of inclusion and belonging, we need to step out of our own experiences and learn to appreciate and care about the experiences of others, especially people with whom we don’t have a lot in common or don’t connect with easily. Without empathy and compassion for others, we see everything through our own lenses, based on our own identity and personal experiences.
One of the trickiest parts of being inclusive to everyone is that our natural, human inclination draws us to people who are the most like us. We tend to empathize with and care more about people we have an affinity towards when we need to extend our empathy and compassion to everyone, even those people with whom we don’t naturally connect. The first step in strengthening empathy and compassion for others is to recognize our shared humanity, and a helpful technique is to use the Just Like Me practice. Think about the person you may be struggling to connect with and think about how just like you, this person is human. For example:
This person has a body and a mind, just like me.
This person has feelings, thoughts, and emotions, just like me.
This person has experienced physical and emotional pain and suffering, just like me.
We may often find unexpected connections or discover something we’d never imagined. Our eyes get wider, and our hearts get bigger whenever we strive to connect on a deeper level with others.
4 . Make it safe. I believe an inclusive community must be built on a foundation of psychological safety — the belief that you will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In an inclusive community, everyone knows they have a voice. They are respected for their diverse experiences, backgrounds, and points of view. They don’t hesitate to share a divergent perspective. They can engage in lively debate and discussion without feeling nervous about sharing their true thoughts. They can be themselves rather than trying to conform. However, inclusion is impossible if people don’t feel they are in a psychologically safe environment.
Early in my career, I was part of a cross-functional team that will forever stand out in my mind. Decades later, I realized that what was so special about the team was the high degree of psychological safety and the norms for team behavior we had established.
When we first started meeting as a group, we established that we would take turns taking notes at the meeting. While this seems like an almost trivial behavior, it has a profound impact on team dynamics. When someone is a note-taker, they cannot be as active a participant as those not taking the notes. It is very common for women or people from historically underrepresented groups to be the assigned note-takers in meetings (this is also known as “office housework.”) In this group, that never happened as every person took notes on a rotating basis.
Another team behavior was that everyone had a chance to speak at every meeting; no one was left out or silent, nor did anyone dominate the meeting. It was entirely normal for anyone in the team to disagree with the others. Nothing was off the table, and we frequently had lively discussions in which we didn’t come to easy agreements. When we did reach an agreement, though, everyone fully committed to the decision and moved forward accordingly.
One of the most common behaviors in our meetings was laughing together. While we were dead serious about delivering a great product, we also laughed a lot. We developed a strong enough rapport to be able to tease each other light-heartedly about each of our quirks.
Above all, we knew we all had everyone’s back. We cared about one another as human beings, and we cared about developing the best version of the product we could possibly deliver.
5 . Use your power for good. It’s my fundamental belief that anyone in a position of power — whether explicit in hierarchy or implicit in group dynamics — has an obligation to use their power for the benefit of others. One way to do that is to be a generous mentor and sponsor for people who don’t have the same power or privilege. Mentors advise, provide feedback, and support the people they mentor while sponsors take action to advocate, make connections, and find opportunities for the people they sponsor. As we get to know someone through a mentoring relationship, we can progress to a sponsorship role.
That was my experience with someone I mentored as part of a one-year emerging leaders’ program. Over the course of the year, I got to know my mentee, Mona, and was impressed not only by the way she engaged so thoughtfully in our conversations but also by her commitment to learning and growing in her career. At some point in our relationship, she told me she was interested in exploring other jobs in the company. I happened to know the leader of the group she was interested in joining, so I made an introduction. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had just made the leap from mentor to sponsor.
Several years later, I reconnected with Mona, and she told me that the introduction I made on her behalf was the catalyst for a new phase of her career. To me, it seemed like such a small gesture — a quick email to someone I knew well, telling him about an impressive person I’d mentored.
As a sponsor, do not underestimate the power your actions can have. Something as simple as an email or quick call can open a door for someone who might otherwise not have had an opportunity.
How do you measure the impact and success of diversity and inclusion efforts, and what changes have you seen as a result of these initiatives?
It’s common for DEI measurements to be limited to demographic details of a community or workforce. For example, organizations may report that they have X percentage of women or people of color in their organizations and stop at that.
To measure the impact and success of diversity and inclusion efforts, we must look at people’s experiences and opportunities in an organization. Running data analysis through a demographic and hierarchical lens can be illuminating. For example, you may find that there is a high percentage of women in manager, senior manager, and director positions but a sharp drop-off in women in higher-level positions. You may notice pay discrepancies between people of different races and genders who are doing the same jobs with the same tenure. You can also run surveys, focus groups, and do listening tours to get the pulse of how people are feeling about being part of the organization.
No matter how beautifully and thoroughly you analyze your data, it will make no difference unless you put an action plan in place to address the issues you uncover. Commit to taking action before you run the survey or analyze the data. For example, I know of a company that ran a salary analysis and discovered that there was a noticeable pay gap between men and women. Not only did they share the data publicly, but they also closed the salary gaps. That’s the kind of tangible action that makes a positive impact.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
The movement I’m trying to ignite is one where leaders are rewarded and celebrated for creating the conditions in which everyone can thrive and do great work, where together than can solve the most daunting problems, and where no one suffers because of toxic, bullying leaders.
How can our readers further follow you online?
Readers can connect with me through my website, https://www.minettenorman.com/ and on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minettenorman/.
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success in your great work!
About The Interviewer: Vanessa Ogle is an entrepreneur, inventor, writer, and singer/songwriter. She is best known as the founder of Enseo which she and her team grew into one of the largest out-of-home media and connected networks in the world, serving more than 100,000,000 people annually. Vanessa’s talent in building world-class leadership teams focused on diversity, a culture of service, and innovation through inclusion resulted in amazing partnerships and customer relationships. She collaborated with the world’s leading technology and content companies such as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Dish Networks to bring innovative solutions to the hospitality industry. Enseo has also held an exclusive contract to provide movies to the entire U.S. armed forces for almost 15 years. Vanessa and her team’s relentless innovation resulted in120+ U.S. Patents. Her favorite product is the MadeSafe solution for hotel workers as well as students and children in their K-12 classrooms. Accolades include: #15 on FAST 100, 50 Fastest Growing Women-Owned 2018–2020, Entrepreneur 360 Best Companies 2018–2020, not to mention the Inc. 500 and then another six times on the Inc. 5000. Vanessa was personally honored with Inc. 100 Female Founder’s Award, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and Enterprising Women of the Year. Vanessa now spends her time enjoying her children, sharing stories to inspire and give hope through articles and speaking engagements. entrepreneurs-to-be with her articles including her LinkedIN newsletter Unplugged. In her spare time she writes music with her husband Paul as the band HigherHill, teaches surfing clinics, and trains dogs.
Please connect with Vanessa here on linkedin and subscribe to her newsletter Unplugged as well as follow her on Substack.
