Small Words, Big Impact: Confronting Microaggressions in the Workplace

Mo Fathelbab: Welcome to today's episode of People and Strategy. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, president of International Facilitators Organization, People and Strategy is a podcast from the SHRM Executive Network, the premier network in the field of human resources. Each week we bring you in-depth conversations with the country's top HR executives and thought leaders.

For today's conversation, I'm excited to be joined by Lori Marcus, Co-Founder of the Band of Sisters. Experts in leadership and culture. And the author of the book, you Should Smile More, she is also an executive coach and a corporate director. Welcome Lori.

[00:00:42] Lori Tauber Marcus: Thank you Mo. Happy to be here this morning.

[00:00:44] Mo Fathelbab: Great to have you with us.

So, Lori, tell us about your career journey and what led you to where you are today as Co-Founder and executive coach and a corporate board director.

[00:00:55] Lori Tauber Marcus: So I like to describe my career really in three chapters. The first part of my career, chapter one, which was the longest part, was, in Academy Consumer Products.

I worked at Pepsi for 24 years in all facets of marketing and general management. when I left Pepsi, I went on to have a career as a, chief marketing and chief product officer. I worked in retail. I worked at Kera Green Mountain on the, durable goods side of the business. And then I worked at Peloton as an interim chief marketing officer in the early days when it was still a smaller private equity backed, private company.

So, chapter one, chapter two was as a C-suite executive. And now for about eight and a half years, I've been, deep into this portfolio career. And when I left, Keurig and Peloton, about eight years ago, I knew I wanted to. Still work full time, but I wanted to do it in a much more self-propelled kind of way.

I didn't wanna have a boss anymore. I wanted to have a lot more control of my time. So I started this portfolio career. As you mentioned, the three main pillars are serving on corporate boards, public, private, not-for-profit advisory. I do executive coaching of very senior executives. And high potential executives.

And then about five or six years ago, we launched the, band of Sisters. And so we've been out on the speaking circuit, talking at conferences and talking to people in the workplace all over the country. So it's fun, it's really busy and active. all three of those things, the coaching, the board work and the Band of Sisters work, they all support each other.

but I really enjoy the variety and I enjoy, the, the freedom.

[00:02:38] Mo Fathelbab: Well, that sounds like a lovely journey, I'm sure. Full of amazing stories. what is one story that you could share from your corporate world that, that had a, memorable lesson for you?

[00:02:50] Lori Tauber Marcus: Yeah, so I think, I have always been a leader that.

Is focused on, building teams, trying to get the best out of people, motivating people, not, not motivating by fear, but motivating by trying to find people's strengths, towering strengths, how to take their, towering strengths and imagine what they would look like as superpowers. And sometimes I wonder, where did I get that from?

Was that how. I was raised, or sort of where does that come from? And I told this story before, but I think it bears repeating. now the funny thing is, the person who I'm gonna cite in this story, I don't think is on social media, so he'll probably never hear this. but the, one of my first bosses, right outta college, who literally hired me right off the pen campus, I worked for a small company.

It was a division of Nielsen marketing research. It was called majors. And, we were doing recruiting. We were going to, recruit other, promotion analyst, which is what I was, and we were, I was in Atlanta, which is where I was working, and we were. I think gonna, university of Georgia recruiting.

Now, I had never taken a course in recruiting. I didn't know how to recruit and we're about to get in the car to drive there. And this was, 40 years ago. And, I said to Dave, I said like, I don't know how to do this. Like, what do we look for? All this stuff. And he just looked at me like it was so simple.

And he said, oh, it's really easy. He said, you just go and you look for people who are smarter, more talented, more clever, and harder working than we are. And then. We'll all make a lot of money and it'll be great. And so I didn't have the language at that point. I was 22 years old. but I realized he had a real growth mindset.

And over the years I've met people that are sort of afraid to surround themselves with people that are better than them that might outshine them, but literally from my earliest career experience. The, gentleman who ran our office, and was later a huge mentor for me in my career. He was a sponsor and a mentor.

but he taught me that. And maybe I had it inside me, so maybe it just resonated with me. But that notion of if you keep finding more talented people, we will all do well. It's not win-lose. It truly can be win-win. And then you save the win-lose for in the marketplace. You compete in the marketplace. You don't compete within your own company.

[00:05:13] Mo Fathelbab: I think that's a beautiful quote. You compete in the marketplace, not within your own company. I hope everybody takes that hard, but, I know that's not always the case.

[00:05:23] Lori Tauber Marcus: Laurie, you recent, not

[00:05:25] Mo Fathelbab: always the case, not always the case. you recently wrote the article, for the people in strategy journal on micro moments unmasking bias at work.

Can you share a few examples of how microaggressions appear in the workplace?

[00:05:38] Lori Tauber Marcus: Yeah. So, we wrote a book, we wrote a book about this, the book, you should smile more. The title of the book, you Should Smile More, is actually an example of a microaggression. it happened to actually to one of my colleagues in a written review, and she was getting a great review by the way.

she was a chief marketing officer and she was told in a review that she should. Smile more, which is just an example of a style point. Women tend to, receive these a lot. She's too emotional. She's just not a good fit. She needs to smile more. She needs to smile less. And so these, microaggressions, or we call them micro moments because I think microaggressions feels like there's some.

intentionality there, and I don't think, I think 99 times out of a hundred there is no intentionality. People don't even realize that they're, they're doing this, it's calling women girls at work. It's like I said, telling women they're too emotional. It's, you're in a. Meeting where you're doing people planning and you're talking about, are we gonna offer this job to Joanne?

And they say, well, no, her husband has, he's a big corporate lawyer in New York. There's no way she could take that big promotion that would involve them moving to Chicago. Again, something that said with such good intention, but is actually a bias against her. So little things like that. They're little things.

They're like little bricks in a wall. that people say or do usually without realizing them. And then little by little they kind of add up and they become like bricks in a wall. And what happens is, unfortunately, or I like to say bricks on your shoulder, the people that experience this, it's not just like once a week or once a day.

It's usually at least once in every meeting. Over time, what happens is they become like bricks on your shoulder. And for people who experience 'em, you know largely, but not exclusively women or people in underrepresented groups, you just, at some point you kind of opt out because it's too exhausting to show up at work every day and kind of have to deal with these, or worse yet you get marginalized.

So when someone says, oh, have you met the new girl in accounting? You don't automatically think, Hey, I bet that girl will be the CEO one day. You would never say, have you met the new boy in accounting? You would just never say it. You can't try it. I mean, you'll, spit up your tea. So, so I think that there, there are little things like that.

Again, one by one they seem too small. To even say something about, and if you're experiencing them, usually you would kind of sound like an idiot if you brought it up. You would sound petty and small. But what happens is, like I said, as a result of that, it's like death by a thousand cuts.

[00:08:27] Mo Fathelbab: So do microaggressions impact a culture?

[00:08:30] Lori Tauber Marcus: Yes, absolutely. gosh, I could talk about culture all day. So culture is. My definition sort of culture is about what gets rewarded in a company. It's about how decisions are really made. Culture isn't about, sorry to everyone who makes these for a living, but it's not about like the laminated thing or the poster that you put on the wall that says, our culture is, that could be us.

Inspirational, but people see right through it. People understand, like I said, what's said, what's unsaid, what gets rewarded, all of that. So they impact culture in that. Part of culture is, in a, every culture's different. In great cultures, people can show up with their full selves and they feel engaged and they feel, they feel seen, they feel rewarded.

They feel like they could bring their full selves or most of their full selves to work that day. And when these little things happen, it just, like I said, it exhausts people and it takes away from their ability to do what you really want them to do. I'm a capitalist through and through. and so really.

Everything for me comes back to how do you get better business results so you get better business results with diverse teams. All the research suggests that, but then regardless of the team, let's assume you have a diverse team. You want people to feel engaged and energized. Yeah.

[00:09:58] Mo Fathelbab: So you have a framework when microaggressions do occur, tell us that framework for how to address those, situations.

[00:10:06] Lori Tauber Marcus: Sure. So let me just, for the audience, let me just set forth, kind of a three by three if you will. So when you think about these micro moments or microaggressions, we talk about what do you do if it's you and you experience 'em? What do you do if you are, a witness in the room? And how do you go from being a witness to a supporter?

some people would say Ally, but I'll say supporter. And then what do you do if you are a boss or the boss? You don't have to be the boss in the room, but what do you do if you're a more senior leader? So think about it from those three audiences, and then for each of them, depending on what the moment is that happens, you might address it right there in the moment.

You might address it after the moment, after the meeting you might have a curbside debrief with someone. You might make a note. And then when you're meeting with someone on somebody else, say, Hey, did you notice in the meeting? Blah, blah, blah. I feel like we were talking over, Susan the whole time and I feel like, we need to make a better effort to let her get her voice out.

So there's in the moment. There's kind of after the meeting, and then there's one that people always forget about, which is before the next meeting. So let's say you and I go to a meeting and we notice, gosh, we are always talking over, Jenny in these meetings. And then lo and behold, when people planning comes up, we're like, well, Jenny doesn't have a big voice.

She doesn't make her point of view known. So one of the things that. I could do on Jenny's behalf, Jenny could do on her behalf and say, Hey, in this meeting, recurring meeting, we have the bosses staff meeting every, week. I feel like I get talked over by Kevin and so could I ask your help Joe?

Like when I say something, can I ask your help to either kind of amplify it or ask me to expe expand on that a little bit? So again, you can use. In the meeting kind of right then and there you can use after the meeting, and then you can use before the next meeting. just for that, framework. One thing I'll say is many people feel like if the moment passes and they didn't say something in the meeting.

That it's lost, the opportunity is lost. And I just, if people take one thing away from this is that the, moment isn't lost. Sometimes it's not the best idea to address it in the meeting. Depending on your level of psychological safety, depending on the sort of the audience, you have to think about.

When is the right moment to respond? so again, three different audiences, three different opportunities of when, and then if you were overlaying on that, the how. So sometimes a really direct, approach is required. Sometimes people use humor. My friend and colleague see her favorite of these is, calling women, girls in the workplace.

So if somebody, if she's in a room and somebody says, oh, we just hired this, great, this great, woman, great girl in accounting, she will literally say, and again, she's very likable. She's from the Midwest, so she can get away with it. She'll say. Did you just say girl? And she'll literally say, did you just say girl?

Is she 12? and then she'll say, try saying boy. Like, and she'll just laugh and everyone laughs and everyone loves her. I always say, I'm kind of underneath this like, preppy Connecticut lady. I'm kind of a smart snarky girl from New Jersey underneath it all. And I say, girl, 'cause that's where I was raised.

So if I were to say the same thing. It would sound snotty no matter how hard I tried, that would come out snotty if I said it that way. So what I might say is, we just hired this new girl in the analytics department and I might say, yes, I heard we just hired this new woman, Marissa. In the data and analytics department, I understand she has her master's degree from Yale.

She's written some excellent pieces about data analytics. She's been featured on it, so I might just use it in a very subtle way as an opportunity to sort of build her up. So again, sometimes direct, sometimes questions, sometimes humor, but you have to use a different style depending on who you are and kind of who the people are in the room.

So maybe that's actually a three by three times three. Yeah. I need a three dimensional model.

[00:14:26] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. No, that's a great framework. Thank you. what do you think are some of the barriers to preventing microaggressions?

[00:14:33] Lori Tauber Marcus: Yeah. I think one of the things about microaggressions, and I've been listening a lot to a lot of, podcasts about, bias training and things like that.

And there's some pool of work that suggests that one time training for anything isn't really. The best solution. Mandatory training isn't always the best solution. So I think every person alive has unconscious bias. Right? But what I'm saying is. If you have a learning mindset and you realize every day, every minute, you wanna be learning things that you didn't know before.

So in the process of writing this book, for example, there were a lot of things that we wrote about a lot of these micro moments that I had experienced myself I knew about, even if I hadn't experienced 'em. But then you learn other things. You learn about things where people have like. Workplaces that aren't sort of enabled for people with visual impairments or hearing impairments, or if they need, a ramp for a wheelchair.

I don't think about that. I am sure that I have said and done things every day that other people experience as bias. So rather than like slap yourself on your hand and like, oh, I'm a bad person. I think it's just the opposite. I think you wanna create a culture where people are constantly learning.

Culture changes in the macro sense. Language evolves, and so it's not about like, Ooh, you said something. You can't say that you're canceled. It's just you have to learn to evolve and grow, like I said, as the culture evolves in our country and the world, and then language evolves. So if you think about it as, sort of see it, learn it, and then create the kind of environment where somebody can say to you after the meeting.

Hey, Laura, you may not realize that, but when you said that thing about such and such, it might, I know you didn't intend it this way, but I think it actually, I was watching how so and so reacted to it. I think it might've had, x, y, Z effect. And so you wanna create that culture where you then say to that person, Hey, thanks for pointing that out.

I didn't realize that. and sometimes. It might be that you go back to the person and say, you know what? I said something in a meeting, and I think in hindsight I realize it might've been a little offensive and I just wanna, square that with you. Or sometimes it's just not big enough to do that, and then you don't say it in the next meeting or the next day or the next week.

So it's just, it's kind of, again, learning culture, learning mindset, and I think that's something you should do. In your personal life with your family, with your friends, and you should do it in the workplace. It's not one or the other.

[00:17:04] Mo Fathelbab: It's about creating awareness, right? I mean, sometimes it's not so large, right?

It's just somebody is not even aware.

[00:17:11] Lori Tauber Marcus: Yes, I think I would take what you've said and I, sort of double down on that. I'd say most times it's not charged. typically when it's charged, like it's, if somebody is conscious, that's a different story. But I think we have so much work to do and so much opportunity just in the area where it is unconscious.

I don't think most people are waking up in the morning and say. I'm gonna hold women back. I'm gonna ask women to plan the parties. I'm going to ask women to run the volunteer culture committees, and I'm gonna ask men to be on the business development task force. I think we're all just, we're socialized in a certain way.

and so I think most of it is unconscious. I think it's about learning, it's about awareness, and then just every moment trying to be a slightly better version. Of the person you were five minutes before that,

[00:18:05] Mo Fathelbab: To that point, one thing that comes to mind is just one to assume best intent. and then the second thing is I would assume if a culture has feedback as part of how the organization runs, then it's more comfortable to have these conversations.

[00:18:21] Lori Tauber Marcus: Yes, absolutely. And I'm a big believer, like I said, not just in sort of formal feedback. Twice a year you have a meeting with your boss and they tell you something. I mean, I remember, PepsiCo was a great company for a lot of reasons, but one of them is, in the day when I was there, I assume it's still the same way.

They invested all of their time in their leaders. And so we had, first time manager training and how to have a curbside debrief. I mean, just a level of training that I don't think I realized how excellent it was until I went to other companies that didn't have any of that. But I literally remember at some point doing a, being the recipient of a mini training that was about how to have a curbside debrief after a meeting.

So rather than waiting for a week later, or six weeks later. We learn this often in the context of customer meetings, where you do a curbside debrief after the meeting with the team. What went well, what didn't go well? What are the follow ups, right? And immediacy is better, but if you think about that without making ourselves crazy, it's better if we can do that.

For everything that we do, and just be able to have more kind of real time feedback. But again, it only works if there's psychological safety and if the leaders are very conscious of making sure that people can speak truth to power. People talk a good game about speaking truth to power. but I would say in my experience, I have seen people say the words and then when someone speaks up, they go Fuck.

And they kind of, push them down or they say, well, that's because, or whatever. And so their language might say, speak truth to power, but their actions immediately after are very clear and you have to have a culture. And I do think this starts at all levels, but it has to also be leader led where people have the psychological safety and you welcome them speaking truth to power.

[00:20:23] Mo Fathelbab: I'm struck by the fact that PepsiCo did this decades ago. I. And yet today, decades and today still there are companies grappling with whether or not it's okay to give feedback. Yes. Why do you think that is?

[00:20:37] Lori Tauber Marcus: I think, I'll be a little snarky for a minute. I think about companies like PepsiCo.

When I was there again, we made chips in soda and so we didn't have some great. And we weren't in the software business. We didn't have all this intellectual property or whatever. I mean, we have, the recipe for Pepsi or Mountain Dew, but at the end of the day, the secret sauce of our company, I mean, we had amazing brands, but it was really about people.

And I think the company knew that from the jump. So they hired talented people. It was. Not the easiest culture in the world. I mean, when the smartest people, at any given time are in the conference room with you, it's a tough and kind of assertive culture, but I think they knew that's what they had.

That was their secret sauce. Their secret sauce was the people. So I think they. Always invested in people. And then I think early on, we talk about when we were writing our book, and we talk about Steve Reinman, who was the CEO for a long time that we were there. And he was really, I mean, white man, I think military background.

And yet he was one of the people that really leaned in to diversity and I think really understood. If we're gonna have the most talented workforce in the world, we need to embrace, diversity and we also need to make sure that our talent reflects the talent in the marketplace, reflects the population in the marketplace.

So he was very early on, in sort of realizing that, and again. I have to say I didn't appreciate it at the time. I thought this is how all companies acted. And then when I went on to other co companies, I was like, oh, they were really quite good.

[00:22:20] Mo Fathelbab: So I was gonna ask you if you had a mentor that exhibited authentic leadership qualities and what that looked like, would that be him or would that be someone else?

[00:22:29] Lori Tauber Marcus: Yeah, you know what? I feel like I have had so many mentors, throughout my career. I want to answer, I wanna answer the question and expand it if that's okay. So, one thing, this is kind of a paid political announcement for mentors are really important mentors, mentors are important. Coaches are important, but the.

Unspoken thing or under spoken thing that's really important is sponsorship, right? So the research suggested suggests that women tend to be over mentored, but under sponsored and for the audience in case it's not clear to everybody. Mentors, they speak with you. and they can help you. They can help you skill build, they can give you advice.

But sponsors speak for you. Sponsors speak for you when you're not in the room. Sponsors have organizational power and they're the people when you're not in the room who can be pounding their fist on the table and say, no, I am committed to Lori getting the next role. VP to SVP, whatever it is.

I am sponsoring Lori for that role. We have committed, she's done X, Y, z. Sponsors are people that speak for you. And so I think some people use those terms interchangeably. They're both important. You need to have both, right? You need to have mentors from a mentors and coaches from a teaching standpoint.

But you need to have sponsors. You need to have people that when you're not there will use their power to help you. And so I feel like I've had too many mentors to count. but what I'm really thankful for is the people that sponsored me, the people that use their power. When I wasn't in the room to advocate for me and to help pull me up through the organization.

[00:24:13] Mo Fathelbab: I love that. I, had an early manager that really with me, I felt he was very tough, but then later I found out he was saying amazing things behind my back.

[00:24:23] Lori Tauber Marcus: Yes. Yes. Yes. I love that. I love that. And one other thing I would say about mentors is some companies now are doing reverse mentoring, which I love.

They'll have, somebody who's more senior, have a reverse mentor who might be a junior person, sometimes much younger. sometimes that's helpful in terms of technology and other things. but a mentor doesn't have to be somebody who's. More senior to you. They could be a peer mentor. One of my biggest mentors is actually a very good friend of mine.

She was the president of our advertising agency and she, had such a wide purview, such a broad purview up and down the organization that she was super helpful in terms of giving me. Tidbits and advice, because she's, she had the privilege of sitting in, boardrooms across multiple companies.

So it doesn't have to be a senior person to be a mentor. It can be, but think about peer mentoring, reverse mentoring, and sometimes it's somebody outside the company as well.

[00:25:21] Mo Fathelbab: Amazing. Lori, last question. What piece of advice shaped your work or personal life the most?

[00:25:28] Lori Tauber Marcus: I loved a piece of advice that I learned from somebody who was, on the PepsiCo board.

He spoke to us at a, at a leadership conference. And this was kind of mid-career at Pepsi for me. And what he said is, as leaders, there's no off switch. and so you think you have these meetings like, I'm in a meeting and now I'm on, and now people are listening to me or I'm presenting at a town hall meeting and they're all hands meeting and now people are watching.

It's the same for parenting by the way. Hopefully everyone's having that moment that's thinking, oh, this is just like my kids. I think I don't swear in front of them, and then they hear me when I'm swearing, in my home office or while I'm doing laundry or whatever. And so the thing is, there is no off switch.

you, so he used the example, you run into somebody at the grocery store on a Saturday morning who works for your company. It's not like, well, that doesn't count the way you acted in that interaction. When you bump into somebody in the ladies room or the men's room, or at the Acme or whatever it is.

On an airplane, it all counts, right? We're a sum total of all our experiences. So again, it's the same with you if you have children, they're listening for everything. And it's the same in the workplace. There is no off switch. It's a little bit of the burden of leadership. People are always. Watching you.

We love to talk about the mantle of leadership, but there's no off switch. And I think everybody, I think that's something that I learned again midway through my Pepsi career, but early enough in my life, in boardrooms. There's no off comments, there's no side comments. There is no off switch. And so just be aware of that and embrace it.

It's part of the, mantle of leadership.

[00:27:09] Mo Fathelbab: That's where we'll end it for this episode of People and Strategy. A huge thanks to you, Lori, for your valuable insights. You can follow the People and Strategy podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on podcast visibility.

So if you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review to help others find the show. Finally, you could find all our episodes on our website at SHRM dot org slash podcasts. Thank you for listening and have a great day.