Complexity is the defining business and leadership challenge of our time. But it has never felt more urgent than this moment, with the coronavirus upending life and business as we know it. Since March, we’ve been talking to leaders about what it takes to lead through the most complex and confounding problems, including the pandemic. Today we speak with Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson, author of Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams. Dr. Johnson is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, a member of the MG 100 Coaches, and was selected for the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar List. She is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Bloomberg, and appears regularly in other media outlets.
David Benjamin and David Komlos: Please tell us a bit about yourself and what set you on your journey to be an Inclusifyer?
Stefanie K. Johnson: I am a mom and I am a management professor who studies leadership and diversity, focusing on how these two things intersect. How do we view women leaders and leaders of color? And what can all leaders do to promote diversity and inclusion? My early leadership studies often showed discrepancies in the evaluations of male and female leaders. I could not just ignore the data so I found myself trying to understand why this was happening.
As I started studying the topic, so much more came up. Societal inequities make this topic so complex. Just thinking about me, I am Mexican-American but present pretty White so no one has ever really discriminated against me on the basis of my race. Instead, I experienced a lot of systemic racism in the fact that I grew up super poor, my parents did not go to college. I literally had to get a job to pay for taking my SATs. I was lucky enough to find my way into a great college (Claremont McKenna College) and Ph.D. program (Rice) but without that education, I would never have made it to where I am today.
Hello, Stefanie: I picked up your book, “Inclusify” from the library and have been reading it. I think I will get my own copy. I am 75 years old with a variety of jobs and professions. Like yourself, I worked to pay my way through two college degrees. I became a hospital chaplain in 1981 in Cleveland OH and worked 25 years full-time, part-time and on-call. As a woman who was raised and formed within the Roman Catholic Church, I stepped out “in faith” to take the steps for vocational development to solidify my identity as a hospital chaplain and college campus minister; the journey was difficult at times, especially without structural recognition or support. I am semi-retired and have worked four years for 16 hours a week as a pricing assistant at a superstore named Meijer (headquarters (outside of Grand Rapids MI). I note their efforts to “inclusify” as shared on the break room large screen TV and programming. I look forward to reading and studying your work further. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you, Mary, for reaching out. I am glad you are enjoying the book and I always love to hear from awesome people who forged their own journey in life. Let me know what you think of the rest of the book!