Belonging Vs. Bonding: Reclaiming Connection In A Divided World

Andy Goram (left) and Greg Morley (right) discuss the importance of belonging and connection in organisations

In a time when the very idea of inclusion is being politicised and polarised, it’s easy to forget one simple truth: humans are wired to connect.

In this episode of Sticky From The Inside, I sit down with Greg Morley—global DEI leader and author of Bond: Belonging and the Keys to Inclusion & Connection—to reframe the conversation.

This isn’t about corporate jargon or diversity dashboards. It’s about what happens when people feel seen, heard, and valued at work.

Together, we explore:

• Why belonging is a feeling, but bonding is a choice—and why both matter in building thriving cultures.

• The everyday micro-behaviours that create inclusion—and the ones that quietly destroy it.

• Why curiosity might just be the most underrated leadership skill in your toolkit.

• How to build safe spaces for mistakes, learning, and course correction—not silence and fear.

• And why advocacy matters more than allyship—because standing next to someone isn’t the same as standing up for them.

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We also reflect on what it means to reclaim the middle ground in DEI—away from tick-box tactics and toxic backlash, and toward genuine human connection.

🎧 You can listen to the full episode using the player below, or follow the full transcript which follows:

Whether you’re a team leader, HR professional, or someone trying to build a more connected culture, this one’s full of practical insights and heartfelt reminders that inclusion isn’t a dark art—it’s a daily practice.

Full Transcript

[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:21)

Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tonnes more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.

Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.

Why Inclusion Feels Under Attack in 2025

Okay then, you'd think in 2025 we'd be making progress when it comes to inclusion but just take a look at what's happening in parts of the US right now and it's hard not to feel disheartened.

DEI is being vilified, whole departments are being dismantled and the idea of belonging, something so deeply human, is somehow being framed as a political thing. To me, it's baffling and I think it's just missing the point because behind all the slogans and the backlash there's something far more universal at stake here and that's our basic human need to connect. And that's exactly what today's guest is here to talk about.

Greg Morley is the author of Bond, Belonging and the Keys to Inclusion and Connection. Now, he's led DEI work for some of the world's biggest brands like GE and Hasbro and he's done it across a multitude of countries. So, when Greg talks about inclusion, it's not from the perspective of theories and books, it's from boardrooms, shop floors and lived experiences right across the globe.

So, in today's conversation, we're going to unpack a few big ideas, I hope, from his book. Like, what's the real difference between belonging and bonding? How does this sharp in the everyday choices and behaviours we make that impact inclusion even when we get it wrong when we don't really mean to?

Is there still a meaningful non-political middle ground for DEI? Somewhere between the performative tick boxing and all the toxic pushback? And is there some secret, hidden, dark art to fostering a real sense of belonging, inclusion and connection at work?

So, if you're ready to look at inclusion through a far more human lens and explore what it really takes to build cultures where people feel like they matter, stick around because I think you're in the right place today. Greg, welcome to the show.

[Greg Morley] (3:21 - 3:34)

Well, that is an incredible introduction and I am not a dark arts master, but we'll try to unpack much of what you told in the introduction, Andy, and thank you for that very generous and kind intro.

[Andy Goram] (3:35 - 4:13)

Oh, no, no, this is a conversation I have long been looking forward to, my friend, and already you're straight into the, yep, I'm not a dark art practicer. And I think this is the thing, this I hope in the conversation that we have today, it's not a dark art, it's an innate desire that we have to do this and why we make such an absolute balls up of it in a lot of cases, I do not know. Anyway, before we start getting on hobby horses and soap boxes and all that kind of stuff, do me a favour, I gave you a tiny little intro there, but just tell us a bit more about you, Greg, what have, what have you been doing and what are you up to now?

Greg Morley’s Global DEI Journey (04:14)

[Greg Morley] (4:14 - 8:21)

Uh, so the quick arc of, uh, Greg Morley's life, I was, uh, born in the U S grew up there, went to school there. And I was very fortunate to have grown up in an environment that was quite diverse. And my parents were very avid travellers.

They both worked and travelled for leisure outside the U S. So we always had this, my sister and I always had this, uh, view of like the outside world. It's been very exciting and, and, and very, uh, place that we wanted to discover.

Um, after university, I went to eventually worked for GE for awhile, as you mentioned, and then, um, worked in, uh, Disney for quite a long time. And Disney was the mode to my moving around the world or initially. So I was able to, uh, work in a team where I was responsible for all of the international recruiting for Walt Disney world in Florida.

So that was a great experience and it was kind of an outside in view of the world. And then I had my first opportunity to work overseas, which was a Disneyland Paris. I then went to Hong Kong, worked in Hong Kong and Shanghai for Disney, ultimately came back to Hong Kong and went to work for Hasbro, as you mentioned, the toy company.

And then, uh, finally for LVMH, uh, in the wines and spirits division of Louis Hennessy. And so in all of that project trajectory of work in life, I really grew to appreciate this, the richness of having diverse teams and the richness of having different ways of thinking about problems and attacking things in different ways. And the, you know, the uniqueness of culture, whether that was, uh, American culture or European, French culture or, or Chinese culture.

And the interesting thing I learned about culture over time is that even in the U S you know, I grew up in Philadelphia. I went to school in Virginia. I worked in Orlando and in California.

Those are four very different places, you know, when, when, when people look at America, they think, well, it's, it's kind of melting pot, but it's not that dissimilar from Europe or Asian in terms of the way you have different cultures. So as, as I got more into the scope of, of culture and performance, I started to see some of the things you were talking about. And it was kind of this fraying of the discussion that politicizing of the discussion and the kind of marginal voices, which will be coming larger and larger.

And I have lived this world to see, uh, to know that diverse teams that work in inclusive environments and that have leaders that are trained to do that work and lead those teams, those organizations excel. That's not Greg Morley's view, although it's just not just my view, I would say it is my view, but it's also bears out in data study after study after study, regardless of the location around the world, um, bears out that diverse teams are more successful and more able to spot risk. Inclusive cultures of diverse teams are allowing teams to be more innovative, more creative, and ultimately, um, have better revenue.

The teams that then have leaders that can manage those environments, and it's not always easy, um, are outperforming their peers by six times. So what I attempted to do in the book that I wrote that you mentioned was to try to bring people back to the middle, which is bring people back to the business case about why diversity and inclusion is important for organizations. I don't talk a lot in my book about labeling and, and, and naming and that kind of thing.

It's really to bring people back into a discussion in a non-confrontational way to say, let's get back to the discussion about inclusion. Why is it important and how do we create it for teams and companies?

[Andy Goram] (8:22 - 8:58)

Which is great. And I am thrilled that we're going to get to do a little bit of that today because I'm, I think I am a hundred percent with you. Just the very look, it's not backed on loads of research.

It's based on experience, I think, and just the idea of having a greater breadth of perspective in a team allows us to, well, it gives us lots of opportunities to improve our understanding, change our perspective. Maybe you have greater empathy, uh, all I think fascinatingly important things for highly effective teamwork.

[Greg Morley] (8:59 - 10:05)

Yeah. And, and when a manager, you know, we've all been in the mood in the room when a manager or a team leader of a meeting, um, has an opinion and leads with that opinion and everybody sort of said, okay, well, we'll, we'll, we'll let it go because he's the boss or she's the boss versus when they've been in a room where somebody is saying, Andy, we haven't heard from you. What, what's your view on this?

Here's another way to think about it. It's not my view, but let's challenge the assumption, that kind of way of running a meeting that's inclusion because that gets the best out of all of the team members. And what I've seen in, in teams that are multinational or multicultural is that is ever more important because, you know, some people are more prone and more courageous to speak up because of their culture.

Others may not be by their culture or their experience. And so leaders who can tap into that, you know, their little board of directors from different places around the world and have different ideas really can build teams that excel. And again, I've seen that over and over in my career.

[Andy Goram] (10:06 - 10:36)

And that must be very interesting from a cultural perspective. I mean, this is all falling into place now, all the little off air chats that we've had about where you've been recently in the world and then your parents' love of travel and everything as well. It's all coming together.

But in the cultural experiences you've had, there must be cultures that are far more deferential actually. So that inclusion piece you just talked about around the table may be harder to unpick unless you are really intentional about it as a leader. Absolutely.

[Greg Morley] (10:36 - 12:28)

You can walk into a culture that's confrontational, that's more prone for confrontation. So I'll use this example of French culture versus Hong Kong culture. I had worked in France for four years.

I moved from the US, I moved to France. And I was, even as an American, taken aback at how much what I saw as confrontation. But in fact, if you understand the culture a little bit better, the French culture, it's really about dialogue, debate, debate, debate, and then finally alignment.

Now, in the scope of that whole thing, the debate takes up most of the time. But when people get aligned, they get aligned and they move. In Asian, in Hong Kong, when I arrived at my role in Mallard Hennessey, my predecessor had been a French person, and the team was very successful under his leadership.

And one of the women that worked for me said, oh, I'm so happy we don't have to argue about everything all the time. And so to them, this debate and challenge and arguing to the point of hierarchical culture felt sort of intimidating. And so what my style was to sort of say, a kind of happy medium, we need to challenge everyone's idea to make sure it's the best one.

But ultimately, we need to align and move ahead. But if you do it in a way that is confronting to people, confronting, then they may just kind of shrink back and not raise their voice. And oftentimes, I have found the best ideas come from the people who speak least.

And it's important for leaders to develop techniques that allow them to give safe space for people for those ideas to come out and be heard and sometimes to work.

[Andy Goram] (12:28 - 13:09)

I love that. Absolutely love that. Okay.

I can't help myself. I want to get into some of the things that are coming out of the book. I think the whole topic of belonging is fascinating.

If you want to go and start at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and then sort of jump off from there. Wonderful. But I think one of the critical things I'd really like to just explore and have you explain is, I guess, this difference between belonging, which you explore in the book, and bonding.

What's the difference between those two things? Because you're very clear about the differences between the two and how they play this role in this sense of inclusion.

The Critical Difference Between Belonging and Bonding

[Greg Morley] (13:09 - 15:52)

It's a great question and a great differentiation. So in the sense of belonging to me is very much a sense of welcoming. So it's the action that people take when someone, say, joins a new team, joins a new company, joins a new project, where they are given the opportunity to feel like one of the brood.

And that's not just to say like, oh, you and I like to wear colors that are red or pink. So we don't do that just by saying there's some similarity between the two of us. We also say that by saying, you know, you're British.

I'm not. That's unique. Tell me more about that because there's something in your experience that I don't have.

So first of all, it is allowing people to feel a sense of they belong somewhere because of who they are, because of their experience, and not to say, you know, you hear this oftentimes, you'll be successful when you figure out how it works around here. That's a perfect way for people to not feel like they belong somewhere. And even simple things, you know, in different cultures, things like meals are important.

So when somebody joins a new team, inviting them out to lunch, you know, taking them, hey, we're going for a cigarette break. Do you want to come whether you smoke or not? But at least feeling like you're part of something.

The bonding part is then when somebody is doing something based on the fact that they feel like they belong. And again, I'll get back to sort of high performing team culture. What in a world of scarce talent, and especially as jobs become more complicated, world becomes more complicated, the risks become greater at work.

Managers want the best people on their teams. They want to have the best people who have a connection and are in some way bonded to the mission of the organization and to the team and to that manager. The teams that excel are the individual when the individuals on the team are willing to go just a bit beyond their job description, or maybe far beyond the job description.

So everybody has, you know, the boss pays you, I do work, that's a contract. What high performing teams do is the boss pays me, recognizes me, develops me, and I do what I was hired to do and then sign. Those teams that are getting productivity beyond the job description are the ones that excel.

And that's when the employee feels bonded to the mission and oftentimes to a leader who's helping to bring them through their career.

[Andy Goram] (15:53 - 16:19)

I love that because I had this thing in my work, which is about trying to find the connection between the things that drive the business and the things that drive the people within it. And to me, that's exactly what you're talking about here, creating that kind of the bond. And the belonging thing is that sense we get, that feeling we get, and the bonding thing is more of a doing kind of action orientated thing.

Would you agree with that?

Why Inclusion Isn’t a Perk—It’s a Performance Strategy

[Greg Morley] (16:19 - 17:44)

I totally agree with that. And one of the fallacies of inclusion is that it's a nice thing to do. And it is a nice thing to do.

I would much rather work in environments where I felt included and rewarded and recognized and appreciated than not. Because in my own career, I've worked in some where I did and some where I didn't, and maybe some where I was in the middle. And I can say that from my own experience, I excelled in those places where I really felt a connection, where I really felt a sense of belonging and that sort of the reward from doing work where you really felt connected or bonded to the mission of the organization and to the leader.

And when I was thinking about this yesterday, an organization is very focused on things like we have yoga class, so we have free lunch or those kinds of things. Those are opportunities for people to feel connected to one another, but they're not a strategy of inclusion. The strategy of inclusion comes from purposeful action, as you said, these actions that leaders do, fellow employees do, that give people the sense that there's something more for an individual in that team than they've experienced in other places, and they will be rewarded for that.

[Andy Goram] (17:45 - 17:58)

Yeah. I think at the end of the day, this stuff is innate though, right? The need to connect, to belong.

I don't think we have a choice, ultimately. We're sort of denying our innateness, if you like. It's true.

[Greg Morley] (17:59 - 19:09)

The challenge, I think the biggest challenge for maybe individuals to talk about Maslow, so how you actualize around this, is to move from a sense where you see difference as something that's not important or that's intimidating or that maybe that's embarrassing, like it's much more cool to be British than American. So we can do it, we can reverse it on ourselves as well, and moving to a sense where you start to adapt your own behaviour to others so that ultimately you can take advantage of difference. And so people have to sort of move along that continuum, because ultimately the benefit of difference in the workplace that comes from inclusion is really understanding like, how do Andy and Greg work together to get a better product than if Andy and Greg were just working on our own?

Or we never slightly adapted to each other, which we've done because we've had conversations in the past to say like, what's the best way to get this product?

Curiosity, Culture, and Conversations That Matter

[Andy Goram] (19:10 - 20:27)

Yeah. I mean, to me, it's spearheaded by a sense of authentic curiosity, right? The whole notion of what you just talked about, for me, is seeing difference as something to find out about, to try and understand better, to see how that can influence you, how you can influence it.

But from that curiosity perspective, I remember in teams that I have worked in where there's real combination of belonging and bond, there's just a deeper understanding of each other. And that hasn't come from me reading a job description and going, all right, you do that, you do that, and fine, and I do this. It's from getting to know the individual.

It's from being with the individual at tough times and seeing how they react, seeing them in fun times and seeing how they react, and noticing the differences and nuances between the two of you. And then you get to that state with that individual where, I'm not saying it's ESP, but you feel that vibe, and you walk into situations, and you kind of get a sense about how that person is going to react. I don't know whether that's emotional intelligence at work or whatever it might be, but that's where it all comes from.

It comes from wanting to find out about the person you're sat next to or in the room with.

[Greg Morley] (20:28 - 22:57)

Yeah. And what the benefit of that connection is that I'm willing to take some risks because I know you have my back. I know you well enough.

We've connected well enough. You know me well enough that I'm willing to stick my neck out from time to time. And that's the way, again, companies thrive is they take risks.

Some of them work. Some of them don't work. But if employees never feel the safe environment to do that, and the safe environment comes from my manager is respectful of me, and also my peers are.

We know how each other work together. We know our strengths. We know our weaknesses.

And that kind of thing is what makes great teams. And the other thing is I think in this current environment, I am very conscious now to be curious and ask curious questions of others. On the surface, not everybody might seem interesting to you, but I can tell you as soon as you start asking people questions, tell me more about that or what are you doing?

I think we're at the risk right now of losing the art of curiosity and conversation with people because people started to be labeled as, well, you said the wrong thing. You called that person the wrong name. You said this, the wrong that.

I can tell you if you come to conversation with a genuine heart and an open mind, it's very unlikely somebody is going to criticize you for the questions you ask or the words you use. I was on a call yesterday where somebody said a word that was very toxic, but he said it in a way he was telling a story. And I said, I don't think that was exactly the word you used because I was in that conversation.

He said, no, no, no, I didn't use that word. And I said, I know that word is I shouldn't use that word. So I'm sorry about that.

So we didn't jump all over the guy. He self-corrected himself and he knew it wasn't the right word to use. And that was fine.

And then actually it helped the three of us have an even broader conversation about things rather than shutting him down and making him feel bad and all this kind of thing. So I think we have to get back to that. But this is my real passion about why I wrote this book, which is we have to come back to the middle ground so that we can have discussions with people.

We can have disagreement and we do it in a way that is genuine, um, and not judgment.

[Andy Goram] (22:59 - 23:48)

I think that's fascinating. I love the bit that you talk about losing the art of conversation, not that I love the fact that we're losing the art of conversation, but, but I know when I'm in the room with a group facilitating, there will be a section of that group often when I ask questions about themselves or why they think like that, their initial reaction is, why do you want to know that? It's almost like they haven't been asked questions before.

And that is quite a scary thing because I'm just trying to find out. I'm trying to, I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to see if I can relate to you better because if I understand your perspective, maybe that'll inform me to do something.

But for, for a section, it's kind of like, Hey, Hey, Hey, what? I'm just here to be passive and listen. I don't, I don't, I don't need this conversation for this one.

[Greg Morley] (23:48 - 23:50)

I didn't sign up for this in this class with Andy.

[Andy Goram] (23:51 - 24:47)

Exactly. Which is kind of like, wow, that's, that's sad. But I guess we see that playing out in organizations, uh, where people, you know, are quite either performative.

They, they show up and they, they do their thing and they, they smile when they're supposed to, but they don't really make that deeper connection. We have this awful stat, I think in engagement where we talk about 66% of any workforce being present. And what we're talking about here is going way beyond turning up and doing your job and getting out of the room.

This is about actually making more of it and connecting to it. And the, that word inclusion, I am already, I love the way that you've talked about it already because in so many places, the inclusion word has been politicized by gender or by race or something else. And all we're talking about is just getting involved with everybody around us and making people feel like they have value.

[Greg Morley] (24:48 - 26:32)

I was, uh, uh, several weeks ago traveling from London to Paris on the Eurostar. I live in Paris and there was a family of people and they were sort of one guy was in front of me and they were all back. They were Americans.

You could tell by the volume of, of their voices and the guy, I didn't start talking to him, but then, then the, they came and brought, uh, some water for everybody. And I said, oh, are you from the U S I heard your accent. We started talking and I was just, I've, you know, it's two and a half hours.

You got to kill some time. I was done with my email and I was bored with my book. Um, it turns out that this guy works in it for the U S defense department.

And we started talking about like what he likes doing and dah, dah, dah, dah. And so then I kind of moved into sort of getting kind of coaching mode. And at some point his wife came over and she said, I hope he's not bothering you too much.

And he said, this guy actually has a real genuine interest in what I do. And he said that as like nobody ever does. Yeah.

And this, this gentleman who I was speaking with manages like 20 it professionals. And he's trying to figure out how to do exactly what we're talking about, build a sense of inclusion, help these people feel like they belong in the organization, keep them tied to the mission because there's a lot of turnover in that world. And it was a fascinating example for me about the power of curiosity and for him to feel like somebody was interested and very much like this connection we created, um, that gave him a sense of personal value.

[Andy Goram] (26:33 - 27:00)

But that, that conversation would have set alight, his reward areas in his brain. Right? And then we'll be firing off dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin, all these things that we are, that are drugs of choice when it comes to that sort of stuff.

Um, and we forget about those things, right? This is not just a polite thing to do. This is a human nature thing to do.

We, we are, we are wired for this stuff.

[Greg Morley] (27:01 - 27:46)

Yeah. And you can see it. Like, I remember when I got on the thing, he was like this and he's reading this thing.

And then as we were talking, he just got taller. You know, he, he sort of became more of the potential he had now you could see it in his physical, in his physical makeup. And the fact that, you know, somebody was curious in him, maybe then he brings that back to his own team and he thinks, gosh, that's a good technique.

I shouldn't use that with my own team. And, and somebody who sees himself being, um, you know, an inspiration to other people and me, you know, of an age, he's starting to think about what am I going to do with the rest of my life and all this kind of thing. Um, the, that, that curious conversation we've had can be a real trigger for you.

[Andy Goram] (27:47 - 28:34)

I think if someone's interested in you, then you have this, I don't know. I think you get a sense of confidence about yourself. And even in your illustration of body language there, you know, the starting point is one of almost not fear, but protection and caution and withdrawn.

But the minute someone takes an interest in us and we now start to fire off all that connection stuff. Well, Hey, I'm like, I'm okay in this space. I feel, I feel, I feel safe.

I feel seen, I feel heard. Okay. I'm in let's let's, let's go.

And that's such a basic thing. When you think about work, you want people to feel safe. You want to feel confident.

You want people to feel engaged. Well, all this curiosity, connection, bonding, you know, this is the stuff we're talking about.

[Greg Morley] (28:35 - 29:50)

And so I think the, the, the, the lesson or the message for people is. If you can become just a little bit more curious of other people, if you can become a little bit more interested in things that maybe you don't think are interesting to you, that can be very powerful for you in your leadership journey or your journey as a human being. Um, and it can add a lot to other people's existence and to your own.

Yeah. I, I try very much to, you know, certain words will trigger me too, you know? And so I try very much at that point to sort of take a deep breath and continue on with the conversation of trying to understand people.

And again, like bring people back to a middle ground where we can disagree on things that are political and we can disagree on things the way people do things. But at the end, we all have to sort of go down this human road together. And so let's do it in a way that is interesting.

And we're learning about each other and somehow again, we're demystifying this world, this world of diversity and inclusion and getting back to what it means for teams and companies, which is more success.

[Andy Goram] (29:50 - 30:31)

I think that's very, very true. I want to go back to something you said before, cause it's very easy to kind of gloss over it, but I think this is where some of this middle ground and intention I think is connected. When you talked about the guy who was telling a story and used a triggering word or an inappropriate word at that time, the way you handled that was very different to what can happen in workplaces where this is seen as bait.

Okay, great. Now I can attack that guy. This whole thing about honoring intent as opposed to say impact.

Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Cause I think that's quite an interesting thing.

Making Mistakes, Owning Them, and Moving On

[Greg Morley] (30:32 - 32:48)

I had a very powerful moment a couple of years ago. I was involved with a project to bring the Gay Games to Hong Kong. Gay Games is an inclusion sports arts and culture festival.

It's been going on for more than 40 years all over the world and came to Hong Kong for the first time a couple of years ago. And this was right at the time when labels and gender and all this was really starting to accelerate us as an issue. So we convened a group, which we called an gender inclusion advisory council.

And we reached out to the community and it was, I would say, an extremely diverse group of people, individuals who had expertise in this field, who represented different gender identities. And I was terrified because I'm on a journey too. I mean, I'm still learning about all this.

And so the way we started the meeting was I said, I am learning as we are the organization trying to learn and why we invited you all here. Please excuse anything I say, misgender you, misname you. It's not done out of intent to harm.

It's just done out of my own means. And it happened. We had a 90 minute meeting.

A couple of times I caught myself. And at the end, three of the people who were in the meeting came up to me and said, the fact that you started the meeting that way was really disarming and it very much helped to set a tone. And the tone being that we all come to work with good intent.

I think people show up at work wanting to do a good job and wanting to do things well by other people. And we have to honor that. And that's part of being curious and part of giving people a space to make mistakes.

Somehow people are allowed to make mistakes in almost any other realm, but then in this specific realm of diversity, we shut down the mistake part. And I think that that closed off a lot of conversation. So I'm all for honoring and correcting the mistake, but doing in a way that doesn't make somebody feel like the next time they're not going to speak up.

[Andy Goram] (32:49 - 34:13)

I think that is just fantastic. You know, I sit here and listening to myself in this conversation and the word I think is you were worried about what you might say. I'm constantly worried that I'm going to put my foot in it and I don't mean any malintent at all.

I would consider myself a curious, open, liberal individual. But there is still a fear, like even the comments I've made today talking about, Hey, this is not about the political thing. It's about, you know, we're not talking about sex or gender or sexual preference or any of that kind of stuff.

We're talking about getting to know people at work that could offend somebody because I'm now eliminating those things from the conversation. I don't mean to eliminate it from the conversation. I just don't want it to be a political conversation because I am wholly ignorant on those sort of things.

Right. And I'm trying to learn, but I empathize exactly with what you're saying. You walk into that situation.

Wow. This could go one of two ways if I'm not careful. And then if you're not confident about speaking in that situation, well, you're not going to get to the heart of the matter.

You're going to hold back on things that you want to ask or be, um, have explained to you because for fear. And I wonder how much of that is going on at work every day with people just really concerned that, well, I can't say that I'm not allowed to say that. And therefore they don't say anything.

And silence is deafening.

[Greg Morley] (34:13 - 36:04)

I think that gets back to your, you know, 66% people just showing up, which is, um, and it happens, you know, in all, uh, corners of the organization. You know, there are a lot of people who have been coming to work for years feeling like, you know, the language people use is discounting them is, uh, diminishing them, uh, whatever the negative feeling that is coming. And then now it's happened, I think more broadly because, because it's being sort of projected on other people and they're, they're the ones that were maybe making the comments or starting to feel the pressure that others are have been feeling for a long time.

So one, one thing that I think is, is critical for everybody at work in a team, in a family is to try as best you can to stand in the shoes of other people. I remember having a conversation with somebody one time, and he had taken a job. Um, he moved from, from Asia to New York and he was leading a large team of people.

And I said, I think for you, the first thing you need to do is imagine the people that work for you on this team. What was it like for them to get the work? How did they get to work?

What mode of transportation did they use? How, what was the environment like? And I said, maybe do it one day.

So to start to really understand people, you'd have to try to, as best you can stand in their shoes and try to live that experience a little bit. And then you have a greater appreciation for why people might be triggered by certain words or why certain emotions about things that happen at work. Um, and then you can have a, an appreciation for it and it works both ways.

It also shows again, a genuine curiosity about people, uh, who they are and, and, and what value they bring to, to the workplace.

Allyship, Advocacy, and Action in the Workplace

[Andy Goram] (36:05 - 36:32)

I guess it's also a role in here for allyship as well. Uh, and standing up speaking out if colleagues are impacted by some of this stuff again, whether intent is there or not, maybe your job is to ask the question. Is that what you meant to do?

Is that what you meant to do? Uh, it doesn't have to be like mega confrontational, but just, just checking. I think is a really important thing today.

[Greg Morley] (36:32 - 38:00)

Yeah. And, and oftentimes I, I find, uh, people that, that are good at this can be in a meeting and this happens. I mean, it just happens.

It's, there's a data there that oftentimes when a man says something and a woman says something that the men, the man's view can be even the same attack topic gets taken up. And then the woman's maybe gets popped over. So what I noticed very often is somebody will, somebody who, um, is an ally and I, and I like much more the view of an advocate.

So somebody that actually doing something can say, oh, um, let's just take a minute because I think, you know, Sarah, you had an idea. Can you explain it again or explain it further? So that maybe male in the room is giving space for that female voice.

I'm all for like fun Pride events, but, you know, wearing a rainbow flag on your lapel is not advocacy. It's, it's somehow, yes, it's allyship. It's a little bit performative.

You know, I, I want leaders who stand up for other people in the room that, that again, try to stand in their experience and advocate for those people advocate for their voice and ultimately for the success of the company, advocate for their ideas so that the company can do better.

Why DEI’s Middle Ground Is Where Progress Lives

[Andy Goram] (38:01 - 38:33)

I think that that is the sum up of inclusion, right? Standing next to each other and embracing the difference. I think, um, I said, I didn't want to miss the political conversation and I really, really don't, but I'd be an idiot if I didn't ask the question around what's going on in the U S at the moment as to all the, I guess, the positive stuff that we've talked about today and particularly your, your perspective on things, this, this stuff that's going on there, it's making it harder though, right?

Because it's, it's almost legitimizing the opposite of what we've talked about today.

[Greg Morley] (38:35 - 41:11)

So I'll go back to one of the things that's imperative as an outcome for diverse and inclusive organizations is those organizations are going to attract the best people. So organizations where, you know, you work, let's say in a company that has a very inclusive culture. That's very diverse.

It's very dynamic. And you say, Hey, I know, uh, I know this guy, Greg, he's very good in HR. Um, you should talk to them, right?

So you're out there scoping for people to join you because you know what a great organization is. That's again, organizations that are going to win in this current climate. There were, there was a rush to invest resource focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion from sort of 2020 on.

Now it was a kind of slow bill, but that took off. I would say that maybe a half of those companies that got all in didn't get all in, they got in at the surface. And so what you're seeing now is a kind of a natural adjustment.

There's a very political element of it. That's for sure. What you have seen though, are a number of big companies more than you've seen more companies recommit to the journey of being diverse and inclusive versus the companies that have said, we're walking away from it for whatever reason.

My sense is that those companies were never really committed to it in the first place. Um, when you have a company like Marriott and their CEO comes out and says, regardless of what the politics are, this is who we are. We welcome people all over the world into our hotels.

We want an environment where our associates feel like they belong and they can do their best work. We're not changing that because that's who we are. A company defunds pride.

It doesn't make the employees in the organization any less gay. The organization continues to have people that want to work in positive environments. And I can say in my experience in HR, you can walk into a team or an organization and you can feel it if it's there or not.

And I think a lot of these organizations that have committed to continuing to do the work of diversity and inclusion are the ones that are going to get the best people and they're going to continue to excel. And the others will either learn the lesson or they will become the, you know, the companies that we talk about a member where they were on the fortune 50 and they don't exist anymore. That's this.

[Andy Goram] (41:12 - 42:32)

I, I, I totally agree with you, my friend. I really, really do. And I think to me, that's the, that's the way to focus on the engagement with this topic in the keep doing the right thing, keep playing the inclusion game.

And I don't mean to sort of trivialize the fact by using it again, but I think it's the intention thing behind this sort of stuff, right? The right behaviours, recognizing people are going to make mistakes, but honouring that intent, um, standing by your colleagues, maybe checking in the, are you okay with that from time to time? It doesn't have to be that, that deep.

Um, and we can start to have better conversations, make people feel better. Greg, I, I genuinely feel on most of these conversations I have with people that we barely scratched the surface on, on what we could talk about, but I've really, really enjoyed listening to you today. I, I wonder if we could get into some kind of summary piece here.

I have the little bit at the end of the show I call sticky notes, which is mainly due to my terrible, uh, working memory that if we could just get it down to a few simple takeaways, we might help some people. So if I was to ask you to leave three pieces of advice on three little sticky notes, uh, either a red or a pink color, we don't, we don't mind here. We're inclusive.

Um, what would your three bits of advice be Greg?

Greg’s 3 Sticky Notes on Inclusive Leadership

[Greg Morley] (42:32 - 45:01)

It's a great, uh, question. And I actually used to keep it sticky note when I was working in my companies on my computer and it was a, uh, it was an acronym of these three things. And so this that's brilliant for me.

Um, and the first was to have a curious conversation with someone today, which is just like, it can be, you know, what'd you have for lunch? Or I know your, you know, daughter had something going on this weekend. How did that go?

Or, uh, is there a restaurant in town that you think you could, that I should go to? It doesn't have to be, you know, tell me about the last five years of your working life. That sounds like an interview.

I'm curious about people, but be curious about them intentionally about things you don't know. Use it as a way to learn yourself. That's always thought it was very selfish when I did.

Um, the second is we, we talked about this as an advocacy. You will become a hero in your organization. If you advocate for people advocating for them by coaching and counselling them, advocating for them by standing up for them in a meeting and most important advocating for people when they're not in room.

Yeah. No, that pays off exponentially over time. And so I would say, try each day to find a way to do that.

And the last thing is on a personal development way is to try to embrace and learn something different every day. Um, I, uh, when I moved back to Paris, I lived here before I had made it an intention of mine to learn more about this place that I live in and I'm not from, it's not my culture, trying to learn the language I'm trying. So I have been going to the bookstore once every two weeks and buying two books.

One is about France or French culture or something because I feel like I should respect the place I live. And the other has nothing to do with that at all. So I just, I'll see some other book.

It's something different. Um, I just read a book on 50 Irish short stories. So, I mean, it's just a way to train my mind towards being open to different things.

And I think that that also can make you, uh, make, just makes life more interesting and makes you more open to difference in the workplace.

[Andy Goram] (45:01 - 45:06)

I love that. Three lovely sticky notes. I can, I can picture them sitting on the top of your laptop there. Marvellous.

[Greg Morley] (45:07 - 45:07)

I think it probably had a Mickey mouse head or something.

[Andy Goram] (45:07 - 45:28)

Very on brand. Love it.

Greg, thank you so much for coming on today. I've absolutely loved this conversation. Um, before I let you go, if people want to find out a bit more about you, uh, get hold of the book and where should they, where should they go looking, my friend.

[Greg Morley] (45:29 - 46:11)

So happy to, uh, welcome everybody to LinkedIn. Uh, I am quite active on LinkedIn and, uh, share a lot of, uh, my experiences and, and, and thoughts and learnings as well as on my website, which is gregmorely.com and would, would love to have people pick up the book, not for the point of selling books, but because there are a lot of, I think, accessible stories in the book that, that leaders can read and say, oh, okay, I, I, I made that mistake too.

And here's a way to learn from that. And the book is a lot of my own, you know, personal experiences, things I did well and things I screwed up and, and trying to share, uh, different ways for people to think about how to build inclusive teams.

[Andy Goram] (46:12 - 46:34)

That's great. Cause I always wanted to ask you for a left view, what you hope the book will do. And I think you've just beautifully said that to everybody today.

Greg, thank you so much for coming on my friend. It's been an absolute pleasure to spend some time with you. My pleasure as well.

Andy, thank you for inviting me and thank you for this great exchange. Okay. My friend, will you take care?

[Greg Morley] (46:34 - 46:35)

You as well.

[Andy Goram] (46:36 - 47:14)

Okay. Everyone that was Greg Morley. And if you'd like to find out a bit more about him or any of the things that we've talked about in today's show, please check out the show notes.

So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like comment and subscribe.

It really helps. I'm Andy Goram and you've been listening to the sticky from the inside podcast until next time. Thanks for listening.

Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.