Join us in this enlightening episode of Women Advancing, where we sit down with Melissa Thomas-Hunt, an authority on building inclusive work environments and promoting diversity. As the former Head of Global Diversity and Belonging at Airbnb and a distinguished academic, Melissa brings a wealth of knowledge on how a sense of belonging can dramatically enhance workplace performance and innovation.
In our conversation, Melissa delves into the crucial role that a belonging culture plays in not just elevating work performance, but also in leveraging the diverse expertise of each team member. She shares actionable insights on how organizations can cultivate environments where every employee feels valued and heard, which in turn drives productivity and fosters a collaborative atmosphere. We also talk about communication, feedback, and the difference between management and leadership. Tune in and discover how embracing inclusivity can transform your leadership style, strengthen team dynamics, and pave the way for lasting organizational success.
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Harnessing The Power Of Belonging To Enhance Performance With Melissa Thomas-Hunt, Vice Dean Full Time Residential MBA Program University Of Virginia Darden School of Business
Having The Guts To Capitalize On Deliberate Junctures And Embrace Risk
Everyone, have you ever noticed when you walk into certain interviews, just right out the gate, your spidey sense goes up when you’re sitting in the lobby and you’re thinking, “What am I doing here?” There are others where you walk in and shoulders are down. It’s like, “These people get me? What’s that difference?” That’s your instinct telling you this is a culture more likely than not that celebrates, encourages, and builds a sense of belonging. What does that sense of belonging lead to? Greater innovation, greater risk taking, an overall much better feeling of trust, and a place where you can grow. You can show up in your entirety.
We’re going to speak with Melissa Thomas-Hunt, who’s the vice dean of full-time residential MBA programs at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Melissa is an expert in organizational behavior, and she put that to work when she worked with Airbnb as their chief diversity, inclusion, and belonging officer. She’s taken the learnings from that and brought it back to the folks at Darden, which is terrific. She’s got some key points. One, we’ll take a little bit of time, and talk about the difference between a manager versus a leader, and there is.
What are some of the key practices that leaders are moving forward? Those of you who are graduating from business school need to keep this in mind as you step into leadership roles in your career. We’ll learn a little more about having the courage to take risks, and not worrying about being liked. There’s a lot to be taken away from this episode, and this is one where I’m not afraid of you liking it because I know you’re going to love it. Listen in.
Welcome to the show. We’re so excited to have the just recently appointed, formally announced vice dean of the full-time residential MBA program, Melissa Thomas-Hunt. Melissa, thank you for making time to be with us.
Thank you, Kate. It’s my pleasure.
Everyone, you’re in for a treat because while Melissa is involved in academia, she also has a corporate backstory, which I think we’ll be sharing a little bit about. Melissa, let’s jump in. Why don’t you share a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you are today?
Melissa Thomas-Hunt’s Inspiring Career Journey
Often people say, “What’s the path?” I’m like, “I had no idea. If I were to go all the way back to young Melissa, I would be doing the things that I’ve done. It’s been a circuitous path.” I would say deliberate at each juncture, but not one that I could have predicted. It starts, my parents were educators. My mother taught math to individuals who struggled. My father started as a tutor, he taught English, he taught math, and he went on to educational opportunity programs.
I think it was important because both of them were helping individuals to try and reach their potential who otherwise might not have been able to do that. While they didn’t talk a lot about it, we often went to their workplaces, I observed my mother teaching. We knew what they were doing. I said “We” because it was my brother and I. The things that they did talk about were about how they contributed beyond their professions, the organizations they joined, how they supported. They believe in helping others through organizations and personal relationships.
We got that. Foundationally, I thought I wanted to do something that was going to be helping, that would essentially leave the world better than I found it. I didn’t know what that meant. I will also say that my parents were pretty pragmatic, that they thought they should have a lawyer or a doctor. They had high aspirations for our education. They made that very clear, and they didn’t know people in business. For them, successful people were lawyers and doctors. They didn’t hold business as an aspiration.
Through college, I was on track to go to medical school. I wanted to be a psychiatrist, which I think tracks to my desire to, or at least what I thought, to help unlock people’s potential, to help move things out of their way. I ended up pivoting for a whole host. The reasons I applied to law school were I was all over the place. I knew I wanted to do something that allowed me to help others. I knew I wanted to do something that would be uplifting. I don’t think I knew what that was going to be. I was a chemical engineering major.
You’re kidding me. That’s a blessing being taught to do.
My parents said, “We have a daughter who’s good at science and math. You should be an engineer because you will get a good job.” I will tell you that being a chemical engineering major at the institution I went to, which was very theoretical in its engineering program at the time, was the hardest thing that I have ever done. I am a very applied thinker. I observed the world. I can abstract, and I can do theory, but it’s usually based on something concrete. Having a theoretically high-level math-driven program was a struggle. I’m super proud of that because I think it set the stage for, “If I put my mind to it, one foot in front of the other. I can do anything.” That was important to learn, not easy to learn, but important to learn at a young age.
Belonging links to increased productivity and innovation. Share on XI’m sitting there thinking about that.
I don’t know if it was heady. I was pretty stressed out.
Understandably.
I did one foot in front of the other and took deep breaths. Like, “I can do this. I can chip away at it.” I also had a little bit of fun during my senior year. I had the opportunity to be one of the student agencies, I had the holiday wreath agency because there was nothing else left. I tried to be even more entrepreneurial because there’s only one time a year when you sell holiday wreaths, and you cannot sell them to students because they’re a fire hazard. You could only sell them to the offices and departments at the university. I realized that I could partner with my friend who had a care package agency, and we could do holiday chocolate wreaths, and we could do chocolate menorahs.
I reached out to friends, and that was a little bit of fun that was wrapped around as I was making my way to getting an engineering degree. It served me well because when I was recruiting at that time, IBM was looking to make its marketing representatives at Salesforce more technical. They were looking for people with quantitative and engineering backgrounds. They liked that I had this entrepreneurial bent, that I had infused it with some innovation. I got an opportunity to go work for IBM as a sales rep in New York City, which is home for me.
That’s huge. Poet and quant, right foot to work, because that’s the thing that’s so unusual when you have both abilities like that.
Discovering The Power Of Organizational Behavior
I ended up in New York. I had the financial services sector as a client, one large, what we called then, a major money center bank. That tells you how long ago it was. I was on a large account team, and I had to figure out the services and products at IBM. I had an amazing mentor while I was there and a great manager who said, “Follow me, do what I do.” I learned from them. They introduced me to clients. I got to take a lot of courses, great professional development. It was a super hard time for IBM. My client went through a major merger.
As they went through this merger, I saw that they were trying to figure out who gets to stay, who gets to go. You have duplicate teams. I became interested in two things, like the group dynamics that were unfolding there, but also the nature of my own job, which was negotiating, but negotiating on behalf of my customers with IBM, internal to get them the best things. I got interested in negotiations. Between these two things, I decided, “I want to study these things. I don’t want to be in the middle of it.” I go off to get a PhD in a field that I had discovered called organizational behavior. I focused a lot on negotiations. I focused a lot on group dynamics.
That was what I wished to this day that I had done. I do organizational behavior. It was the early days. I had already graduated from Stanford, and it was either industrial engineering, which they call it. I graduated, and then this thing or behavior. I just thought, “I should have gone back.” I did it without ever officially doing it, but I’m fascinated by that, and that completely makes sense.
It was great. While I was working full time, I started taking classes and part-time in organizational psychology. I loved it, but I also wanted a more foundational home in business because I was enjoying the work that I was doing. I landed in a business school. I did a good thing. I was a good doctoral student. I learned to publish papers. I had an amazing advisor. I studied negotiations. I studied team dynamics. I decided, “I want to do this for the long haul.” I made my way to various roles as an assistant professor.
If you really care about your team and the work, you have to be prepared to give developmental feedback. Share on XFirst, at WashU, then I went to Cornell, and then I made my way to Darden. I loved coming to Darden. It was as though I thought I was a good teacher before I got here, but I learned so much about the quality of the message that you ask, how you can facilitate conversations and help others learn, commitment to community, and building connection. Focusing on practice, not just ivory tower, all of those things. I think part of that was not focusing on the ivory tower was that the research that I was doing was about how do you leverage individuals’ expertise, particularly when people don’t think that they’re the experts in the room. How do you recognize it?
How do you unleash that? I had the opportunity not just to publish on that but also to step into an administrative role where I was focused on that for the Darden community. Loved that work. Work in different ways with students, faculty, and staff. Poke my nose in all sorts of ways in the hope of just making the Darden community stronger, making sure that we had the talent, like the full array of talent, making sure that they could thrive, then have the opportunity come up to go to Vanderbilt.
Do that at the university level. Locking arms with associate deans and deans, helping them to do the work, to help the students to be successful, to unlock, to remove friction points, to find a full array of talented faculty members to help students all of those things. Up until that point, it was a natural trajectory. Some faculty members don’t go into administrative roles. Get a new. That makes sense. I got this linked in a message from an individual I knew but not super well.
The person said, “I’m working in Airbnb now, and we’re looking for someone to head up our global diversity and belonging, and we know you’re doing administrative work. We know you’re a faculty member, but we were wondering if you would talk to us.” This was mind-blowing. Literally like LinkedIn, I could have missed it. I happen to see it. I see like, I’m a student of organizations. I love to understand how they work.
It’s good to be in one.
I’m like, “Sure, I’ll talk to them because I want to know more about it. I had been a guest on Airbnb, them as a company.” I was like, “This is going to be a good experience.”
It’s more like a service. I get that.
The other thing that I found out that I hadn’t known was that at that time, the mission of the company was to create a world where anyone could belong anywhere. Much of the work that I had been doing was about creating belonging for various stakeholders, because we know that belonging links to increased productivity and intentions to remain in a whole host of things. I thought there’s a company that has a mission around belonging. After about 3 or 4 months of very intensive conversations with the CEO and with others, I was extended the opportunity to join them, which was a major pivot point.
My hope of professional identity was wrapped up in being a faculty member and part of the academic community. What does it mean to step away from that? I just decided that it was an opportunity that I needed to avail myself of. My spouse nudged me or kicked me out of the nest a little bit. He was going to move to San Francisco. It was a big deal for him. It wasn’t a little decision as we were in Nashville, and it was a wild journey that ultimately made my way back to academia. Although I never left. My heart never left, and my head never left.
To me, that makes so much sense, though, because to your point, you’ve always studied organizations, especially since so much also had shifted from when you were at IBM. It’s like you need to get a refresh on what’s going on, especially with Airbnb, because that’s a sharing economy. That’s a whole different premise.
All managers can show up as leaders, but not all managers are leaders. Share on XThat’s right, the whole thing. I would tell my kids, “I was in tech before we called it tech. I went to IBM. Believe me.” “No, I know. It’s like, Ivy, what? What’s that?” I cannot believe there are certain companies that I spout out and I’m thinking, “I have no idea what that means. I understand. I get it.”
Leadership Lessons From The Airbnb Experience
With all those different, so you have the academic scene and being a leader there, and then you’ve got Airbnb. I want to hear a little bit more about that experience, particularly, but are they different or the same? How have those informed what you’re doing now as the Vice team? Your leadership style in terms of, do you put more also, dare I say the I word inclusive or the B word belonging?
I think we can still say belonging.
I think we can.
The B word is good.
We can. How has that impacted your leadership style, contributed to your leadership style?
It’s a journey. It started in my academic leadership roles because I had a Vanderbilt. It was an inaugural role. I built a team there. When I went to Airbnb, there was a very small team in place. I inherited some folks. I got the opportunity to hire a lot of folks onto the team. Constantly getting this feedback. I’m a leadership faculty member. I tell other people how to do this, and now I’m doing it.
I know I’m doing it.
It is way harder to do it than to tell people how to do it. I learned a lot. What I would say is that the lessons, the academic versus corporate environments, particularly tech, are different, but it’s about people and it’s about people management and it’s about people elevation. Those are constant. I did know when I got to Airbnb, and I was fortunate because they had been waiting for someone to do this work there. Like company-wide, the employees had been waiting, the executives had been waiting for a partner.
Careers are not linear, and so people who you were mentoring could actually end up ahead of you. Share on XEveryone knew that I had arrived. It’s like you’re going to a party and they’re signs to invite you, which also meant that the work at that time was valued. I had lots of people wanting to be willing partners. I had the opportunity to start to build a team and to work with people. It also gives the opportunity, you get feedback. I had a great boss who wanted me because I wasn’t academic, because I could analyze the data and interpret the data. I think she also realized that I needed to understand what the currency was at the company, and how you get things done.
The company had done a lot of work that was great. As academics, we tend to tear things down. We’re developed to be critical. My natural inclination said very nicely, but still was like, “Here are all the things that are wrong.” Can we start with the things that we do well? I was like, we can, but that’s not what I’m feeling.
Far between.
Which is not true. I very much have a strength-based approach. I think it’s important for individuals or organizations to recognize the things that they do well and to lean into it, recognize the places they need to shore up, but know that the strengths are where they unlock the full potential. I got a lot of feedback from her. It was useful. She kept me out of stepping on various landmines. I got to watch how she interacted so that, particularly when you’re doing this work, the ultimate thing is your focus on the mission.
How do you get people to come along on the ride with you? The first thing I had to do was learn to speak tech. I would chat with my kids and my husband, and they’re like, “Who are you? What are you saying?” I just realized that, literally, like I had to adopt the lexicon because that’s the biggest tell on whether you get who we are, what we do. Why am I going to trust myself with maybe some things that are vulnerable because I don’t think that I do it well? I don’t know what this belonging stuff is.
I don’t understand what it means to be curious and unlock the potential of individuals who may be very different from me and come from different circumstances. If I think you’re totally different and you don’t get what I do, and you don’t talk the way I talk. I learned to talk the way they talk. I asked a lot of questions. The motto that I instilled in my team was, we lock arms with people. We’re not here to judge anybody. We’re here to provide education. We’re here to coach. We’re here to be a partner.
We’re going to walk and lock step with them to get to a better place so that we become trusted. There are lots of things I learned. I learned that I didn’t give specific feedback. Fortunately, I think I had cultivated strong enough relationships early on with my teammates, who were mostly fairly junior relative to me, who could say, “You said we did a great job, but like, why? What specifically made that a good job? Why did you say it now and you didn’t say anything before?” I learned that I had to articulate what someone had done.
I needed to, in real time, gently and appropriately, in a way that could be received as developing them, and also articulate when things could have been done better. Sometimes, that was direct feedback. Sometimes, that was modeling it. Sometimes, it was asking them, how do you think that went? Are there things you would do better? What did you think you did well? This is the evolution both as an academic leader, but punctuated it at Airbnb that I realized, if I cared about my team, if I cared about the work, and I wanted us to do it well, I had to be prepared to give developmental feedback, which sometimes might be hard to hear.
For me, that was huge. The literature would say that. As a researcher, I knew that. Interpersonally, that’s hard. Sometimes, for me, it meant, “ I like to be liked. We all like to be liked.” No one’s always around, like, “I don’t want to be liked.” Being liked is not the end game. The end game is, have I invested in my people? Have I moved the ball forward? Is the mission being served? Moving myself out of it, because there were times when I was doing all those things, doing it, man, I wasn’t going to be liked in a given moment. People didn’t want to hear the thing I had to say. Many lessons learned about leadership in those roles.
That’s where your organizational behavior piece comes in to me because to give and to be fluent in the type of feedback that needs to be, that’s appropriate for that person at that time. You have to understand how that person is wired. You have to understand, and if you’re dealing with an introvert versus an extrovert, or the scale, or was it a one-time whoops or that thing, which it takes patience.
Growing Through Feedback And Trusting Your Team
It does. We also have to realize, and I think this is hard, is that we like to say that we separate our personal and professional lives, but we don’t. It is in there no matter what. Even when we’re not giving voice to it, it is affecting how we show up in the world. Sometimes, it means pressing pause and saying to someone, “How are you doing? What is going on with you?” Recognizing humanity, which some would say, “That’s not part of the professional responsibility.
That’s not what your manager is supposed to do.” If, ultimately, you’re trying to serve the business, the organization, the person’s development, you have to realize that there’s a holistic person that’s there. Sometimes, it doesn’t go particularly well. If you just have them covering it up, they’re just not going to be able to do the other things, particularly well.
This also goes towards building a culture of trust, where at your point, when people feel open enough and comfortable enough to be real, that’s where also true innovation comes. That’s where you get the right understanding of, “It’s okay if I throw something out, I’m not going to get shot down.” They may not do the idea, but I’m not going to feel like an idiot.
I’m not going to feel demeaned. People aren’t going to feel less of me. Those creative juices are allowed to flow, and people can play off one another as well. It also frees us to feel, I would say, psychologically safe. If there are errors that are being made, or if there are stakeholders that are being ignored, or if we don’t fully understand their interests, we can give voice to that. That’s going to be beneficial to the organization in doing that. We know that when people feel like they belong, they perform at higher levels, and their intentions to leave the organization are diminished.
We know that in organizations, particularly where first line managers are the unlock for this. These are the individuals who, if they are taking their managerial role seriously and holistically, they make the difference in creating belonging. The extent to which they are curious and demonstrating an interest in their teammates’ lives, recognizing what their talents are, and in moments lending their own brand or status in the organization to their teammates. All of those things are the things that create belonging and get people to do their best work.
To step out. Honestly, it also takes things like feedback, and it shifts, makes it so directional. Everyone knows that’s the goal. It makes it directional versus personal, and you wouldn’t even think of it as such. With that in mind, then, how are you taking those lessons? How does that inform classes taught and the environment that you’re in now? How are you preparing folks for that crazy environment that they’re staring at eventually when they graduate?
One of the things we know, I absorbed this at the time I was at Airbnb. This is not specific to Airbnb. We looked around, and I’m like, broadly, we just need stronger managers. We need to prepare individuals for all of the complexities that they’re going to face. We need for them to know how to foster belonging in their teams. They need to know how to give specific development feedback that’s actionable.
They need to have, how do you create cultures and climates that are accepting and generative, but also rigorous in the same thing. All of that informs how I think about engaging with my MBA students and my public policy students because I do hang out in the Vatton School of Public Policy as well. I realized I learned a lot about the power of internal communications, and I try to impart this to students. Particularly when we’re trying to change things, it is so important to understand the role of communication processes.
We need to make sure that we have a broad base of individuals because why would you want to limit the talent that you have at the table? Share on XWhat that means is if you are doing good work, if you’re making great changes, if you are instituting phenomenal benefits, and the employee base doesn’t know about it, it doesn’t mean anything. Lots of times I’ll talk to people, both in the academic environment, like with our students, but also in the workplace with employees, and they’ll say, “We’re doing all these great things. Look at what we did for them. We gave them all this.” I’m like, “They don’t know it.” They’re like, “We sent messaging, we sent emails, we did this.” I’m like, “It doesn’t matter unless you get to the places where they consume it.”
Understanding, in whatever the context is, how do people consume information? In some environments, it’s that leaders have standups, and everyone is paying attention because they feel like they’re going to get the pearls of wisdom, they’re going to know what the currency is. You’ve got to find a way to infuse whatever the message is in the place where people are paying attention. By the way, when you have information or a knowledge base that maybe the leaders feel less comfortable with, they love it when you give them the language and the words, because the biggest risk that people have in this space of like belonging is I’m going to say the wrong thing, I’m going to do the wrong thing.
Let’s just take that out of it. You tell me what I should say, which can feel a little bit artificial, but I think what we know, those of us who like to write with people and go back and forth or in conversation. The more you do it, the better you get, and you can then start to venture out on your own. You have to have a foundation. You have to have muscle memory for it. You have to see other people do it for you to do it. Communication is super important.
I try and still with my students as managers, particularly as first line managers, it is your responsibility to manage the culture of the team. That is shocking to them sometimes. They think my job is to get performance. They often don’t understand that the management of the team, the management of relationships, the giving of a fee, all of that has an impact on the performance.
I was just going to say, that’s how you get the performance.
That’s right. I think also it is just helping them to be a little bit bolder, believe in themselves, to be confident, to be able to stand up for behaviors that they believe in and call out behavior that they don’t. Those are all things that seem hard to do. It goes back to what I said about being liked. At the core, just as we’re wired to be part of a pack, to be part of a larger group, to be accepted. If we perceive that our actions may somehow put us out of step with that, then we don’t undertake them. Particularly if we’re in managerial and leadership roles, that’s definitely what we have to do.
There are a couple of things that you made me think about, how knowledge is power when it’s shared, and so many people just hold onto knowledge. It’s so important to communicate, but also, all of this is so important and doubly complex in this multi-generational, multicultural workplace. Now that may all shift, who knows, for some. It’s also to your point when you were talking about you need to deliver the message where people are at.
Managing Vs. Leading: Embracing True Leadership
That’s a stretch for a lot of folks because how I take it and where I go to get my insights is going to be different than where others, younger or such. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between managing versus leading? It reminds me of mission versus whatever vision. You are a leader, and that’s when you step out and you’re going with your team and managing to your point. I guess it’s just pure performance only, but managers are now what our leaders expect to be.
We would hope that managers would show up as leaders. That they would show up. Leadership is something you step into, you choose. You don’t even have to have the title of manager to be a leader. I used to say, and I think I still believe it to a certain extent, although the technology is all changed. I used to say that management is like a GPS. Turn left, turn right. Going too fast. There’s a speed monitor over here. Here’s the outcome. You’ll get there in time. Leadership is more about the longer terrain. It’s like the Atlas, and how are we going to chart this territory? What are the stops that we need to make?
There is intuition, and usually our intuition is an amalgam of pieces of data that we've actually been collecting. Share on XWhat are the resources we need to acquire? What’s the vision? Where are we trying to go? Those are the different ways in which I think about it. I believe that all managers can show up as leaders. Not all managers are leaders. I think that not all leaders are officially managers. I think about the little L leaders and how you show up in a given team or environment. How do you support others? How do you model good behavior? How do you disseminate knowledge and information? How do you lend the credibility that you have? How do you help others, newcomers, understand the currency in the organization? Those are all leadership behaviors, even if you don’t have direct reports.
I think the key in all of this, too, is mentorship and sponsorship of others. Being their voice, having their back when they’re not in the room, but knowing, sharing the stage, sharing the mic. Credit, God forbid.
I also like to say, because sometimes people will say, my brands could get eroded. Before they sponsor someone or before they lend their credibility, they want to make sure that the person has done all the things. If someone’s done all the things, they don’t need you. It’s inherently a little bit risky, but when you have the status where you’ve been contemplating, like endorsing someone else, you have some room to erode a little bit. You’re going to get some right, you’re not. To help someone when you don’t have to help them, that’s what they remember. I like to say careers are nonlinear. People who you were mentoring could end up ahead of you in the career progression. If you helped them and you didn’t have to help them, they remember that.
Speaking to a whole room of company leaders, what advice and practices would you recommend they do to help build out like even like maybe the top three things like if you do. These three things will go a long way towards building a belonging culture, particularly for women and those who are not historically represented very well in these places.
Empowering Women To Step Into Leadership
It takes time to see people to appreciate who they are. Their path might be similar to yours, but there may be some divergences. Be curious about what those are and not judgmental about it. When we feel seen, feel more trusted, we feel greater belonging, we’ve all of these things. See people. I would say think broadly about what talent looks like because I think we all have our conceptions of who’s going to have competence, what package it comes in, and how is it going to be delivered.
Realize that the quiet, introverted person may have an amazing contribution to make, but you may have to elicit it in a different way than the highly extroverted person who’s always talking off the top of their head. Just be cognizant of that. Also, be cognizant that the people that you have in the room, as talented as they may be, may not be the full universe of people that you need to solve your thorny, challenging problems.
We have to push ourselves to look for that talent in places that we might not have considered it. Particularly as the level of complexity of the issues the world is facing, of just like the products, the services we’re trying to offer. The different communities we’re trying to reach. We need to make sure that we have a broad base of individuals because why would you want to limit the talent that you have at the table?
The truth is, it’s also just smart business because, from a customer standpoint, from that group of stakeholders looking in, you’re going to have greater insights in building the products that are going to be relevant to them. That group is going to trust you more as a company because they’re like, “They get me.” As you said, “They see me, they know which product benefits or features are important to me. I can rely on.”
They get it. There might be an opportunity for a family member of mine down the line to maybe even work there. I hadn’t even thought of it, but I am going to say, what advice would you give for particularly young women now looking at either business school, but frankly, even as they get ready to go out on into their career or their work journey, put it that way.
You could understand so much about people's experience when you're on the ground. Share on XI would say it matters who you work for. There are going to be times where you choose a role or a company, and you know that the person for whom you’re going to be working doesn’t necessarily believe in you as much as you wish you do. There’s some reason, like you need a stamp, you need a brand, you need to develop a skillset. It’s fine as long as you’re doing it deliberately. When you have the latitude, go work for people who see you, who appreciate the value that you bring, who are going to, when you’re not in the room, are going to talk about how excellent you are, who are going to give you stretch opportunities, who are going to give you the real feedback that you need.
I would say that’s critical. It’s critical for everyone. I think it’s particularly critical for women to make sure that they are working for people who value them and that valuing isn’t just like, “You’re great. It’s a wonderful environment.” It’s about challenging them and giving them opportunities and stretching them and giving them that feedback, but all in the spirit because they believe in them and they want to make them better. I’d say that’s important. I would say, “We have to move away from this wanting to be liked and others, some may not articulate it that way.” It’s a social risk.
We think we’re going to get left out of the group. We’re not going to be as popular. We’re not getting invited to the things. I’m not saying to deliberately alienate people. Certainly not. You need to pick and choose your battles and when you use your voice. If we’re driven and we move through the world, making our decisions on whether we support individuals, whether we speak out based upon how people are going to like us or not, we’re going to fall short. Ultimately, we’re not going to feel good about ourselves. That’s another.
You’re looking outside for a proof roll. That will never fill in what you’ve got going here. I, too, loved being liked. One person explained it to me as more important, “Kate, is to be respected. If you respect it, being liked is the cherry on top. That’s an extra benefit.” Usually, the respect thing, they’re still going to be a little soft spot in there for you because they know that they’re doing it right.
When they see that you are consistent in the expectations that you hold, the way you treat people, the intention behind, people can tell when you give them feedback, that’s hard to hear, but that you are giving it to them because you want to develop them and you want to believe in them. They know the difference. It becomes incumbent upon us to say the hard words. It’s harder on us with this generation. It is harder for us to give the feedback than it is for them to receive it. We have to remember that.
It is. It’s the only way that they’re going to, I think, where we can help make potential reality at the end of the day.
I was just going to say, like, believe in yourself. A lot more than the next person. We often just don’t realize how much we have learned and discerned. I certainly believe in empirical evidence, but there is intuition. Usually, our intuition is an amalgam of pieces of data that we’ve been collecting. We’ve come to a conclusion based on that because we cannot point to the end of the data points, we think, “I don’t know, it’s my gut.” Your gut is made up of observations over many experiences and reflections.
It’s the amygdala. It’s your lizard brain saying, “It’s smart when that sees what the eyes miss always.” It’s how we’ve all survived for centuries and eons actually, even longer than that. For what advice would you give your younger self, knowing what you know now and all the wee woo of your life?
Embracing Risk and Trusting Your Intuition
My younger self. I think I would tell my younger self to take more risks in many respects. Particularly in my earlier years, I played it straight, narrow, and very safe. I would tell my younger self that I had an intuitive connection with the entrepreneurial endeavors that I experienced when I was in college, and that I should have done some more to nurture entrepreneurship at an earlier point, and do my own thing. I think I would have said travel more, like I travel as much as I can. When I say travel, yes, globally, but also to the places within the United States that I haven’t been or that I don’t even think that I necessarily want to go because I think inherent is a learning.
You can understand so much about people’s experiences when you’re on the ground, and those who you think of as others then become more familiar, and you have a context for understanding. I think we’re living in a time where we just have to do a lot more bridging. We have to do a lot more understanding of one another about the experiences that have led us all to think the things that we do. We need to unpack it. We need to be in an environment where people can speak to each other, and disagree on questions, and disagree on all of those things. I definitely would love to do more of that.
I feel like my kids have lived in way more environments than I did by the time I was their age. As a result of that, I think they have a lot more facility like in their non-professional lives, like in their friendships, like they can cross boundaries with greater ease, they can have conversations across differences in their opinion and even in their political ideology and still call people their friends. Part of that is, like in an early age, having that exposure to like, “I like this person, but we think about things differently. Let’s talk about that, or let’s play together.” I think that’s so important, and we need to find a way to recapture that or to build that.
It’s rekindling the curiosity and approaching things with wonder as opposed to your point, safer risk. What do you think was the situation that made you say, “To heck with the plan, I’m going to take a risk?” I can think of a few things, but I’m just curious if there was one. I agree with you, I think we all were good girls. We’re supposed to do this. You say, “This is not big enough for me. Too small. I color outside lines. That’s self-awareness, and it’s not going to change.”
I was learning that sometimes, like coloring inside the lines and playing it nice, doesn’t get you to where you want to be. It’s not there to explore it. It’s like, “Maybe there’s another way that I should be thinking about it.” I think for me, I have three grown-ish kids. I think at the point, I realized that they got me, that I had imprinted on them and that they would be okay and be able to make their way in the world, gave me more latitude to feel like I could play, I could take a little bit more risks because they were going to be okay no matter what. They’re grounded, they’re situated so I can go.
Melissa, thank you so much.
Thank you. This has been wonderful.
Believe me, we will talk more of this, I know for sure. There are so many different little nuggets, but really, I appreciate it. On behalf of all the show’s readers and such, we thank the Lord. You are doing what you’re doing. It’s so incredibly important, especially in these times, to strap ourselves in, but we all belong. It’s a great reminder. Thank you for just teaching everybody and creating this next generation of leaders. I have faith after listening with you that the lens will. I do.
This has filled my cup. Thank you so much, Kate.
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About Melissa Thomas-Hunt
Melissa C. Thomas-Hunt is the John Forbes Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, Senior Associate Dean at the Darden School of Business and Professor of Public Policy at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.
She is the former Head of Global Diversity and Belonging at Airbnb where she sat on the executive team and led the strategy and execution of global internal diversity, belonging and connection programs.
For 30 years, she has taught MBAs and executives leadership, team dynamics, and negotiations and conducted research on connection and the factors that unleash, leverage, and amplify the contributions made by individuals in teams. Her book Inclusion Unlocked: A Guide for Leaders to Act was recently published by Wiley Press.
She currently serves on the boards of UKG and Harlem Academy.