Rebel Podcast: Life and Work on Your Terms

Episode 84: Hiring Revolution With Alfonso Wenker and Trina Olson

February 08, 2022 Kyle Roed, The HR Guy Season 2 Episode 84
Rebel Podcast: Life and Work on Your Terms
Episode 84: Hiring Revolution With Alfonso Wenker and Trina Olson
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Show Notes Transcript

Alfonso drives Team Dynamics’ client engagement; working side-by-side with C-Suite executives and internal champions of cultural change efforts.

Alfonso Wenker is a seasoned executive leader and facilitator of transformational organizational culture and strategy campaigns. Serving in major leadership roles within the field of philanthropy, Alfonso has been responsible for driving sector and systems wide change to diversify both perspective and personnel in order to better steward resources responsible for underwriting major movements. 

A Latinx, gay, cis-gender man, Alfonso was born and raised on the west side of Saint Paul, MN, to a Mexican mother and white father. Consequently, Alfonso has often been the ‘first’ or ‘only’ person on a team who is a Person of Color, gay person, or both throughout his career. He has experienced, first hand, how the attempted diversification in the U.S. workplace has both made strides and done accidental harm. 

Prior to co-founding Team Dynamics, Alfonso served as the Vice President for the Minnesota Council on Foundations, which collectively supported member organizations overseeing more than $20 billion in resources. Alfonso also co-chaired the National Creating Change Conference, the largest annual gathering of LGBTQ+ organizers in the country. In 2012, Alfonso took a leave of absence from philanthropy in order to play the role of Deputy Finance Director for the historic Minnesotans United for All Families Campaign. 

Trina Olson is a two-time executive director with a track record of building and retaining teams across race, gender, and sexual orientation to achieve shared goals. Trina has built an impressive portfolio of national and regional policy and advocacy experience, centering a multitude of progressive issues, including: healthcare, hunger, living wage, immigration reform, transgender inclusive non-discrimination, and more. Trina is an expert adult-educator who has supported teams around the country to both improve their workplace culture and performance.

Trina is a Minnesotan who has also made her home in eighteen U.S. cities, including: Seattle, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. A queer, white, cis-gender woman, Trina is motivated by the ways job creators could be addressing the intersection of identity and workplace more creatively and consistently to address the pervasive inequities still at play across race and gender, in particular.

Trina is the author of Fairness in Philanthropy, Leveling the Playing Field for Our LGBTQ Neighbors, as well as, Seeking Safe Haven: LGBTQ People and the American Immigration Experience. Together, Trina and Alfonso have co-written a soon to be released book entitled: Hiring Revolution: A Step-by-Step Guide to Disrupt Racism and Sexism in the Workplace.

alfonso@teamdynamicsmn.com
trina@teamdynamicsmn.com
Podcast: https://www.teamdynamicsmn.com/season-3


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Trina Olson:

I'm gonna really practice not making assumptions about any of these candidates tech ability based on their age, because I know that's a bias I have based on how good my parents are at Tech, right based on how good my nieces are at Tech. Right? And so it's not being like holy, uninformed, but it's saying, Hey, I know I have to watch myself while we talk about these folks because I've never met them and I already have opinions.

Kyle Roed:

This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to HR innovators about all things people leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of war, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe, favorite podcast listening platform today, and leave us a review. Rebel on HR rebels. Alright, rebel HR listeners. Welcome back to the rebel HR podcast. Thanks for joining us this week. Really, really excited for our guests. We have two guests so I am out number by I'm excited about the content today with us. We have Trina see Olson and Alfonso winker, they are the authors of hiring revolution, a guide to disrupt racism and sexism in hiring. They are also a part of team dynamics, which is a national race and gender justice firm, providing training coaching and strategy support for workers and workplaces. Welcome to the show.

Alfonso Wenker:

Thanks for having us.

Trina Olson:

It's great to be here.

Kyle Roed:

Well, I'm extremely excited. And you know, I get a lot of podcast guest pitches. But when I saw what you two were doing, and and when I read about the book, I said, Oh, yeah, we need to talk. Because I think this is really pertinent to our listeners and pertinent to myself and my organization as well. So really excited for the conversation today. So I want to start off, maybe by just asking a little bit of what interested you both in writing a book about a hiring revolution.

Alfonso Wenker:

Yeah, so this was not the book we thought we would write. First, I don't know that we necessarily thought that we would become authors. But y'all kept asking. So being folks that work in diversity, equity and inclusion, I would say the most popular, the most frequent, the most urgent question that comes into our inboxes. And on our inquiry form on our website is how can I diversify my search. And oftentimes, folks are talking about paying women and promoting women more, and just finding more available workers of color. And so the book was sort of born a little bit out of irritation, like, we want to have a big conversation about culture change and organizational transformation and evolution. And here's this very specific question that keeps coming in. And for our ages, we have hired more than people who are younger than 50 would normally have hired, Trina having worked in 18 Different states on ballot measure campaigns. So you sort of build up a team, you close the team, you move to the next state, you work on the next issue. I ran a fellowship program where we had 150 applicants every year for five years, placing people for six different jobs. So we had all these tips and tricks, a lot of IT stuff that we were forced to do that we knew if we did differently, we could actually find different talent. So we had all these anecdotes and stories. And so we would try to quickly in a 15 minute call or a 200 word blog post talk about these things. And it became really clear that folks needed the wholesale revolution, that quick fixes at one point in the process weren't going to work. But that the whole way, that in the US workforce, the way that we think about everything from recruitment, to interviewing to making the offer was completely wrong. It's not the steps that are wrong, we still have to recruit people and then interview them and then make make an offer, but it's how we were doing it. And the premise really was everything about how we hire creates a preference for white people and for men. This isn't about saying we don't ever want to hire white people and men again, but we've created a whole structure that says here's who will win most of the time.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. You know, and I think it's I think it's really interesting. The you know, the fact that you you call out that this is a structure that this is us, you know, it's a structural issue, right. But within that structure can be a lot of emotions. And and, you know, I certainly can recall some times where we were going through some structural change in our recruiting practices. and some of that, maybe that latent fear of change, and maybe fear that, you know, the white men will lose some of their leverage within an organization. And when when those are the individuals who are primarily in power in an organization that can be an interesting and challenging thing for HR to navigate. So kind of kind of walk me through the foundation of going beyond a quick fix and going into kind of that systemic procedural change that's necessary.

Trina Olson:

Yeah, thanks for naming that there are really big feelings associated with who is ever going to be on your team. And What team are you ever going to be a part of, right? So we live in the US. For most of us a lot of our sense of self worth, our purpose comes through our job, our vocation, our calling, the way we want to make a difference, but also very tangibly, our health care, our finances in order to have housing and food and take care of folks, right. So our livelihood is really inextricably linked with who gets hired where and who gets promoted. Where, right. And so our book on purpose, really walks through the material relational and symbolic barriers that we all are going to have to disentangle in order to stop believing any of the binary truisms that we were handed that aren't true. Right? So this idea that somebody is gonna lose, if people of color and women can feed themselves and be taken seriously. That's not true. Nobody's gonna lose by that happening. The fact is, we have folks whose basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs are not being met. And it's not because anybody is incompetent or incapable. It's because we have 400 years plus of racism and misogyny telling us people are fundamentally less capable. And it's not true. So it really is the thing about when we looked at hiring to see if like, Could we just do tweaks? That'd be easier, right? Can we just like, adjust or turn the dial to the LEFT 90 degrees. But what we realized around recruitment and hiring is that our programming, so that's how often when I teach and talk about it, team dynamics, the brain science of bias, is we are all being inundated with messages constantly, of who is better than and who is worse than who is more capable, who is more intelligent, who is more fun, who is more friendly. Like we're just being fed those messages. And so our job as adults, is to wrestle with the programming, right? And so we really walk through step by step that bias is hiding in plain sight, and things that have now been called a standard or are deemed professional. And so we would like the revolution to be the new standard.

Kyle Roed:

Well, there's a lot of like, awesome content and

Alfonso Wenker:

thought about this for a long time. Yeah, we're back on our answer.

Kyle Roed:

That's good. That's perfect. But, you know, if I can, I don't think we have time to unpack everything you just said, because there's so much truth in there. But you know, one of the things that really stood out and what you just shared, and I'm sure the book expands upon this quite a bit, but you know, it's that difference between you know, that that fear or that scarcity mindset, that there's not enough to go around? Or, you know, if if somebody else is elevated in society than what about me, you know, kind of that like the ego that gets in the way of making it a better functioning society and helping everybody. As you said, meet their, you know, their Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And, yeah, so I think I think that's a great call out and, you know, I, I do wish that it would it was simple. I mean, it would be great if they were just, you know, all we need to do is tweak this, tweak that, you know, you just need to go in for a tune up on your systems, and then, you know, and then hit start. But it's so much deeper than that, as you both know. So when we talk about kind of that systemic change, are we really talking about cultural change? Are you talking? I mean, where do you start with that big challenge with that big question?

Alfonso Wenker:

Well, in part one of our book, which Trina talks a lot about and was really the leader in doing the research in part one of our book, we really said ourselves and just the current disparities. So who isn't isn't getting hired? Who isn't isn't getting paid? Well, who isn't, isn't getting promoted. So we just situate ourselves in the reality that if you're having a hard time believing the issue is structural, let's take a look at a couple of data points. So let's look at how long pay parity will be. For white women, women of color, let's look at who gets promoted and who doesn't, right. So if anyone's having a hard time imagining that this is structural, not personal, there's plenty of data in the book to just play with. The other thing that we introduce in the book, and this shows up in part two, which is really the elements of the process is, you know, you talk about simple Kyle. And I would actually say, the shifts are simple, but they're not easy. Because they're so ingrained, right? So the things that will we would ask you to do are things like, don't talk about how much you liked or disliked someone, right? Only have a rule that we're only going to discuss our perception of whether or not this person seems capable of doing the task at hand. Right? simple task, hard to do. Right? So it's about behavioral shifts that become our new culture of how we do hiring. So much of hiring has become sort of this dog and pony show, a pageant of who can really give good interview, which is a really different skill set, then, are you ready, willing and able to do the job we need you to do. And so not only have we given preference to extroverts, or people that really like public performance, we're then measuring people against a rubric that almost has nothing to do with what the job actually is. So instead of saying, we have a way that we do hiring, in part two of the book, we say, ask yourself, what do we need to learn about this person that we don't already know. So it might not be three rounds of six hour interviews with 40 different people. It might be a writing sample, it might be give us an example speech, because this is a public speaking role. It might be demonstrate us that demonstrate to us that hyper technical or scientific skill set that you have that we need you to be able to do at this job. So we've preferenced sitting, still smiling and performing in front of a group of strangers. And the ways in which we code who's really good at that are really linked to how people perform masculinity. So did they have a low voice that was pleasing to hear, right? Do they have a button up shirt where they're wearing slacks? And then we preference all these things that are relative to whiteness? Well, could I understand them? What was their sort of slang or colloquial, colloquial speech? Do they feel like they'd really fit in? So we have all these questions and rubrics, usually that the candidate doesn't know about? That aren't anything to do with their ability to do the job. So it's simple shifts that are going to be hard to do, because we're just so used to well, I'm I like this performance. It was nice to watch them speak. This isn't a public speaking job. So why is it was nice to listen to them speak, even something we're measuring? Why is that even on the table for discussion? So it's going to be hard to say he Trina, you know, three times in the meeting, you talked about how it was to listen to them. This is a copywriting job, they're primarily going to be redlining, legal copy. So we're not going to talk about what it felt like to hear them, we're gonna actually go back to their writing sample and see if they found seven out of 10 of the typos we needed them to find. That's hard to do, because I care about Trina. But it's a simple shift.

Kyle Roed:

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Trina Olson:

So close. So I think part of what we're saying is, we know as much as we can about a person new to us, when do we know enough to give the person a try? So for us, right, if we compare it to dating, right, it's like, okay, cool. You asked enough questions to feel like, sure. It's worth the conversation. Right? You asked, you had enough conversations that you thought, sure it's worth going on a date. Right? So I think the the lie we've told ourselves for too long is we can guarantee if we create this really onerous process, that we will always 100% of the time, pick perfect, right? And that's part of what we're trying to get out of people to is, we're not trying to find a soulmate, we're trying to find a colleague. So how do we drop the there is a best candidate, and instead, say, we're now talking to five adults, all of whom could do this job. They would all do it different because of who they are and how they are and the experience they have. So given our current context, which one do we want to give the shot to this time? Right. And so I think we talked a lot in the book about how do we move from rank ordering human beings to actually compare and contrast. And so we've hidden behind Likert scales, or performances, or multiple rounds of really redundant interviews or questions. And that's been called some version of due diligence, when in fact, it's a waste of your time, it's a waste of the candidates time, it doesn't actually guarantee a different result. So I think some of your listeners, and some of our readers are surprised to learn that we have found because obviously, we practice what we preach, this is how we hire our team at team dynamics. If you follow the hiring revolution, your life will get way more efficient, right? Because we're not going to keep in all of the garbage that doesn't get us closer to our goal. But again, we hide behind it to say okay, cool. We had a whole committee. So everybody together voted with their biases, and we decided to bias the answer. But look, if we all took a vote and call it democracy, right, or we did three rounds, or we had people have coffee and Kyle, one of the things that's interesting because at team dynamics right now, we work hard 11 different sectors, so we get to notice patterns around the country, right, so sectors that never interact with each other. And one of the things we noticed, right, and so we talk about it a lot in the book is bodies, right? So this idea of who is and isn't just perceived as a strong and capable leader. And so we have people go through some bias exercises, but we share real life stories of what it's like when a man who has broad shoulders in a six foot two goes into an interview, and an Asian Pacific Islander woman who's five foot one, and who's just perceived as the stronger leader. Right, and that's about bodies, which to be clear, none of us decided how tall we were going to get. That was not a choice that it was made. And it has literally nothing to do with our intellect. And because, you know, this is an audio format. For folks who don't know, I'm a white woman, Alfonso is a man of color. So also, as he and I share how we've experienced our experience differently, because of people's perceptions of our bodies and our capacity.

Kyle Roed:

That's, that's fascinating. And, and, you know, I can't help but reflect on some of the research that, you know, tall white men hold more leadership positions than short, men are, obviously, you know, there's way too much evidence of people of color and women not holding those types of leadership roles. But it is I mean, that that has to be a bias, right? I mean, as a society, if we, if we don't admit that, and we're just not looking.

Alfonso Wenker:

And we talk about it as professionalism or leadership present, right. And part of how we, in the book, have people start to notice all the ways in which even with the best goals, and the best values and the best intentions, we still make some of those decisions. So we say, okay, look at this list of traits, no one's ever gonna see this be really honest, bald, or having hair, short or tall, heavy or thin, right, just going through. And then notice the compilation of things that you would just prefer, even though they don't align with, with your values, with your goals, with the intentions that you have. And so we have folks in the book, just take that self inventory, and say, remember, all of that preference that you have comes into the conversation about candidates that you would recruit candidates that you would move along in a process, candidates that you would ultimately make a job offer to so that comes with you. So you've got to have a plan to do what we call, notice, name and navigate, so you can remember it because it's three adds notice name and navigate, and be courageous enough to say, I've noticed that when we talk about the candidates that are men, we talk about their leadership presence. I've noticed them when we talk about the candidates who are women, we talk about how likable or friendly they would be or how they would get along with people that feels incongruent with some goals we have, we seem to have created a different rubric across lines of gender. Let's reset, go back and discuss these candidates based on the agreed upon rubric that we had, rather than some of our notions of who's a leader and who's likable. So I noticed I see this pattern, we're talking about different genders differently. I'm going to name it because if I don't, we might just keep doing it. I'm not going to wait and do it in the hallway. I'm not going to like write an email and say like, I'm worried that we might not be following the rules is something wrong, I'm going to name it. And naming explicitly sometimes can be to a colleague to say, Hey, I saw this, can you help me have this conversation with the group? If I'm feeling courageous enough? I might just say it right. And then we decide what are we going to do differently? It's just true. None of us are in trouble. We haven't broken the law yet. It's just true. So we've got 30 more minutes in the meeting. Could we try talking about these candidates a different way? Right. But the only way we can do that if is if going in one. I know some of the preferences that I have. And two we have an agreement that it's okay to do the naming part.

Kyle Roed:

Yeah, and then we're kind of coming full circle because talk about the potential to be emotional or hard for somebody to you know, to digest. But, you know, the way that you just laid that out and you've used the word, you know, it's just true, right? It's not it, I could see how that could immediately de escalate the the ego response and the you know, kind of your low lower thinking self from thinking, Oh, you're calling me, you know, a bigot and shifting that into, hey, I, this is what I observed. You know, here's, here's what I think is not fitting with what we want to do here. And then and then you know, kind of putting the team on a path to figure that out. So I think if you didn't catch that, that was notice name and navigate one of the things I will say, too, if you're, I'm sure you're probably already thinking I got to grab this book. But if you look on the website, there's also a ton of different resources that you could actually take from the book and put to practice within your your HR practices as well. So So I do want to circle back to something you started talking about, Trina and I have I have some views on this, but I'm curious to hear what your research found on the hiring committee, you know, the democratic process of selection, and, and, and all the fun that HR gets to have trying to navigate those things sometimes. And so, as you are going through the process of writing this book, and then some of your experience and research, you know, what, what actually works as far as the structure of a hiring committee, you know, kind of democratic process of making sure that a lot of a number of different people have a voice in the hiring decision.

Trina Olson:

Yeah, it's, it's a great question, because it's a new pattern, right? And so often, when I really view a hiring committee obsession, as an overcorrection, to what used to feel like singular individuals in a secretive way, would make random decisions, and we don't know how they got there. Right. So the intent makes sense. So Alphonsus, Catholic, we talked about how it used to feel like the Pope, right would be like, white smoke came out. And we hired somebody, we're like, how did that happen? I don't know weren't invited, right? So we understand that, that there is a reaction to that saying, yeah, that that wasn't great. And so we agree with that wholeheartedly, right? The challenge is, what's happened instead, is really, really sloppy organizing of people. And so folks are getting tokenized, constantly. So people of color women, LGBT folks, folks of different religious backgrounds, are getting pulled in to Job prospecting, when they have absolutely nothing to do with that job, right and no way to be able to run candidates through rubric for a job they've never had, right? We also refuse to acknowledge, we are all bringing our bias in, not only does being an A group not eliminate our bias, or just like, magically wash it away, it can sometimes exacerbate our bias, because now we're in agreement that our biased ideas are really good one because three of us found that candidate to be our quote, unquote, favorite. So what we talked about throughout the book is each hire should be done in context. And with intention. So absolutely, there are times when I hire at our own company, when it's a job, I know how to do or have done. So I really am an expert, and being able to figure out if somebody is ready, then there's times that our very own company that we're hiring for a skill set, I don't have. So I do need somebody in the room with me, not during the whole process at certain critical moments, to say, can you check this technical writing? Can you look at that bank statement that they you know, gave us an example of right, when it's something web related or tech related? That I don't have? I know the questions that I have, but I'm not the one with the technical expertise, right? So part of just what we ask is, why is anybody here? What specifically are they being asked to do? Or sign off on or check or double check? And where is it that we're not being honest about our own embarrassment that we have a super homogenous team? So we're doing something to just sort of fill it in with more kinds of people? So that essentially we can get a pat on the back from people of color or women or somebody else to say, yeah, yeah, it was okay. And the way we talk about our process is you're going to end up hiring all sorts of kinds of people. That's great. What we want you to do is feel really good about the process. So that if you end up hiring a white person, you end up hiring a man you end up hiring, you know, somebody of the same generation of you. Great, cool, right? But we want you to have felt so good about the person process that, you know, you got there sort of honestly. And so people are under the incorrect belief that committees will eliminate bias. That's just not true. And so the answer isn't black or white, don't have them or have them. It's who needs to be in which part of the process this time with a clear why attached. And then whenever you are gathered, you have a practice of all acknowledging how your bias is going to show up in the room. Right. And so what's nice is team dynamics is growing on purpose. So I'll find out when I were just working on a job posting yesterday. So we're living this constantly, and being able to say, okay, cool. So given the specificity of this job, who on our team is going to be part of at which points, right, so this is something we do regularly. And again, it makes your life more efficient. Rather than having random committees for committee sake, everybody is called in with precision, rather than sloppily.

Alfonso Wenker:

In good news, all those questions Trina just asked are outlined in our hiring helpers inventory, it's in the book, but it's also on the hiring revolution, book.com Resources page?

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. I can't tell you how many times it's, you know, I've had the conversation where someone wants to bring someone into an interview, and they're like, well, let's get their opinion. And, you know, and you have to ask the question, why, right? And there's a number of reasons, you know, I think in the context of bias, yeah, that a lot of times you sit in that room, and it's really, everybody's just trying to kind of match up with whoever the highest ranking person in the committee is. You know, and it can get it can actually get very political and very uncomfortable to the point that I've been in those conversations and a number of times where people are like, well, our opinion doesn't really matter. Anyways, what is the, you know, what is the main person think?

Trina Olson:

Right? What do you disagree with your boss and friend, right, buddy?

Kyle Roed:

Like, are you gonna get to pick a fight with your boss, if they if they do not like this person, because they need a random comment about a sports team? They don't like, you know, like, I mean, it's those things happen. Yeah. Do we want to admit it or not?

Trina Olson:

It's usually it's in those in between moments like Alfonso said, so good example is, he and I and our Vice President of capacity building, Tiree often do hires together because of the kind of side of the company that's growing right now for us. And we all model rather than call each other out. So I know, in a recent hire, I said, I'm going to really practice not making assumptions about any of these candidates tech ability based on their age. Because I know that's a that's a bias I have based on how good my parents are at Tech, right? Based on how good my nieces are at Tech, right? And so it's not being like wholly uninformed. But it's saying, Hey, I know I have to watch myself while we talk about these folks, because I've never met them. And I already have opinions. And then I'll find someone tirade will go through and do the same, right? Whether it's like I'm practicing, not having favorites, or feeling closer to people who lived in cities I live in, or who went to the same college. Right? So we're all just saying, yeah, here's what sort of front of mind for me that's in my awareness, so that we can cut it off at the past before it influences our decision making?

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's, you know, to call that out at the beginning, that's so different than at the end, after you've, you know, you've gone through and you've kind of funneled down to two or three candidates and you're having the conversation, you're and you know, and you have that implicit bias, and then somebody calls it out and says, Oh, by the way, this, you know, this person is this age, and this person is that age, well, well, that shouldn't matter. And then, and then you're like, Oh, crap, did we get rid of all these other candidates? That could have been great. You know, it's it's almost like you if you don't call it out in the beginning, you have you have just naturally added bias into your process?

Alfonso Wenker:

Yeah, I think that's a really important point, because so many times, you know, we started in the beginning by saying, we wrote hiring revolution, because people kept asking us how to diversify their searches. Those questions usually came when they were facing a finalist pool. That was way more homogenous than they had hoped for. And they were effectively saying, what happened? How did we get here? How is it that with all these goals and all these intentions, we ended up with a super homogenous, mostly white, mostly male candidate finalists pool. And the truth is, you weren't talking about it enough earlier in the process. And so you kept making decisions through those biases. And so this is the exact result you set yourself up for goals and intentions, you know, don't matter at this point. And so it's it's absolutely way too late to start having that conversation when you're staring at well, I'm picking between these three, four people

Trina Olson:

The whole second part of the book is us showing our work. So think about it like being an eighth grade math class. Right? We're trying to be really good teachers. We just show you everything. So it's why there's 20 Plus tools, it's templates, it's starter emails, it's examples of what you can have in your application process. It sample questions, right? So this idea of just it has to start way at the beginning. And then you have to stay conscious each step along the way. And so we don't think any of what we were up to feels like a secret. So we were just ready to show everybody, right. And it's how we have the mixed team we do. And none of it is about political correctness. Alfonso, and I have a shared value, which is to only ever hire people smarter than us. So they're smarter than us in some way. That's why they're being added to the team. I absolutely will no more than somebody, but like we're bringing them because they're adding value. And so another tool we have in the book that we're getting a lot of positive feedback on is the readiness and value add matrix. So in this analysis, we just say, okay, great, how do you know readiness, and then you stop talking about readiness, people are either ready, or they're not great. And then what is the unique value add. So we start talking about candidates as the assets they're bringing to our team, rather than the deficiencies, that means they haven't earned the right to be here. And so it does help you take stock of your current context, and helps to do that compare and contrast rather than rank order. Because at that point, everybody's ready. They're all just different.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely, and we are cash, we're just starting to scratch the surface. But we are coming to the end of our time together. So I'm going to leave it there that this is the teaser trailer, go get the book, check out the website, the website is hiring revolution book.com. There's a ton of great content out there. I was preparing for this and I'm like, Oh, that's great. This is good. This is Oh, I like this. So so check it out. With that we're gonna shift gears into the rebel HR flash round. So three quick questions here. And I will start with Alfonso. And there was no implicit bias. There's just because you're on the left side of my screen, so All right. I'm calling that person alphabet. We do it that way. Okay, that works too. Okay. All right. Question number one, what is your favorite people book?

Alfonso Wenker:

I have a bunch right now. It is the book let we will not cancel us by Adrienne Marie brown. It's all about call out culture and our obsession with public punishment and how that is not getting us closer to our goals.

Kyle Roed:

Alright, Trina, what is your favorite book?

Trina Olson:

So this scared my friend the other day when he was at my house and sat on my bookshelf. It's called Die empty. And so I believe it's tied to Henry. I really love it because it is about how to live in vocation. And get all your goodies out before you're gone. So that's one that speaks to me, but is a little nerve racking for other people

Kyle Roed:

die empty. Yeah, that's that the title is definitely shocking, but sounds like begin with the end in mind. You know, you can rebrand that. You could HR that up a little bit. But yeah, I love that. And yeah, good to have that perspective. Alright, question number two. Alfonso, who should we be listening to?

Alfonso Wenker:

For anybody that cares about structural racism, you've got to listen to seen on radio Season Two. The series is called seeing white so it's seen the SC any on radio. Seeing white is the series of season two. It's a couple years old, but it's John B one and Chandra communica. And they do a great job of just a 10 part crash course on structural racism.

Kyle Roed:

All right, perfect. Trina Who should we be listening to?

Trina Olson:

So I'm obsessed lately with the podcast maintenance phase. Michael Hobbs and Robert Gordon. They are incredible researchers. And they talk a lot about bodies. And so I think what's interesting is, in this time, we are all being asked to be much better consumers of information. And they do a great job of saying, Yeah, we're being told a lot of half statistics in sort of headlines. You got to dig deeper and understand, so I love their work.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely, yeah. You can't just read the headline and then post on Facebook. That doesn't count. All right. I'll open this up to both of you. How can our listeners connect with you?

Alfonso Wenker:

So you can find us on Twitter Twitter at team dynamics LLC. You can tweet the podcast at behave podcast and I am at Alfonso winker. We're also on Instagram at team dynamics mn.

Trina Olson:

And my Instagram and Twitter are Trina C, Olsen o l s o n, it's this sweeter spelling. So just, you know, find me that way.

Kyle Roed:

Oh, in not E and got it, you got it. Awesome. And we will have all that information in the show notes. So people can just open up your podcast player, click in there, you can find the book Connect, you know, such great content here. I appreciate the effort, the research, the data driven approach and the call to action. And I think that as a listener, you know, I would call all of all of you out there and rebel HR land to check out the book, think about the world a little bit differently and question your processes question what you do question how you set up your your candidates for success regardless of whatever characteristics they may have. So thank you so much for for writing the book. And thank you for joining me today. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks, Kyle. Thank you. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those the authors do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe