SUMMARY KEYWORDS

conversations, people, talk, bias, leaders, organization, hr, hr professionals, feel, workplace, mental health, conference, culture, listening, impact, assessment, tools, kenston, employee resource group, pandemic

SPEAKERS

Kenston Henderson, Lindsay Recknell

Lindsay Recknell  00:01

You are a people leader or an HR professional, working hard to create an amazing employee experience for your team and your organization. But between the operational tasks of your job managing emotions and politics both up and down the corporate ladder, and trying to find some semblance of work life integration in your own life, I suspect you are also overwhelmed and burnt out. If even the thought of navigating the complicated world of mental health at work probably seems like too much to handle.  Let this podcast be you’re not so secret weapon to help fix that. I’m your host Lindsay Recknell. And my mission is to help great leaders like you feel less awkward and more confident talking about mental health at work. So you can stress less, take more action and continue to make a valuable difference in your job as a leader positively impacting the lives of your I’ll be bringing you the experts insights and actions that will give you the skills you need to navigate mental health in the workplace and foster a workplace where everyone’s mental health can thrive.  This week’s guest is Kenston Henderson, Senior, also known as the bias disrupter and the winning conversations enthusiast. He is the founder and CEO of live with life LLC. He’s a TEDx signature speaker, a certified John Maxwell leadership speaker and trainer, culture transformation champion and certified in Youth Mental Health First Aid USA. He is also a speaker at the upcoming SHRM conference being held in New Orleans in June of 2022. Kingston has over 18 years of experience in human resources, coaching and training leaders and teams to communicate and play well together. He delivers impactful on time and action packed speaking and training messages. He is one of the most sought after corporate and youth motivational speakers and trainers around the world. Since the pandemic, his impact has extended virtually to international areas and Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America. And his most recent talk was given live in Nairobi, Kenya. Kennison has also received the ICN Doctor astral generation Leadership Award, and I think you’re really gonna enjoy his episode. So let’s get on with the show.  Before we get started, I want your time to be valuable here. So in order to get the most from this podcast, head to my website at https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and download the Guide to Influence and Impact at Work, which has the step by step action plan, you’ll need to embed a focus on mental health into the employee experience of your workplace. It’s totally free. And it’ll give you the start to your action plan steps to follow to create engagement to build a budget and a method to measure the value influence and impact that you’re going to be making as you lead this transformational change in your organization. We haven’t been taught the mental health skills we need to truly lead our organizations into the future. So let this guide and this podcast be the advantage you need to elevate your career, your leadership skills and the positive impact you’ll bring to your organization, head to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and download the free Guide to Influence and Impact at Work now. The opportunity is yours and I cannot wait to see what you’ll do. All right. Now let’s get to our guest.  Hello Kenston, welcome to the show.

Kenston Henderson  03:11

Hey, Lindsay.

Lindsay Recknell  03:13

It is such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so so much. This is part of the SHRM conference series where I get to highlight you fabulous speakers. And so I’d love to open the show by having you share a little bit about who you are, what you do and why you’re coming to the conference.

Kenston Henderson  03:33

I’m so excited. Thank you for having me on this show. But I’m so pumped to be a part of you know, the SHRM conference and you know, just a little bit about myself, I call myself or some people call me the hope dealer, the bias disrupter, the game changer, man. And so I’m just I’m just so passionate about equipping people to really be their very best selves, personally and professionally. And so you know, being invited to speak at the SHRM conferences. It just, it’s in alignment, you know, being an HR for over, you know, 18 years now. I love that I get to give back to the great HR people who wear so many hats and being in so many positions within my HR career. I just feel ready to just we’re gonna have some fun. So I’m excited to have some fun with some HR greats.

Lindsay Recknell  04:28

I couldn’t agree with you more on the, I don’t know, like, I feel like HR professionals have been in this complicated new place over the last couple of years where the importance of the role the importance of these leaders has really had an opportunity to elevate you know, we’ve been you know, called HR business partners but really order takers and you know, compliance people and governance people but now we I feel like we get a seat at the table because the value has been has been had to have happened. Do you talk a little bit about that and what what you’ve seen over the last couple of years in that space,

Kenston Henderson  05:11

listen, and like you said, We’re, it’s now feels like HR folks are starting to finally get a seat at a table, like you said, and because they understand we leaders are understanding, we do add so much value. And of course, as HR professionals, we’ve had to wear many hats in many different areas. And we’ve picked up a few more hats during the last couple years, where we’ve had to pick things up and run with it. Like we knew we were doing some of it, we didn’t know we were doing but we still ran with it. Okay. So, which is, you know, drove him people kind of crazy. But you know, at the end of the day, leaders know, and understand that they can lean and depend on us as as truly HR partners that as you alluded to, but to help them navigate this storm of multiple crises. And so, you know, but like you said, for me, the definition I’ve been saying, you know, the crisis, the crisis is an opportunity for you to be amazing. And so I’ve just been equipping HR leaders with their message of, you know, this is a great opportunity for us to, to show how amazing we are, you know, to really shine bright during a crisis. So

Lindsay Recknell  06:24

the opportunity to be amazing. And to to put that into the spotlight because HR people have always been amazing. Just weren’t recognized for that awesomeness. I think this is really given a spotlight, a spotlight on that, which has been really cool. So your talk at the conference is called Winning conversations. Tell us a little bit about that. And what the participants in your talk will get a chance to hear about this.

Kenston Henderson  06:54

And so when it conversational was was kind of birthed through a TEDx that I did, it was called Can we talk? And it was, I would say it was at the perfect time that it came out. Because it was before the racial crisis that took place around the world. And it was really the Cresta was it was about how can we sit down and have conversations about whatever it is, but talking about race, specifically? How do you get to know people? You got to sit down and talk to them? And then how does that play out in the workplace? Same thing, it’s just, you know, it takes a few different ingredients. And so, you know, what I’m gonna be sharing at the conference will be regarding when in conversation is the My REM framework. And so REM stands for respect, empathy, and maturity. If you can put that in every single conversation that you have as relates to race, as it relates to Dei, in general, you’re going to have winning conversations. And so they’re going to learn the mindset to have winning conversation. So I’m gonna give them the back, I’m going to give them everything that I have, because truly, it doesn’t have to be hard, right? We think of the words respect, empathy, maturity, those are not big words. Those are not big words, but they have big impact. And when we’re talking about the human part of conversations, just think about it. If I come to you, respectfully, you come to me respectfully, I empathize with your lived experiences, you empathize with my lived experiences, and we both mature in these conversations. What, like, what can we not accomplish, when that happens? But you know, you know, one of the things we’re talking about it, we’ll talk about comfort, you know, what does it mean to be comfortable? And why conversation about race can’t happen. You know, too many people. There’s leaders who are so comfortable because they can be because nothing affects them until we show them how race plays a part in their hiring practices. All right, how race plays a part in you discriminating because of someone’s name, right? If someone was background, and there’s so many studies done, and I love that SHRM has done so many great studies on on this, that it makes it easy to have conversations with leaders and other people within the organization that don’t believe that race is it is an issue is a problem. Still to this day in 2020 22. We still have had this issue when it most recently with the new judge. The Supreme Court judge can say, Jackson is that, you know, she met all of the boxes. She met all the qualifications that all the experience, but there’s still people that do not want to choose her Why is that?

Lindsay Recknell  10:03

Well, the rigmarole that she had to go through to continue to prove her value and continue to prove her worth in all of those hearings was mind blowing and 2022

Kenston Henderson  10:16

and 2022. But this in that was a prime example of the reason why we have to have these winning conversations. Because this is happening daily in some organizations, their hiring practices, that you have great candidates. They beat all the boxes. But why are they not being hired? Why are they not being promoted within the organization? And once you drill down to it, you’ll see.

Lindsay Recknell  10:44

Well, and can we talk about that for a minute? So what, for HR professionals and leaders that are listening? Where is the place to start uncovering some of those conscious or unconscious biases in hiring practices?

Kenston Henderson  10:59

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just to do a audit on your your last, last hires within the last six months. And then look, reviewing your processes, reviewing all your job descriptions, making sure there’s, there’s no bias within those reviewing your policies, your handbooks, these are all the things that we work with, as HR professionals at our fingertips, like we can run a report, that’ll show us our last hire show us who’s all been promoted within the last few, the last six months. And so and so it’s not like we don’t have the tools, we have the tools. It just takes some intentional effort to say, You know what, maybe I should look at this a little bit more. Right. And but it also goes to our own self reflections, you know, have we all taken the harbor implicit association test ourselves? And then what do we do with that information? Once we got it? Right, there’s a step two after you take it. So there’s so many things we can do. There’s so many services out there so many software tools, that if we truly want to make a big difference than we still care. Okay.

Lindsay Recknell  12:11

Tell me more about this tool that you mentioned this Harvard implicit tools that we call it

Kenston Henderson  12:14

yeah, Harvard implicit association. Test is what they call it. And so that’s one out there, everybody can Google it. And then they have so many different types of bias assessments or bias test. So that way you can, it will reveal what types of biases that you carry, whether it’s gender, whether it’s racial, whether it’s related to guns, it’s so many. But that’s information that’s free to us, that’s free to everyone. And it just again, it just acknowledges that, you know, we all have biases, and that’s, that’s the thing I you know, shout out to rooftops is we all have biases, but as what we do with them that matters. And so, yeah, that’s, that’s it.

Lindsay Recknell  12:59

Okay, we’re gonna link to that into the show notes of this show. Because I didn’t know and everybody needs to know. Yes, and I think that’s really important when you say that we all have biases in some shape or form. That’s, that’s not the part that matters so much as the recognition, the self awareness, and then the action taken to exactly to continue to evolve those.

Kenston Henderson  13:22

I tell people that, you know, whoever takes the assessment, I’ll tell you my results, I found out the, you know, my results of when I took the race test. And I found out my results, my results was I had a favorable bias towards African American people. And I was like, Whoa, how could that be? I have a favorable bias towards African American people. Well, my whole family, including my mom and dad are African American. I grew up my community of friends. And the schools I went through were predominantly black, African American. And it wasn’t till I got to the Ohio State for my college, that it became more diverse. But for majority of my life, I’ve been surrounded by African American people. And so getting the result that I have a positive bias towards African American people, it’s not really a shocker, right? Because it’s your community of people who are around you, who you surround yourself with, that allows that bias to be confirmed in a domain. And so when I tell people, if you take the assessment, don’t be shocked by your responses, just think about who have you been surrounded with? And that will tell you the reason why. But now that I’ve taken this assessment, and I know, then the action part comes into play, where I’m saying, you know, what, I want to diversify my friendships. I want to diversify, where I go, even to worship or so forth. And so as each of our choices, we just have to take action if we when we want to take action. So

Lindsay Recknell  14:59

So Very interesting, because that was kind of along the lines of what I was going to ask you about actually is. So once somebody takes this assessment, if they are feeling uncomfortable about some of the biases that are revealed, how, how did like, how do they talk a lot about those things? What, you know, how do they open the door to those conversations? How do they get the confidence to, to share what is probably embarrassing, maybe shameful, once they realize,

Kenston Henderson  15:31

and that’s in that, you know, that’s what I say. And so when I’m teaching or when I’m training, a class on implicit bias, and we go, we go over that part of the assessment, and I tell my story, and and I make it really funny and lively to say, oh, my gosh, I cannot believe this, I have a favorable bias towards African American people, Oh, my goodness. So that way, it throws down the barriers to defense systems, the fences that rise up when we take an assessment, and we find out something about ourselves that we didn’t think was there, okay, is going to happen, but lean in, you know, what, as the best advice is lean in to your results, do some research around it. You know, that’s where we say, let’s get let’s get good around, addressing those things that aren’t that’s in front of us, the mirror, all right, we put the mirror in front of our face, we may not like what we see, but it’s there. And so how do we what are we going to do we address it, we don’t try to not look in the mirror anymore, we gotta lean into that discomfort. You know, I always say that, you know, comfort is the enemy to change the enemy to success, because you’re not allowing yourself to, to really grow into Be who you were created to be. I mean, just think about it, if we, if we were presented a promotional opportunity, where we can work anywhere around the world, and be paid even more money, I guarantee you, there’s gonna be some level of discomfort, some level of anxiety, but I guarantee you are going to go to that where that promotion is, or wherever you want to take the promotion, as soon as you can go anywhere around the world you’re going to lean in. So I just encourage people to just to lean into it. And, and if you don’t feel like you can do by yourself, then grab a partner. And both of you go through the process.

Lindsay Recknell  17:32

The devil, you know, right, that whole comfort, and maybe uncomfortable, where you’re at, but looking out over the other side is what you don’t know. And the level of comfort gets exponentially bigger, or the level of discomfort excuse me gets exponentially bigger. Yeah. So if I think about psychological safety in this conversation in the context of psychological safety, especially in the workplace, psychological safety being the ability for all of us to bring our whole selves to work, and have dissension and have tough, awesome conversations, and feel comfortable with no retribution to do those things. If we, if the listeners are working in a non psychologically safe environment, how do we have these kinds of conversations? In a place like that?

Kenston Henderson  18:25

Yeah. And so you’re talking about culture, and you know, and culture is a bear, you know, culture is the enemy to, again, change, to moving forward. And if you don’t have a supportive culture, it’s going to be hard. I’ve been working with some, some executives, and different organizations, that, again, they’re not seeing the need at the beginning, right, but once they see the need, and the why behind why we need to have these conversations, then they’re more open to saying, hey, let’s put in to put together an erg, you know, employee resource group to, to help, you know, facilitate, you know, having these conversations so we can create a more open culture, but it really is going to take someone wants to champion it. And I would say don’t do it alone. Grab somebody with, you know, takes money with you take me with you into those conversations with, you know, the, I’m gonna say a C suite leaders or you know, may not even need to go all the way up to the top, but it just needs to be more than one person because one person is not enough to help others see the need, and it’s validated. Sadly enough, but that’s still where we are 2022 but I, you know, I would just encourage people to surround themselves with if with community out even outside of the workplace, you know, those who, there’s so many groups that were created during the pandemic, and that are still running now that where you can you know, Feel free to voice express yourselves freely. But it is going to take still, sadly time for employers who have a culture that doesn’t really allow belonging, or inclusivity into the workplace, but it can happen. It’s just it may take different places. So I know a few people who weren’t weren’t open, but now they’re open because the the conversation came to their doorstep, meaning by way of their spouse or by way of their children was involved in something. And then this is where they started to open up into say, you know, what, okay, this is what they’ve been trying to tell me at the workplace. Okay, I think I’m, I’m ready to listen now. So

Lindsay Recknell  20:50

nothing like a universal experience of a global pandemic, to make it personal to all of us.

Kenston Henderson  20:55

I mean, you would think, but yeah,

Lindsay Recknell  20:59

but I do feel like, you know, we talked about opportunity in change, I do really feel like the last couple of years are, are have opened the door to these kinds of conversations, people are more willing and interested to at least, consider the possibility. Whereas before, it wasn’t, it wasn’t knocking on the door for everybody, it was always somebody else’s problem, somebody else’s thing and mental health didn’t affect me. And so those guys could deal with it kind of thing. So I do feel like I’m quite, I’m quite, I’m quite happy about the progression in that particular in this particular case of how we get to have these conversations at work. And I’d love to talk more about ERGs and employee resource groups, because the actually, the more people I’ve speaking to, that that experience, as a strategy as a tool seems to be quite impactful. Is that, like, Tell me your experience with erg? Is? Is that something that you do recommend organizations to embrace? How can I how can a employee who’s passionate about these topics start one and start engaging their colleagues?

Kenston Henderson  22:13

Yeah, so I mean, of course, you know, I won’t say run to your HR person. But, but it’s, it’s, you know, HR, you know, as a partner, and maybe be able to help them, you know, see their way around to do that. Because, again, it’s about, you know, of course, everybody wants to keep the peace, but it really is. It’s, you want to be heard, you want to feel valued in the workplace. And so you’re going to be have to be the one to to really speak up to that. And so if it’s you, right now, again, get a partner to go alongside come alongside you. And get a leader, you know, if it’s one leader, if it’s two leaders, get with them and say, Hey, can we have listening sessions, right, I’ve been a part of some, some groups where we orchestrated some listening section sessions, where people were allowed to the safe space, set it up as a safe space, and then be able to have those conversations, whether it’s had a specific topic, or whether it’s just hey, what’s on your mind? You know, how are you feeling? Right? psychological safety, how are you feeling in this moment? You know, a lot of those conversations did happen during a pandemic, but I still know a lot of organizations that did not have those and you can see the impact that it’s had because now goals are being set around belonging around di to foster this healthy thriving culture where everybody feels in are seen heard and valued, right, we hear that all the time. Do I feel seen do I feel heard Do I hear even feel valued? And so it’s so important that we, we get to that place of at least look at least ERGs because people aren’t bringing themselves to work and whether we you know, leaders know it or not your personal life is coming right to work with you. And and we’ve seen there’s studies out there now for the last couple of years that people are aren’t don’t feel like they don’t feel valued, because they’re not able to to bring themselves and you got to have the poker face in the meetings even though you are so burned out. Whether it’s mentally physically emotionally. I know I was mentally emotionally worn out because my up in speaking engagements went way up as ever as relates to di right because organizations was trying to get get in front of this thing of behind this thing and just make it up and in some were ticking off the boxes. But there was a need there was a huge need. And so I I think they are valuable. If they have the right people supporting it, and it doesn’t again, it doesn’t necessarily take a C suite person to, to support it. However, it would be an amazing thing for someone to support it at the C suite level.

Lindsay Recknell  25:17

Yeah, well, I think the impact of having someone in the C suite level all levels of the organization, actually, I think there’s a huge benefit of having the experiences and perspectives of the whole of the whole level of organization. But also, because engaging a C suite person and getting them to pay for this kind of work. The the impact is exponentially growing. I can imagine HR folks that are listening to this right now are thinking, I have to add this to my plate to what the actual like, you know? And so do you have some suggestions on how the HR professional listening to this can create a business case, a conversation around, not just adding this to their plate, but creating a role that does this work, and that’s their job, or, you know, some funding so that they can hire an awesome consultant like you to come in and shepherd this through there, do the cultural change, talk to me about that, but talk to them about that actually,

Kenston Henderson  26:31

listen, folks, Lizzy listening HR professionals, I got you, um, your HR brother from another mother. And so I got, I got options. And so, you know, I just finished my online course. And really, it’s all about racial equity, creating a culture of racial equity in the workplace. And it’s packed with so many tools that will help help the HR person who may not have the budget to hire someone else. But and they need to be equipped with these tools, that or people who want to just equip their whole hiring team or their whole HR team to really run with and is really a toolbox to continue to do this work in a greater way. And then at the end of the day, of course, if you want to call me to come and consult, then we can work that out. But there’s so many tools that I put into, put a lot of time into it. And so hopefully, I will be able to share the link to the audience. So that way, they can get what they need. Because I think the more the more we get, the more we lean in, the more we just start eating up the knowledge and the tools and resources, the more we can apply them in again, making our workforces even more inclusive and belonging, that it’s, it’s going to be a part of the culture. And that’s my goal as as a you know, as HR professionals to make the AI a part of the whole culture, not something separate, but as the whole culture that it’s weaved in and out of every process and policy. And, you know, practice. So that way, this conversation will be looking a lot different, you know, years and years down the line.

Lindsay Recknell  28:23

Well, and making making it just one of the core values is that equality is is is how we work around here, you know that it doesn’t have to be a big initiative or program that we implement. It’s just, it’s just part of how we operate in this toolbox that you’re talking about 1,000% We will link to it in the show notes for sure. And promote it, you know, as we promote the podcast, but it feels like it’s this this dino duel because doing this work for it. And for someone in HR, who also has to do the policies and procedures and hiring and compliance and all those things. That feels overwhelming. It feels like a ton of work and to have a a set of tools, where you just say here’s where you start, here’s what you do next. Here’s the impact that I’ll have. It helps them to build the business case as well, I suspect.

Kenston Henderson  29:19

Exactly, exactly. And that’s and that’s what it’s for, you know, you know, it has so many components. So I mean, I will say seven keys, and because it’s not a lot to implement, but it’s just enough to be able to show case to their managers, to their leaders, why this work is necessary. And so I’m just so so excited to equip people with with it. Yeah,

Lindsay Recknell  29:43

amazing. I will I will definitely make sure that they can have all the access to it that they need for sure. We are coming to the end of our time. I can’t even believe it. But what is your like? Last most important parting thought that you want these fine HR professionals To hear,

Kenston Henderson  30:01

listen. So I want you all to hear that. If you’re doing HR alone, you’re doing it all wrong. I say it again, if you’re doing HR alone, you’re doing it all wrong. I’m such a big advocate for community. And so the more you network, the more you connect with each other. You’re not you don’t feel like you’re you have to do everything by yourself. And that’s all I’ve learned over my 18 years of being an HR is that you know, what comes to you didn’t, you didn’t really have to go through that by yourself. You could have tapped on another HR folks. And I know tons of people, but it’s like, you know, I don’t know if it’s pride. I don’t know, it was ego. I don’t know if it’s comfort, I don’t know what it is. But I guarantee you, if you connect with other HR professionals who are in doing similar work as you, and you all have conversations, and you all you know, let off the steam, whatever it is, but be it uh, let your hair down. I can’t let my hair down. I’m pretty short, short hair. But if you if you just take the time to build your your relationships, that you’re going to be able to be even more resilient during times of crises. Now, hopefully we don’t go through any type of pandemics like this anymore. But, you know, I want to just encourage you to just connect with the right people. So that way you can continue to thrive and be the amazing HR professional You were created to be.

Lindsay Recknell  31:29

Oh, I love it. I love it. Words of wisdom from Kenston Henderson fine, folks, listen up. Thank you so so much that community cannot be overvalued. Absolutely. Definitely folks that are listening. Come check us out on the https://mentalhealthforleaders.com website contains links, all the resources, access to all sorts of community building opportunities specific to the SHRM conference, but also just to what happens after the conference. If you are joining us at the conference, we would love to connect with you as well. You can find me in the press room and out of the conference. You can I’m sure Kenston will be available after his talk to greet all you find folks and you can let them know that you loved all the things that he said on the show. Thank you so so much for joining us. It has been a real pleasure getting to know you and I can’t wait to hear your talk.

Kenston Henderson  32:24

Hey, thank you so much for having me, Lindsay. I can’t wait.

Lindsay Recknell  32:29

Take care. We’ll talk to you again real soon.

Thanks for joining me for another awesome episode of the mental health for leaders podcast. To make sure you don’t miss any future episodes, please go to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and subscribe to have these episodes delivered right to your inbox each week. You’ll also find all the show notes, links and resources that my guest mentioned on the show and the link to the Guide to Influence and Impact at Work freebie I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.  You’re listening to this podcast because you know our people need us more than ever. But being a people leader and an HR professional is especially hard right now. If the thought of figuring out how to best support your people and yourself feels overwhelming and impossibly hard. Let’s talk. I don’t promise I can make it easy, but I can make it simple. So let’s do that together. Go to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and download the Guide to Influence and Impact at Work now. Until next time, take good care. And as always, call me if you need me.