Redefining Leadership in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, with Priya Nalkur

In this podcast, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Priya Nalkur about redefining leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Priya Nalkur, Ed. D. is the President of the RoundTable Institute where she leads a global group of coaches and facilitators to help companies build more inclusive leaders and workplaces. She is a professional speaker, coach and facilitator and has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Heller School for Social Policy and has several courses on Udemy for Business. She is the author of the recent book (2024) Stumbling Towards Inclusion: Finding Grace in Imperfect Leadership. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 00

  Priya Nalkur, welcome to the conversation today.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, John. Happy to be here.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  It is a real pleasure to be with you today. We've had this on the schedule for a long time. I've been looking forward to it. We finally get the chance to sit down with each other. You're joining us from Austin, Texas. I'm south of Salt Lake City in Utah. And today, we're going to be talking about the diversity, equity, and inclusion landscape, and how to be leaders within this, shall we call it, volatile, polarized, you know, political climate that we're in, and how to lead within this context, within this environment. And I'll just say on the outset, it frustrates me to no end that this has become a polarized, politicized topic. I truly believe that the vast majority of people

• 1:20Speaker 00

  want to treat others with dignity and respect. I think most people wake up in the morning just wanting to be kind to others. And yet, these terms have become politicized, and this has just become such a hot-button issue for so many people. And I think it's just so sad, because, again, I think most people want to be treated well. They want to treat other people well. Most people don't wake up in the morning thinking, how am I going to marginalize people today? How am I going to treat other people badly today? And they certainly don't want to be treated badly. And yet, this is where we find ourselves, right? We find ourselves in a situation where people find it difficult to have conversations,

• 2:02Speaker 00

  where people feel hurt, outcast, where people feel like they don't belong, where they're excluded.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Certainly, there are prejudices and where there where there is bigotry and injustice and you know, all the all the things, right? And it's just really sad that that's the context, that's the environment that we find ourselves in. But I do think there are things we can do about it. And so that's really what we're going to try to unpack and what we're going to try to explore together today. As we get started, I wanted to share Priya's bio with everybody. Priya Nowcor is the president of Roundtable Institute, where she leads a global group of coaches and facilitators to help companies build more inclusive leaders in workplaces. She is a professional speaker, coach, and facilitator, and has taught at Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Heller School of Social Policy,

• 2:51Speaker 00

  and has several courses on Udemy for business. She is the author of the recent book, Stumbling Towards Inclusion: Finding Grace in Imperfect Leadership. And I love that title, by the way. I do think we need to hold more grace for ourselves, for each other. We're all imperfect, of course we are. So anyways, I thank you again so much for joining me. Anything you would like to add, by way of your own background, personal context, before we dive on in?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  No, I think you nailed it. Let's get into it.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Okay, cool. Well, so I kind of prefaced it, but anything on kind of the outset as we kind of lay the foundation that you would like to share just from your perspective of kind of the current landscape and where we sit today?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, first of all, I really agree with your framing, right? Most of us are good human beings, or at least like to think of ourselves as good human beings. And we have good intentions, and sometimes our impact doesn't match our intention, but that's what it means to be human. And it's unfortunate, I agree with you, that the word or the acronym DEI is now cast under the shadow of evil. You're not allowed to do it. You're censored. You're you have to be filtered, when really, all we're talking about is inviting people to the party and helping people feel understood and seen. And that's all we want as humans, whether it's leadership, friendship,

• 4:13Speaker 01

  relationships, families, anything, that's what we're striving for as humans, is to be understood by each other and to understand each other. We live in a social world. We can't get away from that. And it's really a small percent of us, a small percentage of us who Qualify as sociopaths or psychopaths who are not interested in that kind of life where where we don't have a conscious, but our conscious tends to lead us towards things like including other people, welcoming them, being curious about each other, listening, sharing stories. So it's the things that we should have learned in kindergarten that I find myself teaching leaders today, right? Saying please and thank you, but beyond that,

• 4:58Speaker 01

  really feeling what it means to say please, to say thank you, to forgive ourselves when we make mistakes, to not believe in a stupid question, but to ask the question and say the thing that we really feel without filters as we could in kindergarten, but somehow over the course of our lives, lost track of the ability to do so. So I'm here to help people confront that fear they have in saying the thing that they really mean to say, but for whatever reason can't or don't have the skill or afraid to do so, and to liberate people from those censors and filters that I think are relatively false.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate that. As you were talking, I was just thinking last night I took my son who's in junior high, ninth grade, he's going into high school. They did an orientation, you know, he'd go walk around the high school, meet his teachers for next year, all of that, right? And I have older children, so I have children that have already gone through this high school. I really am quite pleased by how well the administrators, the teachers at this high school have done at just making it an inclusive place. Like, there are, I mean, every high school, they're teenagers, right? So there's going to be some clickiness, there's going to be, you know, some of that, right? But nothing like when I was a kid, right? Like, it is such, like, in comparison, such an inclusive place. Like, people are just friends with each other and they're kind to each

• 6:26Speaker 00

  other and they don't bully each other. And, and even if they have their friend groups, they still are kind and reach out to each other and will include each other in other things. And, and all of that, I'm just like, oh, my gosh, I was talking to my son. About it. I'm just like, this is so dramatically different, you know, than like what it was when I was going through junior high and high school. And it's such a positive improvement. Like, I'm so happy that that's how it's been for my children. Um, as they've gone through, you know, the education system. And I was also, you know, just reflecting, I'm like, okay, I really, I hope this means. You know, that these future generations, I hope this means that this translates into the future workforce as well.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  Because I, you know, you know, as an O B O D H R person, you know, I also, I often lament to my wife and kids. I'm so like, I. I I just wish like, just because you're you're an adult in the workplace, doesn't mean all of a sudden all the high school stuff goes away like. Adults have lots of drama, you know, and adults show up in the workplace. And they still sometimes act like they're teenagers and they they have drama and they bully each other and they're toxic and they're like all the things, right? And I'm like, it's like some people just don't grow up. It's like they don't, they don't learn how to just like you said, like to be like back in kindergarten to just like. Be kind to each other, be be forgiving and and ask the question and learn and grow and all these things. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh, I think.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  I think my kids and like their high school situation, I think like they just learned something we didn't learn when we were younger and I hope. That this translates into their work experience. I hope this next generation. Has just figured something out that we didn't figure out. So that all this garbage doesn't carry forward with them. When all of a sudden they find themselves in that kind of environment, I hope, fingers crossed, but I I guess I don't know. Um, anyways, I I just wanted to kind of share that.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  A hopeful future, you know?

• 8:17Speaker 01

  I I have that too. And I also am someone who idealizes and romanticizes. Um, life as, you know, my, my daughter is also ninth grade and I. Sometimes I walk away from time with her friends thinking, gosh, I don't have to worry about. These kids, they're so strong, they're so independent, they're making good choices. Choices beyond I could have ever made at fourteen years old, just really clear in their thinking. Um, and the other part of me that is not so romantic and ideal. Uh recognizes that they're living in a very different world. Sure. Uh the advent of social media helps me to ground myself in reality to say,

• 8:58Speaker 01

  you know, actually, some of this stuff is still happening, but it's happening a little bit more insidiously. It's not as in your face as it was when you and I were in high school and they're still having to navigate and build new skills that you and I did not have to build at that age to um understand that they're living a world in reality, in real life, but they're also living this world online that they, that still requires them to navigate tricky social dynamics, exclusion, inclusion, uh mean behavior, bullying behavior. And so they're, they're living in a more, in some ways, a more complicated world. And yet, I hold out hope, like you do, that um they will

• 9:42Speaker 01

  develop the needed skills to work in an environment where they can truly be kind to us each other. I also um have a lot of compassion for people who have gone through a journey growing up um with people who have been mean to them or have excluded them categorically, regardless of their social identities. And have not actually gone on a healing journey to get to the point in their mid forties where they can be effective compassionate leaders. Um it takes some work to heal from this, all the psychological baggage we bring to any moment.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  And I have compassion for people who have not done that work or not recognize that they have to do that work. Um so all of us are on a journey and um and yet I, I still have an idealistic view of the future, thinking these kids are gonna be okay. If these are the kids who are gonna lead us into the future. I feel pretty fortified by that.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I I man, I sure hope so. Uh, I yeah, I I hold out hope for that. Um, I I really do like your point, though, about like just having grace that's come up multiple times. You know, having grace for ourselves, for others, um, embracing our humanity, like just recognizing like life is tough and and we all have different forms of baggage, like some people have heavier baggage than others.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  Right? People have have dealt with hard things. Uh, but the reality is everyone has some form of baggage. Everyone has to work through different things. Um, and so that just what what does that mean? I mean, that means I have to hold grace for myself. That means I have to hold grace for others, like the people don't always respond the way that they should, clearly. Um, and you know, I I can definitely be very harsh and judgmental around how people respond to a certain situation, a certain context, or I can take a step back and reframe it in my head, the way we started the conversation today, that, you know, most people aren't sociopaths. Most people don't wake up in the morning thinking, you know, like, you know, ha, ha, ha, I'm gonna like hurt people today. Like, most people don't do that. Like, most people

• 11:55Speaker 00

  want to just live their best lives and they want to do the best they can. And different people have different triggers, different people have, you know, like, there's just things that people may or may not, you know, be have done a good job of working through, or, you know, or they may be in the process of working through. Um, and life is just hard, you know, like, life is just hard. And so, you know, being forgiving of ourselves, being forgiving of others. I think that's part of the path, part of the journey of being inclusive. Um, for for others, you know, like if we truly want to open our arms and and embrace everyone and like include everyone and help people to feel needed, wanted, valued. I think that inherently just means we have to hold grace and be forgiving, right?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I I think that narrative has emerged because of the way we've been talking about leadership historically. So I would say, you know, in the seventies, eighties, nineties, leadership was really talked about in terms of competencies, right? You needed to be performative. You needed to be or you needed to perform at a certain level. You needed to have certain outcomes. You needed to have a bottom line and and you needed to be transformative or transformational. Um, and when people didn't get that right, they were implicitly and explicitly punished for it. Yeah. And started to believe that they couldn't be leaders. And my personal belief is that everybody is a leader, whether you like it or not, you are

• 13:20Speaker 01

  just the way you're walking around in the world, just the way you're holding your body and presenting yourself to others influences others. So you have power to influence and to create change. If you choose to accept that you have that power, sounds very, you know, Star Wars-y, but it's true. It's uh, we do have that power. Um, but we make a mistake, we get punished for it implicitly or explicitly by ourselves or by others, and then we stop trying. But grace and self-compassion allows us to keep trying it, allows us to make mistakes, it allows us to say, hey, I'm human, mistakes are how I learn, right? I learned to walk by making all kinds of mistakes. I fell on my butt a hundred times before I could actually

• 14:04Speaker 01

  walk on two legs. And it's the same thing as we're adults. If we're not giving ourselves that compassion, we stop trying. And the the thing about the words diversity, equity and inclusion is today, twenty six, twenty twenty six, they're kind of scary words. And fear keeps us small, fear keeps us from trying. Fear keeps us from self-compassion and grace. And the way to move through the fear is to say to ourselves, I'm probably gonna get it wrong, I'm probably gonna make a mistake, and I'm human. And if I do this, especially if I make a mistake, I'm implicitly giving others permission to come along with me. And to me, that's what leadership is. Leadership is about courage, it is about grace.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  It is not about perfection, because we are developing. If we're not growing, we're dying. That's, you know, uh, something I've learned years ago. Um, and so we have to, we have to accept that we are. Perfect. That's the only way we're gonna create change and influence others.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, and and we need to model that, like model appropriate vulnerability um around our imperfection, right? Like, nobody is fooled by the facade of perfection. Um, and and maybe in previous, I I'm doubtful. I I guess I I didn't live and work in these previous generations, but I'm doubtful that anyone was really fooled by the facade of perfection. But maybe they were, I don't know. But um, but certainly today, people aren't fooled by it. Like, people know that their bosses aren't perfect. They know they don't make perfect decisions. They know that their lives aren't perfect. They they they aren't fooled by any of it, right? And so you don't need to to put on that facade. And in fact, all it does is a road trust because no, everyone knows it's fake.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  So really, what is going to help you engender trust and build relationships is to have an appropriate level of vulnerability and to just model for your team. That grace, that forgiveness, the self-compassion and the compassion for your team. Um, that, yeah, mistakes do happen. Um, I'm gonna put my foot in my mouth, you know, despite whatever good intentions I have. I'm probably gonna say something stupid. I'm gonna put my foot in my mouth and I can acknowledge it and I can just say, oh, I'm sorry. I really didn't mean it that way. This is what I intended. Uh, let's talk through it, you know, I'm sorry. Let's, you know, how how did that impact you? You know, let's have a dialogue, right?

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Like, and model for them, like, how to how to go through that when those types of things happen. And that, like you said, that then that then creates a a space where other people feel safe and free to do the same. If if all you ever do is put up this facade of perfection and anytime the slightest little mistake happens, um, either there there's some like immediate consequence for it, or, you know, uh, yeah, implicit or explicit kind of negative consequence hap- con- competence uh consequence happens for that. All all that happens from that is like you you have the shutdown of the psychological safety and people.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  No longer are going to engage in that space. People are gonna self-monitor, they're gonna um, they're they're going to ultimately shut down. They're going to only only share when they think it's completely safe. Which ultimately in a space like this means there's not gonna be a whole lot of sharing, right?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, when we lose the capacity, we we, you know, we we block our capacity to develop shared and collective potential and wisdom. Like, that's what we're doing in organizations, whereas we're trying to build potential, we're trying to build collective wisdom here. And when people shut down, we lose the capacity to do that.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, like, I feel like I'm a fairly educated guy. I am an ally. I am an advocate. I am, you know, someone who engages in these conversations all the time. Um, and I, but I'm sure that I still will say and do things that probably are, you know, putting my foot in my mouth. Or, you know, will rub people the wrong way sometimes. And my kids are not shy about telling me, you know?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, kids are amazing.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Like, my kids, my Gen Z kids, and and some of it's just generational, right? So it's like some of it, like, I think with my peers, my generation, the things I like, like what I just said, fine. They're gonna have no problem with it. But in my Gen Z kids' generation, like, I just said something that for them is, you know, they they take issue with. And I'm like, well, okay, this is a learning moment for me, right? Like, I could either just shut down and say, oh, I guess I'm never gonna talk about this with my kids ever again. Um, you know, that would be the dumbest thing I could do, like, or I could like actually engage in a healthy conversation with them and say, oh, tell me more, like, help me understand. Like, that certainly wasn't what I meant. That wasn't what I intended.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Help me understand. And I I can't tell you how many times I've had those types of conversations with my kids. And, you know, sometimes they roll their eyes at their dad, blah, blah, blah, right? Like every teenage kid does. But ultimately, I think we have a relationship where they know that they can have those conversations with me. And I want them to know that. I want them to have those conversations with me. I want to learn from their perspective, right? And, man, I I sure hope that that's. That's the kind of learning that we all want. I I I want like any leader who's, you know, leading in a multi-generational workplace, you know, whether they're they're they're leading boomers all the way down to Gen Z. Like, I want them to recognize that, yeah, how you're engaging with different generations might look different, like how you're communicating with them might

• 19:44Speaker 00

  come across differently, like, and that's tricky. That really is tricky, you know? It's okay. It's okay to acknowledge it's tricky and it's okay to acknowledge um that, you know, sometimes you're not going to get it right from their perspective and like have the conversation.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  That's right. I I believe that life happens in our conversations. Um, because there are the relational contexts that give us all the emotional range that we get to experience life through and um, and I think the humanity happens in the repair. Uh, the repair is, let's talk through this. How can I change my behavior? What kind of person do I mean to be? And I'm am I coming closer closer and closer to that every single day? I think that's the work of being human. Um, and we do it together. We cannot do it alone. We have to do it together.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. So so what would be some of your suggestions, tips for leaders? You know, as they're trying to increase that that bubble of psychological safety, like increase and enhance that that environment within their teams, because that's tricky, like especially if there's been instances that have eroded that trust.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. I just came, I just had a facilitation yesterday where the team was, we spent a whole day talking about and rebuilding trust on the team. So it's a it's a combination of mindset and mechanics. But if you're thinking about mindset, I think you've really got to practice deep curiosity, not for your own entertainment, but for on behalf of others. Be curious on their behalf, because when you're enmeshed and integrated in your own story, you don't always have access to the type of questions that somebody else who's observing you does. So be curious on behalf of others, so that collectively you all learn around that table.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  And if you're curious, it means you're gonna have to practice listening. You're gonna have to listen in a way that you're not rehearsing what you're gonna say next. But you're listening on behalf of that other person so that they feel seen, understood. Because exclusion is is the experience of being misunderstood and all of us navigate our lives feeling misunderstood. And that feels gross and we don't wanna misunderstand other people. So you really have to listen in a way on behalf of the other person. So if you're curious and you're listening, the next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna ask powerful questions. You're gonna ask open-ended questions that get people to explore their experience and not just solve the problems in front of them.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  And that creates deeper dialogue, wiser dialogue. It creates, you know, this phenomenon where one plus one equals four. Because we're in it together, we're getting so much out of this conversation. Because we're both interested, we're curious, we're listening, we're asking really expansive questions that go beyond solving a problem or just coming to a conclusion. We're actually learning together. So I think, start there. We have a, you know, a roundtable, we have a whole toolkit and a playbook of lots of different tools. But these are the fundamentals, curiosity, listening, and asking questions.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  And and maybe the last question I'll ask is, like, how do you do this? When you're, you know, we're, I suppose you might work in a workplace where everyone has the same political leanings as you, everyone has the same kind of socioeconomic, political background as you. Like, diversity isn't just racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, sexual identity, like, like all of that, right? So the the political aspect, the political polarization is so, so hard. So like, how how do you, how do you deal with this? How do you handle this?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  That's some of my favorite work to do because I I believe, and speaking of mindset, I believe that resistance is a gift. And when there is resistance, you'll ride on the edge of deeper wisdom and deeper potential. So if you're able and willing to acknowledge. What resistance looks like, particularly when there's polarity and we we happen to see it in political, you know, leanings or biases. Yeah, yeah. Assumptions. Um, I believe that with curiosity, with putting our guards down, with being able to sit on the same side of the table instead of the opposite side of the table, and understand and get into someone else's perspective and shoes with that willingness to listen and learn. And then both of us come back to the other side of the table.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  I think we're gonna find shared potential again. I'm not saying we need to agree with each other. That's not what shared potential is. Shared potential means, oh, we can learn together, even if we stay grounded in our views. And together, we might come up with something that neither of us could have come up with on our own. That that is not a middle ground. I'm not into compromise necessarily. I'm into deeper wisdom. And I think if we come together and recognize we're resisting each other and see that as a gift, the same way I see conflict as a gift. It's an opening to more understanding. And so I invite my clients and the people I work with constantly, like,

• 24:55Speaker 01

  yeah, avoiding conflict is easier because it conflict is scary. And if we're not, if we're avoiding it, if we're not getting into it, we keep ourselves safe, right? Or at least we have the illusion of safety. But if we're willing to get into it and dance together in there, and maybe, maybe throw some punches, we stand to get stronger together on the other side of it because we've just created something new. So with some skill, you know, we teach people how to do that with skill and safety and a lot of courage. Like I said before, I think leadership is the work of courage. Um, we actually can discover things that we would have never discovered on our own.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Or that we would have never discovered if we just stayed in proximity to people who are similar to us in belief and identity.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  I love it. I love it. Well said. Priya, this has just been a great conversation. I know at the time I need to let you go, but before we wrap things up, I just wanted to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, where they can find your book, and then give us the final word for today.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. So my website is theroundtableinstitute.com. You can also find me at priyanalkor.com. And what I'd like to share with people is that, you know, we've taken all our work from inclusive leadership and we talked to our clients about what they want and what they need. And of course, because my clients asked for it, I wrote this book, Stumbling Towards Inclusion. But it's 2026, it's our 10th year anniversary. What we're doing now is we're taking leaders out into the wild. We're taking them away from their screens, away from their laptops, away from their boardrooms, because they've asked for it. They want an analog experience of leadership and they want to be courageous and brave and they want to overcome their fears. So this fall, we have

• 26:43Speaker 01

  a program called Courage Quest, where we're taking people out on a quest that requires a lot of their courage to go out in the wild and practice leadership, raw, with each other. And that's what I'd like to share with folks.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  That sounds awesome. Thank you so much. It's just been a real pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what Priya and her team can do for you. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe. They can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day, and I hope you all have a great week.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe, and please join us again soon.