The Happy at Work Podcast
The Happy at Work podcast explores the intersection of organizational culture, positive psychology, and employee branding to create thriving workplaces. Our expert hosts—Dr. Laura Hamill, Michael McCarthy, and Dr. Tessa Misiaszek—bring diverse perspectives and deep expertise to uncover practical strategies for fostering happiness and success at work.
We engage with various guests, including organizational leaders, HR professionals, psychologists, researchers, and employees across various industries. Through thought-provoking conversations, we delve into:
- How organizational culture shapes employee experiences and drives engagement
- Evidence-based positive psychology strategies that boost both human flourishing and business metrics
- Innovative approaches to align brand identity with employee experience and operationalize company values
Our mission is to give listeners actionable insights and tools to transform their workplaces. Whether you're a CEO, an HR professional, a manager, or an employee seeking to make a positive impact, the Happy at Work podcast offers valuable perspectives to help you create a more fulfilling, productive, and positive work environment.
Join us as we explore the cutting edge of workplace well-being and performance, uncovering the strategies that lead to truly happy, engaged, and successful organizations.
The Happy at Work Podcast
Eddie Pate: Creating Inclusive Workplaces One Small Action at a Time
Eddie Pate shares insights from his career leading diversity initiatives at major companies and his new book on inclusive leadership practices that create belonging. He explains how small daily actions create lasting ripple effects that transform workplace culture through accessible, practical strategies.
• Eddie's journey from sociology doctorate to diversity leadership at Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon
• Balancing corporate leadership with prioritizing family responsibilities
• The 2IL model for inclusive leadership rooted in social psychology
• How "spending your privilege" creates visibility and opportunity for underrepresented voices
• Making inclusion accessible through daily practices rather than overwhelming initiatives
• Empathy as the foundation for creating truly inclusive workplaces
• Navigating the current DEI backlash while staying committed to the work
• The business case for inclusion: better talent attraction, retention, and innovation
To stay connected and continue the conversation, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.
And don't forget to check out our previous episodes for more tips and strategies to boost your workplace happiness. You can find them on your favorite podcast platform or on our website.
If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you!
Stay inspired, stay motivated, and stay happy at work!
Welcome back for another episode of the Happy at Work podcast with Laura Tessa and Michael.
Speaker 2:Each week we have thoughtful conversations with leaders, founders and authors about happiness at work.
Speaker 3:Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation. Enjoy the show.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Happy at Work podcast Today. I'm so excited to have Eddie Pate joining us today. He is a consultant, he is a author, he's a speaker. He's a lot of wonderful, wonderful things. He's also my friend and I'm just so glad you're here, eddie. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4:Laura, oh my goodness, thank you for having me, and you should have said I'm your friend first. That's the most important part of this whole thing.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 4:I'd do anything for you, sister, you know that for sure.
Speaker 1:Right back at you, eddie. We go way back, right. I mean, I don't even know when, but we worked together at Microsoft for a long time yeah, decades. This is the sad thing, it's not years, you start to count in decades. So there's been so many cool things that you've been up to. So why don't you tell for our listeners, tell us a little bit about your career journey and what you're up to now?
Speaker 4:Sure Happy to do so. So it's interesting. I think my career journey actually goes back to the point when I had a six-month-old little girl. I was married, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do after a very quick and unfortunate end to a football career, I ended up going to grad school and starting the doctoral program at University of Washington where I studied sociology compared to race and ethnic relations and social psych. It was a major inflection point for us to go. I had a second kid in 98.
Speaker 4:And then my career journey took another point where I had to decide what I wanted to do. Do I go into academia after I finished my doctorate in 2000? Or do I go corporate? And because of who I met and who you engage with and, as I like to say, who's in your kitchen and you have their voices influencing what you do and who you are, I ended up going the corporate route, which, to this very day, I'm actually quite happy I did. And I started at Microsoft, where I was and I think you know this, laura I was the very first person hired outside of HR to be a diversity manager, as we were called back then, and so I worked for Charles Stevens, who ran the Enterprise and Partner Group, a global sales organization, and when you think about how you can help influence people in terms of inclusion, diversity and equity for a global sales organization was mind-blowing, was super cool way to start your career.
Speaker 4:And then I made several moves, going to Starbucks right after Microsoft and progressively higher and higher roles, and I had even a little consulting stint between Starbucks and my next gig. And then from Starbucks, I ended up going to Avanade as vice president of inclusion, diversity and equity. And then I culminated my corporate career at Amazon, where I led diversity efforts for worldwide operations and, as I like to tell people and joke, it was this 18-person team I put together for this little organization that any given time of the year, could be a million people, literally a million people. So it was talk about we should have a discussion of how you scale business success across a million-person organization, that global. So then I retired from Amazon back in 2020, in March, actually, right before COVID went crazy. How, how convenient and nice was that? Yeah? So I I left corporate and then and July of 2020, I you know, you know got my consulting business going again. I hung a shingle, I started speaking and writing and consulting and then in 2024, as you were saying, I published a book on daily practices of inclusive leaders, and that's kind of my trajectory and there's been always a parallel path along those lines.
Speaker 4:I love being a dad, I love being a husband, and so I have had athletic kids. I was an athlete, so my other path was how involved could I be in their lives as much as they wanted me to? Until they didn't and they're just like Dad. You know what? I think it's time for you to stop coaching. Thank you very much. But you can be on the sideline if you're quiet, and so you know, then I kind of took that role and so, and to this day, I, you know, my favorite role is in an environment, if you will, is family.
Speaker 3:I love that and the fact that you're you're prioritizing the family over period work. And I had a friend at Harvard who said I asked him if he ever wanted to go to the Supreme court and he said something along the lines I gave it like a dilemma. It was you can argue a case before the Supreme Court or go to your kid's show, like a ballet show or something he said oh, I'm going to go to the show.
Speaker 3:I said why he goes, because my kids are only going to grow up once, and the Supreme Court will always be there. I love your priorities. Yeah, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4:It's absolutely right. I mean, I, honestly, in my corporate career I spent 18 years primarily executive level, and not counting a couple, consulting things and consulting part. I think I missed one baseball tournament my son had from little league through high school and I missed maybe one soccer game or tournament my daughter did. She played all the way through college. In fact, at one point I diverted a trip back for a business trip where I flew into Chicago instead of coming home and I drove the van for the soccer team and set up a dinner at my boss's house who made pasta as a team dinner the night before a tournament game. Because that's what you do, that's what I thought was the right thing to do, and I would never change anything in the way I approached making family a priority because it's all good, right?
Speaker 3:I love that. I wish you were my dad, but I think I might be older than you.
Speaker 4:I don't think so. I don't think you're older than I am, and you should talk to my kids first before you do that. I love that.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 4:We'll compare birth certificates later, but I think I might have you Great great Well, we heard that you've written a new book.
Speaker 3:We'd love to hear about it?
Speaker 4:What's it about? So my book's on the daily practices of inclusive leaders, a guide to building a culture of belonging, and so what I really wanted to do and I'm a co-author with someone who worked for me at Amazon and that I actually knew at Microsoft, jonathan Stutz, is the co-author. So I just want to be clear I'll refer to it as my book, but there's a co-author thing happening there too. It's just easier that way. You know, my book is really about how to teach leaders to lead inclusively and to have impact every single day, but do so in a way that it's not overwhelming.
Speaker 4:And see, and that's to me that's the secret, because over the years it's been burned into my brain that over the years people have come to me and said a couple of things hey, what are the three big things I can do? That will just be perfect. And then in my mind I'm going you're crazy, there's no big three things you can do. It's gonna take more than that, right? And the other thing is, people have said to me look, I am so busy, my plate is so full, but what you're doing is important, but how can I make all of it work? And so I think I've been slowly but surely hatching this notion of daily practices, or pebbles that you drop that cause ripples, that cause other people to drop, pebbles which cause ripples, which cause other people to drop, pebbles that cause ripples. And it's the aggregation of those pebbles and ripples that lead to systemic change. That's sustainable, right, because you're changing. You're literally not banking 90 in a plane. You're changing a degree at a time and it could be a fast change that you go in a different direction. That's sustainable. So this is what I.
Speaker 4:This is kind of the message that I've been hearing from leaders, and so my book is has some structural pieces to it. I introduced a 2IL model, an inclusive leadership model that I talked about. That's rooted in my social psychology doctoral work. But what I spend the entire book doing is looking at the life cycle of an employee, from the moment you are even introduced to your company. You know in your company where you're moving around in the company, you know your representation, your promotion, your talent management pieces, and even to the time when you're exiting employees and have a lead. I look at every aspect of the life cycle of the employee and we give daily practices that can help you improve as a leader and lead inclusively, and that's kind of a high level nuts and bolts in the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's such a good book, so I really like it and I like the circle model that you have in the book is so straightforward and it allows you to kind of go as deep. Or, as you know, if you don't have as much time, you don't have to go as deep, but it makes it accessible, and I think that this is something the accessibility to big ideas and hard things is like really what people are asking for.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I'm curious about what are some of the things that you're hearing from people who are reading your book and some of the ways maybe they're using what they've learned.
Speaker 4:Well, what's really, what's very cool? So, even when you look at my book, it's got tabs, it's got dog ears and so, to your point, what I'm hearing from people is what I love is I don't have to start on page one and work all the way through to 299 to really understand what, to get what pebbles I can drop for talent management and let's see what they can do. You can literally go there, dog, ear it and do it. That's why we literally called it a guide right, because it's like a field guide, right? If you have a bird field guide or that kind of thing and you want to learn about the rufous-sided tohi and you don't have to read about everything, you just go to the section on the rufous-sided tohi and that's what you do, right, and so that's what we. So I'm hearing from people that they love that.
Speaker 4:The other things that I a couple other things that I'm hearing from people which I love because that was the mission is it is taking a complex topic with a lot of nuance, but making it simple, and so, at every turn, with Jonathan and with our editor and with Danielle Goodman who was our writing coach, it for me it was okay. I hear you, but where's the nuance that has to come out? Because we can't make it so simple that you don't really understand what you're talking about, but not so complex that you need a doctor to understand right. And so that was the nut that I needed to make sure that we were cracking every single time. And so I'm constantly saying, no, okay, we got to be a little bit more nuanced, but not so complicated. How we can do this and I'm getting that from people saying this is really I really like this because it's simple, it's digestible, it's doable every single day, yet it's going to have an impact. So I'm hearing those kinds of things from people, which I love.
Speaker 4:Actually, what's interesting? People love the 2IL model that you're talking about because it's doing exactly what I intended it to do, and this is something that has evolved over my corporate career and it's the core of my inclusive leadership training that I do and what it's really set to do is to give you a notion of how you show up in interaction, and that's super important to know, because how you show up one-to-one, one-to-few, one-to-many, matters a lot, and you're influencing that situation, and every time you meet with someone, it's an interaction. It's not just stagnant, right it's. You're influencing them, you're being influenced by them. They're influencing you. No-transcript. Understand how they show up before they can help others, and I make that really clear. Love that and I have two questions.
Speaker 3:The first one is really easy, because I think we forgot to mention this. Can you tell our listeners?
Speaker 4:the name of your book so they could read it.
Speaker 3:Of course I will. It's Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders, A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging. And actually the first product they worked with was Knights in Shining Armor over 100 years ago in Germany, and they've just stayed, they've grown, they're doing other things, but yeah, they help people make.
Speaker 4:Knights in Shining Armor. And what could I have said Cool, right.
Speaker 3:I guess someone had to do that and I'm wondering what could I have said to the new managers that had all these new?
Speaker 4:hires. What could they have done to make all these new people who are excited and nervous, where we could have taken some strategies from your book to make them feel like they belong, because that first day is really important. The first day is super important, right? And I think the best thing that they could do and we talk about in our book is you want to make sure that they're not just people who have a seat at the table right, and we talk about this a lot, but actually it's important that they're sitting at the table, but what's more important is that they have a voice and that they are heard, and so that's how you begin down the journey from first introduction and organization to belonging is really make sure that those employees so I would have said right away is like we brought you here not to sit around and watch us do this work, because somehow we've been in this industry for all these years and you haven't. We want to hear from you. We want to create a speak up culture where you feel comfortable, regardless of who's in the room, to give an idea, to push back on something you don't agree with. Or, more importantly, when you think about five generations in the workplace. Tell me what I'm doing. That's really different than the current customer base. I'm a boomer, so I've been doing this like this forever. I'm a millennial and I've been doing this, so talk to me a little bit about what you're doing. So, in other words, you really want to make sure that people are not just seen, but they're heard and they actually have a voice right and that people act too, and I think that's super important.
Speaker 4:The other piece that is part of what I think I would have told those leaders is they need to understand that inclusion, the pathway to inclusion, is empathy, and so that those leaders in the room need to understand that these are people, not workers, and they need to make sure that they understand that right Is that they have lives and they want to bring their whole selves to work, and sometimes it's messy, sometimes it's not good, sometimes it's great, but you have to be empathetic before you can create inclusion, and inclusion are activities and things you do to make the workplace environment work. It's not a feeling. A feeling is belonging. How do they feel as a result of the empathetic leadership that creates inclusion and inclusive moments for people? So that's what I would have told them is just make it really clear that this is what we want and that we should think about that.
Speaker 4:You have a voice here, and then how you create voice is any number of ways. Be willing to spend your privilege, for example this is one of the things we talk about in our book and I love this notion as quickly as you can when someone is ready. If in the workplace, for example, michael, let's say, you are the boss, you're the one who's always the one speaking at the meetings and you're talking to the senior leadership team and you're talking to the creative team, and then you have a couple of the new people with you, why don't you spend your privilege and say, hey, you know what I normally do this part of it. Actually, you know Ana's going to do it. She's new to the team, but I want you to hear her. Her voice is powerful, it's really cool what she brings, and so on.
Speaker 4:That very moment, what you've done is drop a pebble that causes a ripple in that room, because now she has visibility, she has an opportunity to impress.
Speaker 4:You haven't set her up because you prepared her for this and you've done this, and what you've shown other leaders in the room is like wow, that's really very cool. So maybe the next meeting they go to or the next big opportunity, they create visibility for someone else and before long that becomes just the norm of an organization. So these are the kinds of things we talk about. Super simple, it's like create space for someone else, visibility, drop that pebble and boom, and then guess what? Ana feels like Wow, they're just not blowing smoke. They really do want me to feel like I have a voice and I belong and I really like this place. You know what I'm going to do. I know someone who's super fabulous. I'm going to tell them that they should come work here too. So there's return on investment to doing this, because now you get access to greater talent. You see what I'm saying. She'll stay longer, you have higher retention rates, so there's some ROI to this too. But those are some of the things.
Speaker 1:If that's what you were asking, that my book talks about Thank you so much. Those are awesome. I love that term spend your privilege.
Speaker 1:That's such a good one right, yes, so I think we'd be remiss without recognizing all the stuff that's happening in the world regarding DEI and just how hard it is and how hard, I'm sure, the space that you're working in is, and so maybe I mean we could go on and on about that, I'm sure, and so I'm curious about any thoughts you have on that. But I also I want to get your, I guess, more specific thoughts around this idea. I'm seeing a lot of people kind of switch the language away from DEI and say let's just call it fairness, and I'm really curious about how you think about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know what? I literally was on a podcast yesterday for the Institute of Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, where it was asked the expert and that was the whole focus of this, and there were four of us on the panel like where do you sit with all this? So I'll answer high level your first part of the question. Honestly, it is terrifying, it is horrible. I don't think we've seen the worst of it and I'm not, by nature, very pessimistic or negative. I'm very positive, I know, but I do think there's a lot of turmoil and we haven't seen the worst part for DEI. It's just going to get worse before it starts getting better.
Speaker 4:The wonderful thing is we are seeing resistance, we are seeing people protest, we are seeing some court decisions that are good, that are blocking some of the craziness that's associated with DEI and some of what's happening over there. So think about it a lot, talk about it a lot, and we can get into some more of the details if you want to there as well. But one of the things that you're alluding to is people are finding ways of getting out of the crosshairs. Right, some companies are saying I'm in the middle of the crosshairs, I don't care, I'm going to poke my fingers in their eyeballs to bring it on right. So there are companies doing that. There are companies that probably didn't want to even be in this space and they were doing it to you know, because they felt like they had to because because Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and and you know, breonna Taylor were murdered and a bunch of people upset.
Speaker 4:So I guess I better jump on the bandwagon, right? They're the ones hopping off the bandwagon and they don't care, and that's fine. You know there's going to be those. Now there's this group of people who want to double down, want to keep doing this work, but they want to find a way of how do you take that crosshairs away from my company and still do this work, but fly under the radar? And I actually don't. I look my bent way. I like I'd rather step up toe to toe, be really intentional and say bring it on that. Right, if you don't want to be here, because I'm creating access for everyone, not just people, not just underestimated groups, but everyone white people too right, if you don't want to do that, see ya. But there are a lot of people who are saying look, I love this, but I'm not going to call it DEI, I'm not going to even call it inclusion. In fact, I think even fairness has become surfaced amongst the group that are attacking this to say this is what they mean. So people are, people are, you know, you know doing, you know they're finding different ways of labeling it around humanness or people, people connectedness or you know those kinds of things. I honestly great, because you know what's most important is we keep doing the work and that we keep creating access for people who don't have access. That we create pushing a real narrative, that DEI, or as I call it, id&e, is about creating space for creativity and innovations. Everyone benefits your bottom line benefits, every employee benefits, and I mean every employee. Right, the pie is not zero sum. In my book I talk about. The pie is something that can continue to grow and the more you do ID&E or DEI, or human connectedness, whatever you call it, the pie is just going to get bigger.
Speaker 4:And here's the point that I'll make to people who are listening, who are making decisions Nothing's changed from two years ago, when you jumped on the bandwagon because you know it's the right thing to do and it's the business smart thing to do. Nothing's changed. Only thing that's changed is people have co-opted the term, have used a wedge mentality to divide people and have co-opted a term in a way that doesn't make sense. Ei has never been about black people and women, as I'll flippantly say. Not about black people and women. It's about everyone. However, in our culture, being white and being male does give you advantage. So we should make sure we close that gap and where it's creating an unearned derailment or wall or something against underestimated groups, we should fix that. But guess what? We don't fix that. To get at the white men in this situation. We encourage them to be part of the solution, part of the decision, because diversity is for everyone. See what I'm saying, and so that's what's really important.
Speaker 4:And you could take the same argument in India. It's not going to be about race, it's going to be about color, it's going to be about caste, it's going to be about gender, it's going to be about religion. You go to Japan it's not going to be about race, it's going to be about cultural difference and it's going to be about gender, it's going to be about age. And so you have this. You have around the globe, different dimensions of diversity that we have to convince people and show. Show them that if you create inclusive, accessible strategies I don't know products, everything everyone benefits. This has never, ever, ever been about creating advantage for some groups at the expense and the disadvantage of others. Never been about that. They just say it is because that's how you get people to get fired up and angry so you can move them as pawns in your political leanings or whatever you want to do. We need to take back the power of that, rebrand what ID&E really is and humanize the stories. And I'm all fired up. I'm on a soapbox.
Speaker 1:You can't see it, you are. I love it so much, so good.
Speaker 4:But that's what we need to do.
Speaker 1:Sorry, Completely.
Speaker 4:Eddie, I'll stop. I'll take a drink.
Speaker 2:No no, it's so good.
Speaker 4:My chihuahua that's sitting in the room is just like hey, you're going right now.
Speaker 1:Daddy's awake. Daddy's firing up Daddy's awake. So, eddie, I mean I cannot. Even time is already up and this has been so amazing. I feel like we can keep going for another hour or so. Can you just share with our listeners how they can learn more about you or more about your book as we wrap?
Speaker 4:up? Sure, thank you, I appreciate it. So I'm an open book, right? Linkedin's a good place that you can just find me on LinkedIn. But my website for my book is wwwinclusivepebblescom, appropriately right. Or you can go to eddiepate-speakingcom, and that's my website for my business. Look up on LinkedIn, just connect with me. I'll give you my email, my cell phone I don't care, because we got to just connect and keep this work going, but I think that's how you can get ahold of me. And Inclusive Pebbles is my book website. The eddypaid-speaking is my business website. They're linked together. Please reach out if I can help with anything, if you need someone to come in and speak or do this, or just. You know you need to run some ideas by. You know I'm we. This work is too important not to make ourselves successful.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for joining us and talking with us, and I just love your work.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having me. Michael, Laura, Thank you you. You two are awesome, I love this so fun.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us. A great day. Bye, everybody.
Speaker 3:We hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to hear future episodes, be sure to subscribe to the Happy at Work podcast and leave us a review with your thoughts.
Speaker 2:Are you interested in speaking on a future episode or want to collaborate with us? Let us know. You can send us an email at admin at happyatworkpodcastcom.
Speaker 1:And, lastly, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter for even more happiness. See you soon.
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