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Leaha Crawford and Rhonda Nolen are business consultants that discuss the current struggles of small business owners and entrepreneurs. Each episode covers steps necessary for smaller businesses and business owners to grow and prosper.
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This is a que un the studio's original program. The following is a paid program sponsored by Crawford management group and smart time consultants. Please be advised that the voices and opinions you hear do not represent the views of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of Nevada System of Higher Education.
Unknown Speaker 0:27
Hi, my name is Leah Crawford.
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And I'm Rhonda Nolan.
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And you're listening to the let's talk with Leah and Rhonda show for all the beautiful entrepreneurs
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out there. This is for you. Good morning, Las Vegas. Leah. How are you doing on this beautiful Saturday morning? Hey,
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you want to know what I am amazing. My peloton and I are back together again. Oh my God, we are so excited. It's like a new relationship. All right, we're getting to know each other. All right. Explore the stretching and the bike. I've done some yoga. So we are really we are becoming reacquainted.
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I'm so happy to hear that. I
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am so excited. I love it. I love it. And I'm trying to find a yoga studio. Okay, trying to find somebody that does the 26 postures at a time when I can go do the 26 postures. Because me and downward dog. We
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just don't get that friend.
Unknown Speaker 1:24
We're working on a relationship. Okay, I'm working on it. Okay, I'm working on it. I said about five minutes a day so I can get the cause if for some reason I'm not doing a posture. Prop so any yoga, any Yogi's out there any help? Because I don't know if my fingers turn the wrong way the elbows supposed to turn in and it holds lifted, lifted. Boop, your bottom up and yes, a whole lot of court. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm not today, and
Unknown Speaker 1:52
I'm so happy to hear that your love for movement is
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bad is bad. I even put a goal up there on my on my mirror in my bathroom and said some put some positive stuff around it. So yeah, I got a date. Oh, everything. Yes, we are back. We
Unknown Speaker 2:06
are back. Fantastic. Exciting.
Unknown Speaker 2:09
All right. So this morning, I want to do something different. I know last week we had Rodney on and I heard you and Rodney had an amazing conversation. Oh, we did. It was great. It was great. You know, shout out to Rodney. Hello. How were you? Oh, y'all, you guys broke? What do you guys have an event tonight? Oh,
Unknown Speaker 2:26
we do. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated. And Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity is having the fire and ice ball tonight. 7pm at meet Las Vegas. This is our annual scholarship fundraiser for both of our youth organizations. So if you'd like more information, you can reach out to either one of our websites.
Unknown Speaker 2:47
Nice. I love it. I love it. Well, that's a that's a nice event by I love fire and ice, fire and ice. Well, today we're talking about something different though. We're gonna talk about cultural competency, correct cultural competency. So I had the pleasure of meeting Tracy, at a class that we took with downtown Las Vegas Alliance. I want to say it was a six month class that we had to go to every month for entrepreneurs. Just to help us with our businesses we connected. This is your second visit to the show. So thank you for accepting our invitation again. But delve right in and Tracy, tell us about ideate collaborative. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 3:30
good morning everyone is a collaborative is a consulting firm that helps organizations transform teams to build up the skills and capacity to work in a global work environment. So looking at everything from the culture of the organization, to the values, to the skills, trainings needed to bridge the gaps that are preventing high productivity, innovation, creativity, those challenges those interpersonal challenges, those skills that people are sometimes missing, that prevent us from being able to work effectively across generational difference generation difference, all of the different human differences that really do make a difference that we oftentimes take for granted and don't think of because they're rooted in our cultural experience.
Unknown Speaker 4:12
I love it. First of all, Tracy, who are you? Who are you? Who is Tracy? Tracy DeRay. Who are you?
Unknown Speaker 4:20
I am Tracy Duran? No, just kidding. Tracy, I am Tracy. I grew up in Las Vegas. I left after finishing my graduate degree. Ironically, I have a Masters of Fine Arts and painting and drawing. I did my undergraduate at UNLV. went, went on to California got my master's degree and how I started out in my field was my first job outside of graduate school was at a contemporary art museum as an artist and resident where my job was to develop and build community access programs to provide art education and access to the museum for communities that wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to So engage with the museum. Yes, yeah. And so that's how I started. And what I discovered is that I could build really amazing programs. But if there wasn't space for them, if they weren't welcomed when they came into the museum, I couldn't effectively bridge that gap. And so over time, I started doing internal staff development, training and development, looking at the culture of the organization to create the culture that welcomed our community outreach participants.
Unknown Speaker 5:30
I like the way you said that. So what you found was different cultures and communities were not welcomed in the art space. Absolutely. We're having a problem in the art space being welcomed. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 5:43
we were, we were a free museum. And people would say, Well, everyone has access for free. And I can't tell you, I spent years saying Free doesn't make us accessible.
Unknown Speaker 5:53
Say that, again, free does not make you accessible. Absolutely. Okay. Because the arts. I have a child that was an arts. And I guess you're right, because there are some cultural biases, that we you know, we tried to tiptoe around it, but they're, but they're out there. They're Yeah, they're, yeah. And so you started a company to address that? I did. Yeah. Okay. So let me ask you this. What behaviors do you see? When I mean, the behavior that you see the most often?
Unknown Speaker 6:25
Yeah, the behavior that I see the most often is, I would say, I'm gonna give you two even though you asked for worries. The first one is a lack of self awareness. When we don't have high self awareness, it's really hard to work across differences. And so understanding our own complexity helps us build up the ability to be able to understand and relate to the complexity of others. And then the second thing that I find lacking is conflict avoidance. Most organizations are conflict avoidant, they, they steer away from it, they don't want to address it, they don't want to deal with it. And one of the key competencies to be able to help an organization move forward is to teach them how to engage in productive conflict. How do you have those difficult conversations that allow you to implement the behaviors and training and have those difficult conversations to move employees forward to move your mission forward? Okay,
Unknown Speaker 7:24
because there's normal black woman, and the stereotypical of what black women is the angry, black woman. And I've had to deal with that a lot. Not being angry, because that's absolutely amazing. That's my favorite. Absolutely amazing. But having to deal with that, initially, and I watch other black women, I've heard other black women say the same thing, that that's the first they deal with it angry, black women stereotype a lot.
Unknown Speaker 7:56
Yeah, one of the assessments and tools and trainings I use is called intercultural conflict style. And what that looks at is it looks at whether a person engages in conflict through direct or indirect communication, right, and expressive or emotionally restrained communication. And so it helps the team understand that a person who may be direct and, and emotionally expressive, isn't angry. That's, that's their primary cultural way of engaging in conflict. And a person that, you know, is more indirect and potentially emotionally restrained, is going to feel very anxious or nervous around that. So it helps you train people to elevate accordingly, or D D elevate. So, essentially, how do you meet each other in the middle? So if you're, if you're working with somebody who's emotionally expressive, and your natural tendency is to show no emotion, what do you need to do? What skills do you need to do? How do you check in with yourself to elevate your own emotion a bit, so they know you care? Because and vice versa, if you shut down and become more emotionally restrain, the person who's emotionally expressive is going to feel that you don't care, you know, you're not listening, you're broke a broken trust. And so, actually addressing that those are cultural differences and how we're raised and not, you know, rooted in those stereotypes and doing a lot of work around looking at the difference between a cultural generalization and a stereotype a cultural general generalization, being fluid and adaptable, whereas a stereotype is going to be rigid and rooted in evaluation and judgment.
Unknown Speaker 9:34
You know what I read something that was talking about the ambidextrous, the ambidextrous leader, ah, uh huh. And really delving into as leaders and managers, how do you adapt? How are you resolving conflict in a healthy way, in a good character way? How do in self awareness and self awareness is kind of tricky, because self awareness does elbows into not only how you see yourself or more importantly, how others see you. Absolutely. And then being able people being able to be honest, because what we also found people are honest. Yeah. You know, they don't really tell you the truth of what they see and how they feel. Everyone wants to give you the sugarcoat, oh, everything is fabulous. No, it's not. Not only is it not fabulous, I'm not happy. Wow.
Unknown Speaker 10:20
So the services you offer for entrepreneurs who have small businesses where they may have 510 15 or 25 employees? Do you offer discounts for those smaller businesses? Because they're not, you know, as large as some of the others? Yeah, absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 10:34
So one of my key principles I work on is to make the work I do affordable for everyone. And so I will work with small businesses and nonprofits and actually work within their budget to ensure that they have the same accessibility as a fortune 500, or a larger company that has more accesses more access to resources.
Unknown Speaker 10:55
So how long are your workshops? Is it a day workshop? Is it a month? A couple of months? How many weeks? Tell us a little bit about that?
Unknown Speaker 11:02
Yeah, absolutely. So my workshops really vary. You know, yesterday, I have a client in New York City, and I come in and periodically do four hour, two and a half hour workshops with them. And I might not hear from them for six months, six months. And then I just finished a two year contract where we started out a cultural audit looked at the needs within the organization, and then designed leadership development, moving from the senior leadership team, through their program directors down to a cohort of 25 people that they identified as leaders in a succession plan to help build up skills and capacity. So I do everything from one offs to multi year contracts, helping organizations look at the full culture of the organization, because what happens if you go in and train people without integrating those skills and mindsets into the culture of the organization is you end up with ineffective training? Because
Unknown Speaker 11:55
that's the I think that's the part because I can train you. Yes, I can train you. But if it's not embedded in the corporate culture, because we talk about, you know, just what I'm talking about it, people, companies are spending a lot of money on training you. But if it's not embedded in the culture, you just went to a class for a day and got some information.
Unknown Speaker 12:19
Yeah, you just basically got some knowledge and walked away with knowledge versus being able to make those cultural shifts, if organizations don't start at the root causes of what's creating the behaviors within the organizations, by doing some deep digging, you know, sometimes even digging out some of those old skeletons that people want to brush under the rug. Yeah, they're not going to see forward movement, because they're giving their employees skills and knowledge that can't be applied in their workforce or in their culture. And so identifying what those root causes are, will help organizations be able to address the root cause while they're building up the skills and capacity of their employees to move the organization forward.
Unknown Speaker 13:00
And then understanding that you're dealing with people. Yep. You're dealing with people dealing with people. And as a friend of ours, has people be people. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 13:06
people are people be people, people, people, people, people, people, people, they
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and people are whole people. So everything with them, they
Unknown Speaker 13:16
bring they bring past trauma, they bring past drama, especially if they haven't healed. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Do you find when you're in organizations, is it emotional while you're going through these trainings? It is if
Unknown Speaker 13:34
if the organizations are open to the change, it does feel like a very emotional process, which is hard for some people who think, Well, I'm just coming to work, I just want to show up, do my job, and go home. And so creating a safe space where everybody can feel welcome. And I use two different assessments to help with that, to understand the developmental stages within the organization to make sure that I'm able to have the knowledge I need to bridge those needs, really centering. What are the people's needs in in that training? How do we design prompts around their work environment, the work they do to make sure that the discussions feel personal and relevant to their workforce? I do a lot of CO creating with the employers to make sure how I'm facilitating the dialogue makes sense for their employees.
Unknown Speaker 14:25
I love it. I love it. So as your trainings are catered, yes, all the now do you get the mission vision? Well, you have to get the value statement. But do you get the mission and vision and value statements that accompanies?
Unknown Speaker 14:36
Yes, I always ask for their mission, vision and value statement I do on several onboarding calls with the companies I work with, to make sure that I'm in alignment with their needs and understanding what their needs are to ensure that the way that I custom design the training curriculum will help them move forward. I don't go in and just offer a canned training that everybody It's so
Unknown Speaker 15:00
I d a collaborative 702-292-2354. Again, 702-292-2354.
Unknown Speaker 15:16
Or you can visit them on the web at www id@collaborativ.com. I'll say it again a little slower. www IDEAT E, C O L L labora. t i v e.com.
Unknown Speaker 15:43
Conflict Resolution, difficult conversations. I know many people in their personal lives, they don't like to have difficult conversations. How can someone listen? Let's get some training tips. How do you start a difficult conversation?
Unknown Speaker 16:04
Yeah, I. So first, I had any difficult conversation starts with listening. How are you listening in that conversation to understand not only what the person is saying, but the impact that the situation has had on their life as well as what values are they sharing with you? So starting at that deep level of listening, where you're not just listening to the Word, you're not listening to formulate your thoughts? You are truly listening to? What is this person sharing with me that happened to them? And how has it impacted them, and potentially gone against their value structure. So once you understand that, you can then ask questions, and dive into conversation through your own vulnerability and transparency, to ensure that you can have an effective conversation with them. And so listening and the ability to be vulnerable in the space to have the conversation is where difficult conversations have to start.
Unknown Speaker 17:05
Okay. And then once you get there, and because listening is an acquired skill, it is it's because a lot of people listen to respond. Absolutely. But listening is an acquired. Yeah, it's a really, it's really an acquired skill. After I listen, then what happens next? Yeah, so
Unknown Speaker 17:22
after you listen, we go through several different communication tools, one starting with, how do I ask a difficult question. And the framework that Ida teaches is going through transparency. So not only asking yourself, why you're engaging in the conversation, but truly, really knowing your why. So you can have that transparency with the person and say, hey, you know, you know, can we have a conversation around x, y, and z, this isn't bothering me in this way. Or, you know, however, that plays out after you establish why you're engaging with them, then going into that reciprocity of saying why it's important to you. And that's where understanding your own Why is extremely important. Because if you can't name your own, why you probably shouldn't be asking the question. And so then being able to say, this is important to me, because it impacted me this way, we didn't meet our deadline it cause whatever that may be sharing that reciprocity in the conversation and then going into, you know, what questions do I need to ask? Another aspect of difficult conversations that I always work with people on is we can validate a person's experience without agreeing with them. And that is one point where we, when we're in those difficult conversations, it seems like our human instinct is defend, justify, explain. So how do you pause and allow yourself time to slow down to move from that justification or explanation to listening, going back to that listening to listening and being able to validate and say, I hear you, Lea, I can hear how this impacted you? Can we have a conversation about that? So the pregnant pause that pregnant?
Unknown Speaker 19:13
Absolutely. One way you because I use my huh? Yes, and bite my tongue. At the same time, I bite my tongue and just listen. Are the skills transferable into your personal life?
Unknown Speaker 19:27
I think absolutely. They are. Yeah, they absolutely are. Because how we use and the more we use them in our personal life, the easier they're going to be in our work environment, because we become comfortable with them. And so they definitely transfer back and forth in terms of you know, if I'm, how do I make sure that I'm not projecting Leah's need, but I'm actually going out and saying, Hey, Leah, what's going on? How can we meet in the middle here? I'm saying that very generally, but if I'm practicing in my personal life, Nice to meet you where you're at, I'm going to have that natural ability when I'm in a work environment to also reach out. Because another thing that happens in organizations frequently is we project the needs of our employees based off of our own cultural lens, or our own cultural experience. So without understanding that our experiences in this world are very different, just based off of our cultural experience, I'm going to assume you need the same thing as I need. And that's not true. And so that's where that cold, that's where that cultural self awareness helps us to understand that if I am holding complex in these ways, which oftentimes we don't think about it, our culture is the water we swim in. So if we don't slow down and think about our culture, we just keep swimming in it and assume everyone's
Unknown Speaker 20:45
water. I don't want to swim in that water anymore. I want to get in different water once, because then this ties to social and emotional intelligence. Yes, it does. Got it. Yeah. Do you teach that as well? I
Unknown Speaker 20:58
do. Yeah. Yeah. It all ties in, I don't think you can separate. I don't think you can separate them. You can't you can't separate the social and emotional from a whole human. You can't.
Unknown Speaker 21:08
And what I find is an anybody. I mean, you can think about your own personal experiences. When you're angry, and you make decisions you'd like, Oh, my God, Why'd I do that? When you're calm, and you can think through and process, you get a different decision. Yeah, a lot of times, but
Unknown Speaker 21:27
sometimes you don't have time, because you have to make a decision quite quite quite quickly. Because an employee may have done something in a wrong way. And you're not happy about it. But you have to figure out how to fix it quickly to make your overall client happy. Yes, well, but
Unknown Speaker 21:42
even but even in that, I think if you practice this on a regular basis, you become better at it. So you process faster? Yeah. Because a lot of it is I'm thinking about how you talk to people. Because if you talk to them crazy, after they did something, you know, because everybody makes mistakes. And when I look at look, you're just not brain surgery, because we've had mistakes and my company, and my team knows, well, you know, Leah, you're always gonna have our back. I am. I mean, we might have to make a quick decision about what we did. And it might even be costly. But it's not brain surgery. You know, nobody's dying. We can fix it. But let's figure out together how, because I like to include employees in the decision making, too, because then they can take understand why what you did, was it probably the best thing to do not that it was wrong. And sometimes what I found is the employee doing it, the way that they did was the right way to do it. We just didn't agree, oh, it might not have been the way that we, I would have done it. And I'll give you an example. Someone made a call, I told him that we were about to do something, and they made a call prematurely. And the client was upset that they made this call prematurely. But in the long run, the call needed to be made, right. They just made it before we have made the final decision, but the decision was to make the call, right. And she and not but but in us dealing with it. It was okay. Hmm. I didn't say call. But okay, let's let's work through it. And we were actually able to work through it in a healthy way. But a lot of it was the communication style.
Unknown Speaker 23:25
So you're very patient. So have to be I had to learn patience. You're very, and children teach you that. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 23:33
they do children teach you that when you got to deal with it, we get when you deal with children. They teach you patience. And I had to learn it. Yeah. I had to learn it. Because you can't wait. Because what I find is Rhonda to when you're moving fast. When you're moving fast. You make a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes and everything. I mean, it's a it's a method, and you got to have a methodology and be consistent. stuff still gets done. But it has to be a method and some people while you're moving too slow. I am. But it'll get done before you think is gonna get done. Because it's getting done in my head. Right, right. Right. I'm doing it. I'm thinking through it. Right. But I want to only do it one time, right? I don't want to go back and do this. Again. I want to take time to really understand and really, you know, move forward.
Unknown Speaker 24:27
Yeah, you touched on something that is one of the behaviors I see in organizations that create people from going from good to great, which is a fear of failure.
Unknown Speaker 24:36
I'm not a mosquito,
Unknown Speaker 24:39
yeah, too hot. Creating an environment where employees can make mistakes, they can take risks, is going to promote more innovation and allow them to grow because they don't have that fear of, if I make a mistake, I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose my livelihood. So creating a culture where employees can take some of those risks is one of the things that helps an organization move forward. And that's
Unknown Speaker 25:05
very, very tricky, because I was having a conversation with a corporate company, and I'm not gonna call their name. And they were saying, you know, one employee did something wrong. And then they were coached on how to do it, right. And then the other employee did the same thing. And they fired that person. It was the same exact mistake. And she felt like that was a bias, like, you know, why didn't you coach this other person through the situation and give them opportunity to shine you? And I mean, why did you fire them? So it's real tricky as corporate America?
Unknown Speaker 25:39
Well, it's real tricky in corporate America, but you also got to understand is based off relationships, too. Yeah. And then you got to look at past experiences. And it's a whole, it's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into the mix. But that's the reason why I didn't do corporate America, because I was like, you know, you don't know when you stepped on a time bomb in corporate America, right? You don't. And I love my friends that do because I'm actually in a cohort now, where most of them are in corporate America. And I love it. I applaud you guys for being able to do that. I don't add I needed to create my own culture. I need I understood that early on, I needed my own culture, and I wanted an inclusive, you know, vulnerable, we can make mistakes. We you know, we love each other through the mistakes. I'll take the hits for the mistakes. It's okay. But let's not keep on doing them. Because I don't have a whole bunch I can take over. But let's, you know, how do we work together?
Unknown Speaker 26:32
Yeah, yeah. And some of that is trust,
Unknown Speaker 26:35
as a lot a lot. Most of a lot of it is trust. A lot of it is trust. All right. So I D eight, collaborative 70229223547022922354. So if you have a nonprofit, small, nonprofit, small business, these are skills, because it's how you treat your employees, how your employees treat your customers that help you meet your bottom line. This is personal development on a whole nother level honey another way it is to get personal development.
Unknown Speaker 27:10
And we all need it all. We all know the size of your company is we all need it because we all need to learn and grow. We are a work in progress. Everybody
Unknown Speaker 27:22
see an accounting that does WFP working process working process? Yes. WEP WEP. All right. Well, Tracy, I want to thank you, thank you for again, accepting our invitation this early Saturday morning. We appreciate you. Thank you. And I look forward to bringing you back. Now. Thanks. I look forward to doing something around her. And I think we need to do a workshop like a workshop around this for entrepreneurs.
Unknown Speaker 27:45
I think that would be great. That would be great. Love that. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 27:47
Let's put it together. Let's make that happen, a workshop around entrepreneurs so that they can come in for a nominal price and really get exposed to this type of training and it's cost effective for him. I like that. That
Unknown Speaker 28:01
makes sense. You've been listening to Let's Talk with Lee and Rhonda. Oh, I'm Lea Crawford. And I'm Rhonda Nolan and we have enjoyed you being with us this Saturday morning. Thank you so much. Miss Tracy Duran. You gave us a lot of nuggets today. I
Unknown Speaker 28:13
didn't know this a lot. So next week, I'm back baby.
Unknown Speaker 28:17
Until next week, and bye bye Las Vegas.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai