The Add IDEAS Podcast

It's just us today and what a season this was. Also, we got listed on The Top 100 Outstanding Role Model Lists supported by INvolve and YouTube.
Join us for the season wrap-up and key calls to action.
00:00 - To More Top Moments
00:30 - 2024 Top Lessons
02:28 - Showing up on people's issues
05:20 - Psychological safety and values
06:40 - BTS
07:55 - What we can still do
πŸ”— You can view the full lists here: https://bit.ly/3Anx93M
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Creators & Guests

Host
Bandile Mndebele
Bandile Mndebele is a passionate advocate for intersectional inclusion, committed to creating equitable and inclusive environments. Their journey began at Stellenbosch University, where they pioneered a gender-neutral initiative, making it the first top South African university to recognize the gender-neutral marker, Mx. Following their academic pursuits, Bandile has held influential roles in various organisations, including serving on the Global Council for DEI and as a PRIDE Network Chair at a major S&P 500 company, where they co-founded Ubuntu South Africa. They have been instrumental in driving initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, particularly for marginalised groups such as LGBTQ+ individuals and neurodivergent people. They have also been recognized for their leadership and impact, receiving awards such as the Top 100 Outstanding LGBT+ Future Leader and Top 100 Outstanding Executive Role Model. Through their podcast, newsletter, and speaking engagements, Bandile shares insights and inspires others to create a more just and equitable world. Their work highlights the importance of intersectional inclusion.

What is The Add IDEAS Podcast?

Certain things in life are hard but belonging should not be.

Through inspiring stories, expert insights, and actionable tips, we help unlock meaningful ideas for a stronger sense of belonging in every aspect of your life.

From war to groove, there is a conversation worth having and lessons learnt about how we show up authentically as ourselves. Sometimes, we only want to afford a good groove towards a thriving community both individually and collectively.

Join me, Bandile Mndebele, as we explore the world of IDEAS: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Sustainability.

Our lived experiences matter and so should our ideas.

Thank you for following and listening to the show.

Hey guys, it's just us today and I'm grateful for so many things that have happened this year

and equally disappointed about some of the events that have unfolded since we started.

I mean, there's been a lot of news on election outcomes,

but I think I want to take a pause to celebrate some of our big championing wins on this show.

The show recently got listed on the 100 outstanding executives supported by INvolve and YouTube.

It took us a year, an incredible year to start the show.

And I'm so grateful that, you know, having started, it landed, it resonated, it connected with so many people.

And for us to get listed is such a big explosion, a big way.

And we're only grateful that there's more momentum to come.

And part of us wrapping up the season, it has been so eventful.

Many lessons came out and time to those elections is this notion of change.

If, you know, many times people have been positive to the call of change, saying, hey, we can no longer live,

for example, when you look at South Africa's changing political landscape,

when you look at the surprise change in Botswana, maybe for some not that much surprising.

But it's so encouraging to see the evolution of what people's change needs are and how we can better meet them,

not just as leaders, not just in terms of the evolution of inclusion or below or since or ever.

Or the fast-changing pace of, you know, belonging or having a strong sense of belonging,

which is what we started off with earlier this year.

We dubbed this year the year of change with so many things changing.

And the US election was.

It historically was a historic change, not just for the country, but for a lot of people all over the world.

And as much as this outcome has come, you know, there's so much that has had such a profound impact on the cycle

and the psychology and also on people's internal sense of safety now.

The new, renewed now relationship of people, how, for example, you can go about being an authentic self at work.

That needs to be revisited.

It always seems like the more things change, as inevitably the saying says, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

We speak a lot about on this show, for example, about sponsorship, allyship and some forms of mentoring and support and coaching.

And yet peopleҀ™s issues which are at the heart of support seem to be moved down the bucket list of priorities.

Globally, it's such a messy field.

You know, war still continues in different parts of the world.

And yet, ironically, 35 years after the Berlin Wall has fallen, we are still at war.

And one has to start questioning when will the war cease.

When will there be a purely a ceasefire on so many of these things that affect us all?

Not just equally, but some far more than others.

But at the end of the day, everyone will be impacted in some shape or form.

And to caution this, I think we must be now mindful of what changes people legally want to impose.

I mean, one of the biggest concerns is what does a Trump 2.0 presidency will do on people and people unification?

To talk about continuing war of the I, you know, now we see the war on the I spill over into something that is far larger than any one country can contain.

We've learned from episode three with Pumla Dlamini, for example, the need for kind leadership.

I'm really grateful for how this podcast has evolved and keeps evolving.

You know, I think one of the lessons that really stand out in terms of bringing people together and unifying people and how we can go about it is really borrowing from a lesson that we we've just recently learned with Avelile's episode on episode 10.

And one of the key lessons that stood out for me in terms of how we can go about people unification is, for example, the issue of equal focus and equal opportunity, which I feel is a great platform.

It's a great mantra to have to support certain things that can help people move the needle in some shape and form where there's solidarity, where there is empathy, where there is vulnerability,

where people are able to open and can actually share, as some of our episodes have highlighted previously, for example, with Roy, allowing room for that.

I can talk with my about my pain and you can talk about your pain.

We have a space of shared trauma and we need leaders who are going to be able to prioritize that unification in meaningful ways that really have given people agency.

As Roy says, tie in the eye into the result, into tangible results that people can really celebrate and look, say, hey, these are non-negotiables.

And one and one of those results is psychological safety.

Right. We've talked a lot about psychological safety earlier on in the season.

And with it being under threat in so many places and in other places, ambivalent about how it's going to unfold.

Psychological safety is something that is undeniably integral to people's sense of navigation, and sense of safety, limiting many instances where you have to code switch,

you know, limiting a number of instances where, for example, the glass ceiling or the rainbow ceiling, as the book reveals that I'm currently reading,

really doesn't feel so impossibly high or so impossible and extraordinarily excellent or abnormally excellent that you cannot see yourself attaining it.

And I think one of the reasoning or one of the.

I think one of the lingering questions that I have struggled with as well, digesting the elections of this year, looking at those lessons clearly think certain things

emerge. The values of leaders are important, right?

Not just in kind leadership, but the values in political discipline, the values in community and informing community safety and connecting more into the purpose of.

What I want the show to do, I really wanted to build a show.

This is just to go back to the behind-the-scenes, you know, it takes a while for us to produce an episode.

And ideally, we would love to be I think the priority for us is to be started off as a monthly podcast.

We have the full intention and the desire to be more regularly updating our show.

And I'm only grateful that when we started, it was indeed nothing for us without us.

And we have made a lot of changes as a podcast.

Part of that change was really being seen in an extraordinary way that our listeners have tuned into.

So from the bottom of my heart, I am truly, truly grateful for your loving support and the investment that you have on the show.

It means a lot as a creator, and as a podcaster starting out, there's so much that still will never get perfect.

You know, perfection is to fallacy, but I really hope what we do get perfect as a people is supporting each other.

This is what really, really stood out for me in his episode the call for people to support each other, not just South Africans, not just South Africans.

Allyship forms of support, allyship, the need to support each other through empathy, through listening.

As mentioned on the podcast previously with Annemarie Shrouder, we are all doing our best with the trauma that we each individually carry.

This is a paraphrased, you know, our guests have really brought such key insights, such key and invaluable lessons that I think can be applied to really incorporating any idea that you might have,

whether that is for people unification, for advancing our diversity and the ever-evolving landscape of people risk.

It's always growing. It's always needing a watchful eye. It's always needing a hero.

I appreciate the fact that there's longevity to these efforts. It's not futile.

There is a connected piece that informs and helps shape the outcome of so many people who want to do better.

This is not to discount people who have held, who have been on the right side of history,

but is to encourage those who have been on the right side of history to keep staying on the right side of history.

Right. That's the very important. It's important that you always try to stay on the right side of history.

But more importantly, how do we confront the people that are on the other side of history?

That's a tough one. And gleaning from some of the conversations that I've held with Udoka, Roy, we have a lot of options.

But one of them is understanding from a point of other people's trauma, putting the other person's trauma into our own lived experience.

And unifying people is going to take a lot of everyone's hard work, smart work, hard work, persuasion, motivation, but more so conviction.

Many people are still forgotten and we risk losing more people if we do not truly unite ourselves to a true call of action,

a call of action that is clear on unifying people.

Yes, there are many people that many people don't want to be united with.

But at the end of the day, someone's humanity shouldn't be conditional on the things that they cannot change about themselves.

We cannot change, for example, I think I started earlier this season that there's so many immutable differences that people that informs that diversity,

because diversity is a fact of life. You cannot do away with diversity.

Be it neurodiversity, be it living with disabilities, be it with gender diversity, racial diversity, political diversity,

which now is the dividing cause for so many things that we now see spill over into other diversity realms.

But truly respecting and seeing each other.

This is the Add IDEAS Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening.