Curiosity and vulnerabilty: real world research for equity and inclusion

In this episode of the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast, Dr Helen Fitzhugh of the University of East Anglia speaks with Dr Balissa Greene, an occupational psychologist working in Accenture’s Leadership and Culture practice. Balissa has a strong track record of driving impactful change in diversity, inclusion and wellbeing across the public and private sectors. In this conversation, Balissa shares her insights on how to do 'real world' impactful research and how to overcome resistance to projects that are necessary.  

Transcript

Helen Fitzhugh:

Welcome to the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast. This podcast is part of a toolkit of free, evidence informed workplace wellbeing resources provided by the Workplace Wellbeing Research team at the University of East Anglia in the UK. You can find the resources on www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org

Helen Fitzhugh:

Hi, I’m Dr Helen Fitzhugh of the Workplace Wellbeing Research Team at the University of East Anglia. In today’s podcast, I’m speaking with Dr Balissa Greene, an occupational psychologist currently working in Accenture’s Leadership and Culture practice. Balissa has a strong track record of driving impactful change in diversity, inclusion and wellbeing across public and private sectors. Balissa, welcome!

Balissa Greene:

Thank you very much for having me Helen, I’m so excited to be here today. 

Helen Fitzhugh:

It’s great. Thank you for coming. To start off could you tell us a little about your career journey and your professional interest in workplace wellbeing?

Balissa Greene:

Brilliant. Thank you, my career journey. So it's very meandering, but I think I'll I'll try and make it as concise as possible. But I've always had, ever since I was very young, I've had this real desire for fairness. “Thing’s aren’t fair. I want this to be equal. How come this person got this and the other person hasn't?” And that really has sort of followed me and I've been very sort of outspoken about things like that, even at school. And so in some respects, it's kind of not a surprise that I've ended up here, but just to sort of go back, my journey started in terms of wanting to be a psychologist through a television show called Frazier, I’m dating myself. So Frazier Crane, I wanted to be Frazier Crane helping people, you know, having my own radio show and you know, and I was really taken by this by this opportunity that you can have to really help people. And I decide, of course doing some research I understood you know that clinical psychology was the path. 

Coming up when I was sort of growing up and going to school, that was really the only thing that that was talked about: clinical psychology. You know, sort of helping people with mental illness or, you know, diagnosis and things like that.
 
 

So I started along that path. And really, what I was fascinated with more than the clinical work was the surrounding systems. Things like: there's not enough staff on the ward, therefore the patients can't go out. Oh you’ve only got 20 minutes with the patient. Why is that? They really need an hour.
 Oh, how come you know this group of of of workers you know, from this particular region or, you know, this particular part of the world seem to have a bit of a more difficult time than these other group of workers? Why do nurses and doctors have this power hierarchy difference?  So all of these things were so fascinating to me, and I was very interested in that. And someone said to me.
 You know, that's actually another part of psychology, it’s called occupational psychology. I was like, “ohhhhh”.

 So before Google, we used to have these big books in library. I went to the library. I looked it up and when I read the description of occupational psychology, I just thought this is what I have to do.
 This is what I have to do because this is what I kind of felt it in my heart. I was like, I want to be able to help people thrive at work.
 This is what I want to do and more importantly I want to deal with the system. You know the big bad system that's, you know, that's inflicting, you know this this stuff on on, on to the workers. And so really my career journey has taken me to working in big public sector organizations like the Police, the National Health Service, Defence and to now you know, working into the private sector, consulting with, you know, Footsie, 100 and 250 organizations. And the issues are the same across these organizations. The issues about including everyone. Trying to get leaders to lead in a way that is fair, that include that is inclusive, are very much the same.  And it's about applying an understanding of human behaviour to the world of work that has really seen me take my career to very different, very different pockets in my career, but essentially it's been about making sure that those responsible for the system, those with power, those with privilege, really get to understand how they can do their bit to make the workplace somewhere that's better for all workers.
 
 

So that's what I enjoy most about my career and it's taken me to a lot of different places. 

Helen Fitzhugh:
 Fantastic. And obviously there's a really strong strand there of fairness and equity that runs through your career. But I also know that you're very interested in evidence-based practice. So what makes you so passionate about that? 

Balissa Greene:

Evidence-based practice is the thing, I'm like, “show me evidence.” I am always asking why, you know when we make decisions, you know, what are we basing that on? In my research and in my observation, the thing about evidence is that we have to have a reason for doing what we're doing. When we are responsible for others in the workplace, if you are a leader and you are responsible for others in the workplace and you just decide to make decisions ‘OK’ without any evidence, that has significant consequences. Really significant consequences. For not only for people’s day to day working lives but for the culture that you create, right? So, evidence, for is really about how do you that you make the right decision? Now professional judgement is absolutely critical and I want to highlight that it's not, you know, that I'm saying you can never over your years of experience or your ability to look at situations and make a judgement about it, because you've been professionally trained, or sometimes you can look at situation and your values will guide you. Professional judgement is important, but equally as important is the ability to really be critical about your decision making, and that's not to criticize, that is to be critical and ask yourself the question is this the right thing? How do I know it's the right thing? Who else has done this? Where else can I get some information? You know, have I heard from the people that this is affecting? You know.
 You do need to have some evidence for why you're doing things, and I think it's so important it's so important, particularly in the time that we are living in now. Where we have so much going on socially, politically, economically, to really be able to stand behind the decisions that you make that will affect people's lives.

Helen Fitzhugh:

Great. You’ve had a wonderful, varied career, and I'm sure we're gonna be talking about lots of different things from it throughout this podcast, but can I take you back up for a moment to your PhD research and ask what you found that might be of interest to HR partners and managers that they
 can adapt to their own settings?

Balissa Greene:
 That's a really great question, Helen. Thank you so much. My PhD research was around the lived experience of Commonwealth personnel in the British Army. That was a case study for actually doing real life organisational research and looking at the quality of research that we can get out of it. So you know the army has, or defence has, a policy recruiting internationally, particularly from the Commonwealth and this has been going on about 20 years at this point, when I was doing this PhD. And no one had ever evaluated this policy - is this working? What is the lived experience of you know, individuals who we recruit from Commonwealth countries? What is an experience of those working alongside them? You know, they had not been really deep look at this. And this is a significant policy that affects people's lives. And what the PhD was starting to do this work, the real PhD was about how difficult it is to do real world research in an organization such as this that is hierarchical, that’s huge, you know, as a researcher, I couldn't just go and say: “Hi, I’d just like to talk to some people, can you come and do like some focus groups with me?” No, I have to go through the chain of command and they have to get participant information sheets, you know, and and they have to sign off. Do they understand the politics of doing this kind of research, which was fundamentally about sort of fairness and equity and inclusion and diversity. That makes people uncomfortable.
 So how do we actually do real world research to gain this evidence we so need, right? And what's the quality of that research? What’s the quality of that evidence?
 
 

And so it was really a commentary about that and and how we sometimes have to do the best we can with what we have, and so to your question around, you know, what can sort of HR practitioners take from this? It's about, you know, do you have something and is something better than nothing?
 If you are going to make policy decisions, what's guiding that, you know? Can you speak to people?
 You know, who have you spoken to? If you have spoken to people, are they all the same types of people? Whose voice are you hearing? Who is not included in this sort of evidence gathering, right?
 And that's something I think that HR practitioners can take from my work. It's about, you know, not thinking about perfection, it's thinking about how can we make progress in this evidence gathering process and additionally, it was this commentary on qualitative research because very much, you know, quote unquote evidence and research is very much by numbers and facts and trends and data.
 But this question of what is data? Ok? Who produces data, who gets to produce data, right? So, it comes back to what are we trying to do. 

If you are an HR practitioner, and you're thinking goodness, we have this policy that I'm not sure about. Something we want to introduce or we're thinking about diversity and inclusion initiatives or thinking about the culture of an organization, things that we want to change. You do have to ask the question, what do I have? What information do we have that we can use to support our decision making?

Helen Fitzhugh:
 Absolutely. And with the Commonwealth recruitment, what challenges did you come up with?
 What did rich stories tell you?

Balissa Greene:
 So many stories. But essentially what I gathered from the research, what the research told us is that if you are from the Commonwealth, that’s not a monolith. And you have very different experiences in the organization based on where you sat in the organization in terms of power. And so for example if you were from Zimbabwe and you were black, you're most likely to be a soldier in the organization.
 However, if you were from Zimbabwe and you were white, you were more likely to be an officer in the organization, OK? And that has…. You’re both from the Commonwealth, you’re both from the same country, but you have a very different experience based on where you the sat in the organization. And more so than race, it was about power. It was about where you ended up.
 Because of very different positions in the organization and if you have very different positions in the organization, you have access to different things in the organization you know. So being an officer, you know it's a very different experience from being a solder, you are in a leadership position.
 So your lived experience of the organization is going to be very different.
 
 

So when we talk about Commonwealth personnel, you know we talk about, you know personnel from X country, we need to actually come back to the evidence. Ah Is that so? Do they have the same experience? Can we talk about this as a monolith or a generic sort of experience and the research told us that no, no, we can't. We can't do that at all.

 You know, the research is accessible for those who want to have a look at it, but it was very interesting to do such a large-scale qualitative project synthesizing this rich detail about
 people's lives and their lived experiences.

Helen Fitzhugh:

And you touched upon earlier that, you know, there is some discomfort in organisations when you start to ask for those rich stories and and collect data on power imbalances. I wonder how you negotiate that area of discomfort but still try and get the evidence across to senior leaders and others, persisting in doing that because it’s important. 

Balissa Greene: 

Absolutely, it's so important for us to do that and I actually start by being vulnerable. I share my story with organizational leaders. I am very much in organizations, I’m an open book. And one of the things that you know I would share is that I was born in London. I grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, mainly Trinidad, in the West Indies because my father is Trinidadian and in the 1980s at the time of the sort of race riots – (it’s so interesting because you know we've had sort of pockets of that now) - my father took the bold decision that we were not going to sort of be raised in the UK. That we needed an environment that was that was different that was more supportive. 

And so I share my experiences with senior leaders, about you know how I see the world. That I understand that this can't feel like it's a challenge. But that for me, I'm approaching this very much as an inquiry. OK. We’re just curious about, you know, what that lived experience is, because I've had a different experience and your experience and my experience will be very different. But, you know, letting them understand that I'm coming at this not with a sort of position of blame is really I'm just curious about how we can do things differently and how we can do things in a way that serves everyone. I think is really important. 
 
 

Because I think if you're coming in with the position of expert, actually I know best, I'm coming in as a consultant, I have all the the things, the bells and whistles ready to put you under the microscope.
 That's a very different position to, hey, look, let's explore this together and let's see what we come up with and we're doing this this way because this is my background and this is where I'm coming from, this is my understanding.
 
 

And then you ask people - I've always asked senior leaders what they want to get out of it. So it's not me doing to to them. It's about how can we co-create something that we're comfortable with? You know, having that conversation about what are your, what are your fears? You know, what are the things that you know are non-negotiable for you?
 
 

So, I think if you are vulnerable as the researcher or as the consultant, the person who's doing this exploration in partnership with an organization, you encourage others to be vulnerable with you

Helen Fitzhugh:
 Yes, absolutely. And openness, curiosity and co-creation are good watchwords for any research.

Balissa Greene:

Absolutely! I love those watchwords, I live by them. I live by them and and you know, it's sometimes it's it’s daunting, because certainly early in my career the message was you had to show up as knowing everything, you had to show up as the, quote unquote, expert. And actually as you move on in your career, like no one's an expert. I mean, you might know a bit more than someone on a particular topic, but it doesn't make you an expert, it just makes you more informed about a topic.
 But in that in that regard, you have blind spots as well.

 And so when you show up to an organization, you're supporting this this issue of co-creation is so important. It's so important. So it's having that conversation about. What can I do? What can I not do and how can and what can we do together?
 
 

Helen Fitzhugh:

Thank you. Yes. I know from my workshops with HR practitioners and others in organisations that sometimes they do find it a bit wearing or exhausting to constantly try to be the voice of kind of grounded decision making on wellbeing, inclusion, fairness topics. So I mean you've already given us quite a lot of tips there, but you know, have you got any other examples of how you've negotiated the difficulty of getting senior leaders and others on board with your push for evidence based practice? 

Balissa Greene:

Absolutely absolutely. Because I think one of the main challenges at the moment, well, not even at the moment, it's always time and money. It's about resourcing. It's about actually we don't have time to do this. We don't have money to pay somebody to do it. We need to do this now. So do you know what in terms of wellbeing this is what you know, everyone else is doing in my industry. So I'm just going to do that, OK.
 
 

I'm all for puppy therapy. Yoga at work. I love those things. Those are great, but really, when we think about why people come to work and what's going to make people feel heard, seen and included, it's about autonomy. Can I manage my workload? Can I speak to my line manager? You know, does somebody hear me? Do they see me? Can I contribute? Can I create impact, right? So when we are thinking about what is evidence and actually this pushback of actually we don't have time to do any of that. We're just going to do X initiative. I think it's always going back to ask a question to senior leadership, or whoever is holding the purse strings around, is this going to make our people, staff team, whoever feel included, heard, seen?

 Is it going to have an impact on their work and maybe just pushing back and asking the questions?
 That in itself is evidence, having a critical conversation around what benefits is this going to to bring to us. And sometimes you're purchasing or you're procuring services. It's not being afraid to ask of the provider of that service these questions. How is this going to work 'cause you might not have the evidence. You don't have time to go and gather the evidence, if you're procuring. How are you going to, how are you going to get someone to to ask those, answer those questions? I think you need to ask them first.

 So just in terms of a tip in terms of supporting senior leaders, it's helping them to be critical. It's helping them to be reflective and you need to be able to do that yourself so that they can see how that's done, but it's about sometimes being a trusted advisor to a senior leader as opposed to being the person who's going to do all the work. 

Helen Fitzhugh:

Yes, absolutely. Do you have an example of that from your career?
 
 

Balissa Greene: 

Absolutely. I was working with the Falkland Islands government, so I went to the Falkland Islands to support the government on their labour force development policy. And the brief was to develop a
 policy that would encourage people to come and live and work in the Falkland Islands and want to stay there. So essentially it's a talent attraction sort of piece of work.

 And before I started, I was doing a lot of asking questions, asking a lot of questions. So why do you want to do this? Why do people want to come here? What information have you got? Doing the whole researcher piece and what it got business leaders and politicians to do is really start to ask some of the questions themselves. 

You know Balissa, we don't really know. Actually what we do want to know is this. You know, actually, could you maybe work with this person to find out the questions to find out the answers? And it's me going back and saying well, actually, can we do this together or what information do you have?
 So it's by communicating effectively, having really informal conversations, sometimes you don't have to be, you know, formalized meetings that are recorded. It can actually be as I did, just having weekly catch ups with senior leaders saying actually: So why do we want to do this then? And some of the answers to those questions really helped develop thinking about what we really wanted for that piece of work and essentially…. So what turned out, what transpired from that piece of work, that was all about, let's get people to sort of, you know, get more people to come and live and work here.
 It turned out to be, actually, you have people that are already here that want to stay here. So we don't have to do the attract piece. What we have to do is change some of the policies so those people who are here temporarily and want to stay, so that they can stay. Right. So it turned out to be a very different outcome to the brief that was asked. And that was a piece of work I was really proud of because it fundamentally changed people's lives.

 But we had to do some some asking questions and looking at some of the evidence that was hidden in plain sight. I would say. Sometimes the evidence is already there. You just have to start asking questions so that you can uncover it, and then it's suddenly it's there for everyone to see.

Helen Fitzhugh:
 I'm loving the thread of curiosity that's running through this whole podcast that you know going in with that attitude of actually have we started at the right place even? You know, people often
 start research projects, evaluation projects, at a point where a researcher comes in and if they're working with them might take them back to the start again, what's your aim? What are you actually wanting to achieve with this? Is the intervention that you've planned going to going to effect change that you want? So it's a really nice highlight of how a researcher can help facilitate that.

Balissa Greene:
 I always I like to ask the question: so what would good look like? So at the end of this, how do we know that we've been successful? What would success look like? Even those questions are sometimes it's like, oh, OK, success looks like that, ok? Can I deliver that? I'm not sure you know. And maybe renegotiating well, why? Why? Why would success look like that? You know, as opposed to something else. So you're quite right about this sort of curiosity and vulnerability as a researcher, as a practitioner. Just knowing that you don't have to have the answers when somebody asks you a question. That you can say, OK. I have experience. I have tools. I have, you know, methodology that can help us explore this and get to an answer together, but I might not have the answer that you're looking for. 

Helen Fitzhugh:

Yeah, absolutely. What do you think is going to happen in the future? What the pressing kind of workplace well-being issues, fairness and equity issues that are going to come about in the next decade. 

Balissa Greene:

Well, that's such a big question!

Helen Fitzhugh:

I know!
 
 

Balissa Greene:

But no. On a serious note, Helen, that's a really great question as well. Because what we're seeing in terms of workplace wellbeing is just this explosion of initiatives, OK, there's so much happening. You know, as you know, I kind of joked about, you know, some of the initiatives that, you know, I've seen so far. But, you know, it's very much well-being at the moment is very much centreed on the individual. It's very much centreed on fixing the individual or giving the individual an experience you know, as opposed to thinking about the system opposed to thinking about organizational culture.
 Those are the things that really have a significant impact on someone's wellbeing because as I say, you know, I can have lots of things going on. I can have EAPS, I can have access to counsellors,
 I can, you know, do lots of different things, but if I show up at work and the person that I work for, you know, is unfair, doesn't lead well, doesn't give me feedback about my work, those are the real things that are going to influence and impact how I feel about showing up and doing my best and thriving at work.
 
 

So I think in the future we going to see the shift once we kind of moved away from looking at the individual, I think we will start to see this focus on - maybe these things are still here, you know? So we might have to think about the culture we work in. We're going to see a shift in terms of, well, I would hope we would see a shift and let me say this to look at leadership and how leaders show up in the organization and the power that leaders have to change dynamics to change culture and to change policies and platforms that affect people's everyday lives.
 
 

Helen Fitzhugh:

Yeah, absolutely. And you know that Evolve Workplace Wellbeing all of our resources are geared towards that kind of system or organization's level of approach of saying let's sort out how people are embedded in your organization and how consideration of their needs is is embedded rather than it being kind of an extra – or what we call a spangle.

[both laugh]

So I think, yeah, we're all we're on message there. Thank you. That's definitely something that people who've been to our Evolve workshops will have will have heard me talk about quite a bit.

 So it's been a joy having you here. If the listener only takes one simple message from this podcast.
 Although of course, we hope they will take more than that. What would you want it to be?

Balissa Greene:
 It's a great question. I think if there's one thing that you take from this podcast and you're, OK if you're a practitioner, if you are someone responsible for, you know, wellbeing, if you are responsible for people, if you're a leader, it's….. Who am I listening to? Who am I listening to when I'm making decisions and that takes us back to evidence? It's OK, if I’m making a decision where am I getting my information? So who am I listening to?
 And if you think about who you're listening to, and you don't have different and divergent points of view in your decision making, then I encourage you to ask more critical questions or find some other people to help you in your decision making. So, I would really hope people take that away from today's conversation, amongst other things. But that's ….

Helen Fitzhugh:
 Yes. That's a great place to wrap up. Thank you, Balissa.

Balissa Greene:
 Thank you so much for having me, Helen. It's been a really fantastic and I look forward to, you know, more collaboration and connection.

Helen Fitzhugh:

Great. Thanks very much.
 
 

Helen Fitzhugh:

Please do visit www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org We look forward to seeing you next time.