Episode 269 Do I Belong with Vincent Brown

On this episode of the Lead Up podcast, Mike is joined by Vincent Brown who has over 35 years of experience in the diversity and inclusion sector, words which were rarely, if ever, used when he started.

After Vincent gives us a look at his background and how he got into this field, he explains to us the difference between the de-segregation movement and the inclusion movement and why we changed from one to the other in the last several decades.

Vincent also talks about the importance of getting to know the people across the table from us. He tells us it takes 7 seconds for our brain to make judgments on people but we need to be able to see under this. We can do that by sharing our stories openly and being comfortable asking people to share their own stories.

He explains that we can often exclude people by not allowing them to belong. Vincent describes diversity as a noun, inclusion as a verb, and belonging as an outcome and how it can benefit many businesses. He uses his own company which he sold to Goldman Sachs as an example, which he can trace back the success of it to diversity.

He finishes off by telling us that leaders need to be responsible for inclusion and diversity and they need to be able to discuss these topics with the rationale of their head, the care of their heart, and the action of their hands. 

You can get a copy of Vincent's book, Intrinsic Inclusion here, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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