DEIB & Coaching - PODCAST

Laurel Elders:
Welcome everyone, to Coffee, Coaching and Callings, a live podcast created for coaches, leaders, and helping professionals that are on a mission to lead a successful and heart centered life. Your hosts today are myself, Laurel Elders and Michael Tucker of the Institute for Integrative Intelligence, where it's our mission to elevate human potential through both the art and the science of masterful coaching. Today's podcast, we will be focusing on following a calling and we are so honored to have with us today Hassan Rafiq. Hassan is a distinguished workplace strategist and a dedicated practitioner in the realms of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. With an impressive background encompassing over 15 years of executive coaching, organizational development, HR, transformation, and leadership development, Hassan's expertise is renowned in driving positive change within organizations through coaching senior executives on DEIB. In recognition of his groundbreaking work, Hassan was honored with the prestigious 2019 DEI Innovator of the Year and DEIB Leader of the Year Awards by Great Places to Work. Hassan is an ICF Professional Certified Coach, currently spearheads the esteemed Coaching for Inclusion practice, catering to C-Suite executives and senior leaders, and further propelling the transformative power of DEIB within organizations. Hassan, welcome. So excited to have you with us.

Hasan Rafiq:
Thank you so much, Laurel. Delighted to be here.

Laurel Elders:
Can you share a little bit about what called you into the DEIB work that you are doing?

Hasan Rafiq:
Yeah, happy to. So if I go back, my father was in the military and I'm from Pakistan, and every two to three years, we would move because he was stationed in different stations across Pakistan. And we might think that Pakistan is one country, one culture. North is very different to the south, and west is very different to the east. And every two years, I would have this experience of inclusion and exclusion. I didn't know the words inclusion and exclusion, but I would just experience it. New school, new town, new friends. You're just there for two years and then off you go to the next town, next new school, next new experience. And that sort of was my preparation into understanding differences, how to navigate those differences and how to embrace those differences.

When I moved from Pakistan to the Middle East, in Dubai to head up diversity, equity and inclusion for EY, what I realized was this is more than just differences that we can see. For example, we would have one of our offices have 1500 people, more than 200 nationalities. 85% to 90% of the people in the country are expats. 10% is the local population. Diversity is literally like a melting pot. And I could not understand how do we design something for such a diverse population where classical Western approaches to diversity would not work because the concept of race does not work here. The concept of looking at LGBTQIA+ does not work here.

What I realized through that was that I need to dive in a little deeper into myself and understand when I was having those childhood experiences, what were those? And those were moments of someone saying something to me that I felt wrong, or I felt, why would you say something like that to me, without realizing that that person has a perspective as to what they're saying and why they're saying it. So I believe strongly that a lot of the diversity that we experience is invisible. You can't see it. For example, in this conversation, there are three people. I can see a lot of visible diversity, but I can't see how you think, how you perceive, how you come to conclusion. I'll experience some of the language differences here because I'm not a native English speaker, so my English is different than yours. I'll experience a little bit of stylistic difference. Maybe you ask very direct questions and you think in a linear way. I am more circular in my thinking and more indirect in my communication. I'll experience a little bit of it. But as I'm experiencing it, I do fundamentally believe a lot of exclusion happens unintentionally.

Let's take this example. You're very direct, I'm very indirect. You're expecting a linear response from me based on the question you asked, right? And I tell you a story because I'm indirect and I'm circular in my way of thinking. And you'll say, Hassan, come on, get to the point, or you will interrupt me because you're not getting what you should be getting in a linear and a direct way. Now, if someone is observing this, we can't see any of it. I will feel excluded if you interrupt me because you just dismantled my whole thought process. You will feel excluded because of the way I'll respond to you, because I'll tell you another story. And it will become more frustrating, right. Without realizing that we have diversity at play in this conversation and every single conversation that we can't see. I may be very careful, based on race, identity, in what to say to an individual. I can point that out. I can learn that from the tips. But the reality is it's much bigger than that. Who are you and how do I engage with you while focusing on the diversity that I cannot see? And I think that became my true passion. If I link this to coaching, long time ago, I had a colleague by the name of Dalal dan Leshi is an MCC. She observed some of my behaviors, and she said, you know what? You're very curious. You ask deep questions, and the one thing that stands out for you and others is you are a deep listener. You just patiently wait and create those pauses and don't fill the space with language or your communication. Have you ever thought about coaching as a profession? Never thought about it. What is it? I don't know anything about it.

And that's where it started, as a journey. And within that DIEB is such a huge space in coaching. Not now. Yesterday. We should have thought about it way before coaching even started, because there is the lived experience and an identity that a person brings to a coaching conversation. And as a coach, I need to be extremely focusing on what is this person bringing besides being my coaching client. And their whole lived experience is part of it. So I summarize that it's not me at all. There are so many people who helped me understand what my calling was by asking curious questions. And then they also pushed me a little to explore how can I help people on their journey to becoming more inclusive, and then also build their personal transformation. Because we are all on a journey to transform ourselves, whether we like it or not, whether we see it or not, every single day we transform. And this just accelerates in areas that we want to.

Laurel Elders:
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. And it reminds me of just taking a coaching approach and how the skill of completely honoring who the person is you are with in this moment, and not bringing in a bias to project on them, seeing them as their own unique person while honoring their truth.

Hasan Rafiq: 
Absolutely.

Michael Tucker:
You know, I really appreciate what you said about invisible diversity, Hassan, and I'm curious. I mean, it sounds like that's a large part of your philosophy, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about this unique DEIB approach that you have. Maybe there are other elements that you could share.

Hasan Rafiq: 
Yeah, happy to. And I also feel I think it's being more human at the start of it. Yes, you may have a certain race identity, whatever it is, if we become curious about people, inclusion will appear automatically. Automatically. I've seen that happen all the time. When I set aside, especially when I'm coaching executives, they need a script, and I say, I don't have a script. I can't create a script for you on how to engage with someone from this race or someone from this gender. It does not exist. What I do have is a script for you to become more curious. Because the moment you become more curious about the individual, you will find connection points that you haven't discovered yet. Maybe they went to the same school. And by curious, I mean going deep with individual, not curious about what happened over the weekend. Oh, wow, you went to this ice cream shop. I go to there all the time.

That's not being curious. It's curious about who is this person on my team? What is their lived experience? And the moment you dive a little deeper into the lived experience, you find a lot of similarities, but you also find opportunities to learn and grow as a human being. I'll give you a very simple example. Very senior executive in the engineering team and I started to explore with him his identity and his lived experience. Because he was frustrated by the word privilege. He was white, had a lovely experience in the tech industry, and he said, whenever someone says that, I'm just very frustrated by it. I said, fine, let's explore who you are and how you grew up. I want you to take me to your childhood. And he started sharing experiences. Some of them were very exclusionary, some of them were very inclusive and so on.

But he told me one story where in 1980s, his father got a personal computer from somewhere, and he just opened it because he was curious. And I said, okay, let's look at this household now. You could afford a personal computer when it was somewhere around $4, 000-$5, 000 in 1980s. And you managed to open it up because you were curious. What about a similar household that does not have that kind of money? Do you see a little bit of privilege here or not? Can you discover it? Because someone else might not even have money to put food on the table for once, even single time for the day. And you're having this experience which is shaping who you will become next. And that exploration creates that insight that I had certain things given to me that others may not have. We're not putting a label on you by saying you're privileged because you had that. We are just exploring, if you did not have that experience, what would happen next and how would you grow. Similarly, I also feel, when you dive a little deeper into adult development, a lot of the individuals are stuck in me and my identity versus me and what roles do I play in this world. Multiple identities that I have, and how do I shape those multiple identities.

Because we are told a narrative about ourselves that becomes our narrative. The moment we start exploring multiple narratives of who we are and who we can be, it just opens up multiple spaces for us to be someone else. And by someone else, I do not mean to say that you lose your authentic self. We have multiple authentic selves. We just haven't discovered them yet. And the moment we discover them, we realize, I can be this, I can be that. Sometimes I also feel where DNI becomes really challenging is when we hold on to one narrative and one identity very, very strongly, and that shapes the way we look at the world. And like I said, everyone has multiple identities. The challenge and opportunity with that is we haven't yet achieved equity from a visible diversity perspective, let alone focusing on invisible diversity.

Representation matters, and we can see this in the coaching profession or any profession. We have lack of representation. That's the starting point. So we can approach it from a numbers perspective and focus more on getting more representation. The whole recruitment drive and getting more people from diverse backgrounds into the organization. If we don't focus on the environment that they are getting in, then we are doing disservice to them. It's just like you're putting seeds in the soil and the soil is toxic. You can have the best seeds in the whole world. They will not germinate, they will not grow into a beautiful tree because the soil is toxic. And that's the reason why I say representation matters a lot, but environment matters more. If you create that inclusive environment, you will automatically see more representation. And that's where the visible and invisible comes together, where it needs to be a balance between the two. How much effort, energy and enthusiasm are we putting in creating an environment or nurturing an environment? Where I experience inclusion, I don't give it in the form of a survey inclusion index. 89% of the people feel included. Yet you talk to a few of them and they share their horrible lived experience in the organization. That's not what I'm talking about. It's I experience inclusion when I talk to Michael and it's a lived experience. Right. You can't quantify it numbers, yes you can through a survey. But how am I feeling with you when I am with you in a team meeting? That's where inclusion happens and that's so hard to get because we don't invest enough in it.

Laurel Elders: Wow, so many thoughts running and generated from this exploration. Just to touch on something that came up for me is, as you were talking about the different parts that we have and we can have different parts of highest self even. It brought to mind also, who am I in relationship with others that creates a new possibility potentially. If there's that awareness and respect there. Which brings me to this question. You had brought to my attention the work of Barry Johnson and the book, And. I would love for you to share a little bit more about what stood out to you. I've already just really loved and appreciated this work.

Hasan Rafiq: Yeah, I got exposed to Barry Johnson's work about four or five years and then I went in. I was so enlightened by it. I got a certification to Barry Johnson and Leslie Depole from the Polarity partnerships. It says it all. One word says it all. And And classic approach to personal transformation is always about where am I and where do I need to go? It's always from and to. And you identify a gap and you can find so many books on change management that do just that. From where we are, what are the gaps, where do we need to go, how do we build for it?

Uh, what Polarity Partnership says, it's not a from and to. It's always an and. Which means you are dealing with polarities and there is an upside and a downside to both of them. Very simple example would be centralized and decentralized. If we look at an organization and we say, you know what, we need to centralize all of it, it's a from and to conversation. There is an upside to centralization and a downside to it. If you focus too much on centralization, you'll start to see the downside of it. Similarly for decentralized, and if you apply that to coaching, if you apply that to DEIB, you will find so many dilemmas that we are trying to solve from a from and to approach, which is failing us. Because when you look at the DNI journey, you will find a lot of let's focus on the numbers. Let's get the representation. I just gave that example. Let's get the numbers right. If we get our numbers right, we'll get the representation and we'll become more diverse and inclusive as an organization. No. The answer is it is an and. If you're investing in one space, you need to focus on investing in the other space, which is, how do we become more inclusive? What does it look like? And will we have the same traditional numerical approach to achieving inclusion or not?

And, that's the reason why I love it so much because it creates that dilemma in us as well as DEIB practitioners. What are we trying to solve for? And is it a problem that we are solving or is it a dilemma that we are engaged with? And both of those two things are different because problems can be solved very easily. You can apply the from and to approach. If it is a dilemma, it requires us to step back and understand the whole system. Where are we going to start to play in? What would be the consequences? And if I lean in too much on one side, what is the downside of it? So I bring that to the DEIB work that I do, and I also bring it to the coaching, because very senior leaders, they are dealing with a lot of dilemmas. They're not dealing with problems, especially organizational culture is a dilemma.

And we need to understand what are the polarities at play? How do we navigate them? How do we get the upside of all the polarities? Which is the hardest thing to achieve when, you're trying to solve a dilemma or a problem? But personally, I think it has transformed me the most, because it's one thing to say there is an and to every conversation, and there is a but to every conversation. But the reality is when you say and, you just pause. And we know from a neuroscience perspective, the moment you pause, you use different part of your brain. You engage your executive brain. And that helps you think through things in a much better way versus just saying, oh, it's a problem we need to solve. What is the data? How do we solve it? So it slows you down a little bit, which is extremely important in the fast paced world that we live in because we end up solving problems that we shouldn't be solving because we didn't step back and look at the bigger picture, or we solved a problem that is going to create more problems later on.

Michael Tucker: 
Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate you sharing that, Hassan. I mean, so many different layers you know. And I have to be honest with you, I am still with this conversation that you were having with this CEO. And it makes me wonder for you, when you think about having these powerful coaching conversations that are, um, DEIB focused, what are some of the dimensions of those conversations? A lot of our viewers are other coaches. I'm sure this would be really helpful for them.

Hasan Rafiq: 
Yeah. I think the starting point is to understand my coaching client and their personal DEIB narrative. It's a tool that I created, that I've used, and it is very powerful. It's not rocket science. It's your head, heart and hand. So understanding how you think about DEIB. If you come to me and say, you know what? I have this big announcement that I'm making next week. Can you share with me some talking points so that they are balanced from a racial and gender perspective? I'll say no. I don't do that. You don't need that. What you need is to understand who are you and what's your personal inclusion narrative. That will shape what you will write yourself. You don't need the comms team to write it for you. You can ask them to write it for you, and then you can rip it apart and put it back together based on what you want to say.

The reality is, many of the executives do not have the time and space to build their own personal inclusion narrative. So when I say head, heart, and hand, I'm not looking for a story, but I am looking for a story. If you are able to give me that story in a moment, that's not good enough, because it does not give me enough to understand where is your head at when it comes to DEI? And that may be very specific to understanding representation numbers, quantitative qualitative data. Great. Where is your heart at? Because every single individual connects with a certain dimension of diversity more than others. Maybe it is LGBTQIA+ that you're more passionate about. Fine. Bring it out.

Heart is also where you would have some of your own challenges with the concepts of DEIB. You may dismiss the concept of race. We need to talk about it. What's beneath that dismissal? Because you will discover more about yourself. And that's a very vulnerable space for a senior executive to be in. But, the growth that comes with it is very, very powerful. And then finally, it's the hand. What are you doing? And if you say, I am a big ally for women, and I sponsor this and sponsor that. Stop doing that. You don't need to do that. What you need to do is how are you moving the needle yourself? And just being a sponsor and an ally is not enough, especially if you are a senior leader. You're responsible for a team. You're responsible for a department. I need to understand from you what are you doing from a systemic perspective to make your department more equitable, more diverse.

And oftentimes, because senior executives don't have the time and space, they build their own leadership team to do that work, which is fine. You get more people involved in the DNI space. So hand is not just being a, uh, mentor or sponsor or an ally. It's more than that. And as leaders go through this experience, they discover, I'm not doing enough, or I'm doing enough, I need to do more. That's their personal transformation as well, because when they do more, when they take on more, they learn more and they grow more. So this one tool has really helped because it is personalized. It's about them. It's their own journey, where they are on that journey, and how to take that journey to the next level by looking at areas of focus that they may not have discovered yet. That I think is very, very powerful from a coaching perspective because it's one on one.

Laurel Elders:
Wow. How do you see, or think we could advance representation in the coaching community?

Hasan Rafiq: 
I think any organizer... I hear an echo, it's gone now. I see any organization has representation and not so much representation. So, starting from looking at our base in the coaching industry, what does it look like from a representation perspective and how organizations or individuals are advancing more representation for the future. Are we getting enough diverse candidates to become coaches? And sometimes there is a challenge in terms of if we can afford it. So I am absolutely inspired and love the work that you are doing. Laurel and Michael, with Coaching for Everyone.

It's an opportunity for us to advance. Literally advance the coaching profession, to become more representative by bringing in diverse trainees who become coaches. I'll give you a real life example of why this matters so much. I had a very, very senior black engineer who kept on rejecting three top coaches that we gave him. And so I became very curious, said this person aligns, and the chemistry meeting should have been phenomenal because I know you really well, and I know this coach really well. So what's going on? Why are you rejecting? And it boiled down to the lived experience. My coach does not understand my lived experience.

Why does it matter? Because it matters so much, especially in coaching, because you're going to be vulnerable. And this person does not connect with you at a level that you want because you won't be able to establish the trust, the openness, and I won't say that it's bad for the coaches. It's not bad for anyone. It's understanding that certain coaching conversations are much more powerful when they are happening with people who share your lived experience. They get you and they understand you. We also know that when it's coaching, you are an empty vessel. You don't have an agenda. Coach can be anyone. But we also know that the coaching client is looking for someone who shares their lived experience, who understands.

So when we get more representation in the coaching industry, it's going to benefit not just the coaching industry, it's going to benefit the coaching clients as well, because they are looking for more diverse coaches. They're looking for someone who connects with them instantly. And that's something that we can also learn if we invest a lot in the training for coaches who are currently, um, in training, as well as coaches who are already established to understand DNI and how it shows up, identity, how it shows up. There's a lot of work that the ICF is doing in this space. But what I feel is representation is key here. And some of the work that you're doing with the coaching for everyone is going to lift us up. But we need more, and we need it now. So the more we accelerate representation in the coaching industry, the better it will be, especially for our coaching clients who depend on us.

Laurel Elders: 
Thank you. And how about the different dimensions of diversity in the coaching conversation as well? The other side of that?

Hasan Rafiq: 
Yeah, I think that's also something that I discovered when I was building this program for a tech company. Where we were looking for coaches who had deep DEIB expertise and were credentialed. And to my shock, I found thousands of DEIB practitioners who were using the word coach in their portfolio. Nothing wrong with it. It's not like I own coaching. You can use the word coaching. Big C, little C. Anyone can be a coach. It's not, there's no, rocket science. But organizations are looking for credentials.

So I can't select those thousands of DEIB practitioners that I found because they did not have the credential. Similarly, I found thousands of coaches who did not have the deep DEIB expertise and sadly, some of them didn't want it to touch DNI because it was all about race. Right. That was the perception. What, I realized was, once I found those 48 people across the US. It was magical, because what we were trying to build for was executive development through a DNI lens. Not just regular executive development. Specific focus on how do we get better at DEI as a senior vice president, as head of this big unit.

And therein lies a lot of dimensions of diversity, visible and invisible, because these senior leaders may be black, maybe Hispanic, maybe female, and so on, there is a lot of diversity that you can see in them. And then there is a lot of diversity that you cannot see, which a DNI coach can bring out their lived experience, their identity, their relationships. A little bit of adult development there, too. Their multiple identities and their relationship with DNI. Because essentially what we are building is their inclusion narrative from scratch. People who haven't had that chance. And then we are observing for how do they engage on the topic of DNI. Especially in certain industries in tech at that point in time.

This was at the peak of the whole revolution that was happening. George Floyd's murder and Black Lives Matter. Every single moment was a moment to take a stand, and one wrong word, you're gone. Because the environment is such. And that's where I saw a lot of visible and invisible diversity intersect with one another. It was magical to understand your invisible diversity, informing your visible diversity. It was the first time that I saw that, because as they explored who they are, they realize they play a role in society that was given to them. They may not agree with it. Right? And what is that role? We need to explore that. We need to go deep into that. And it is not just getting a title of an ally. That's not enough. We have a specific role based on our identity and how do we leverage our identity to play that role. So essentially, it's a lot of inside out work. It's very deep, it's very vulnerable. A lot of, um, lived experience comes out, a lot of tears come out too. The reality is, once we do that work, we realize who we really are, who we truly are, and the role that we play in.

Michael Tucker: 
Wow. You know, I really appreciate everything that you're saying, Hassan, and going back to what you talked about, this invisible diversity. It's such a powerful thing. I do a fair amount of diversity, equity, inclusion work, um, from a consultant standpoint, and I also bring it to my coaching. And it's interesting because even coaching other black leaders, there is a huge diversity of thought. And I think there's an idea that, there's a stereotypical black person and that's not the case. So, I mean, you know skin color is one thing, but diversity of thought is another thing. And you are really just hitting on that and talking about the roles and categories that folks have either unconsciously taken on or felt like they've had to take on, and how one might identify so strongly to that particular identity, to sometimes it could actually be a detriment.

Hasan Rafiq: 
Mhm

​Michael Tucker: 
And so what you're talking about is really hitting home for me. I've really enjoyed our conversation so much. Just a couple of things, that if there's anything else that you'd like to just share with the folks watching or listening. If there's anything else that you think would be meaningful for them to know about you, about your work what would that be?

Hasan Rafiq: 
Yeah. I would say if you're watching, if coaching is something that you're interested in, just go for it. What you will discover is it will transform you as a human being. If you let it transform you. And it's built on failure, we will fail. We fail all the time. I think I remember a quote from it was Nelson Mandera. He said, "I never fail. I either win or I learn. " That's it. And every moment is a learning moment for us. I also feel this is my personal message. I feel we have a big pandemic, and that's a listening pandemic. We are not listening to one another. We are becoming louder and louder, and we all have a point of view. The polarization that we see in this country and across the globe is because we are not listening to one another. We are not paying attention to what people are trying to say. And it literally hurts me, because that's one skill that we have. There is a reason why we have got two ears and one mouth. We should be listening more. And paying attention to what is being said and not said before jumping in with our point of view. So our real pandemic is the listening pandemic. We need to pay attention to how we listen and how to become better listeners. It's one of the biggest coaching practices. So if you're interested in coaching, it will automatically make you a better listener.

Laurel Elders:
Yes. Very well put. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. I just want to say, I'm just so inspired, because your messages and perspectives, to me, are the heart of what we value at the Institute for Integrative Intelligence of including all aspects of the whole and, um, having that very heart centered, honoring presence. So thank you.

Hasan Rafiq: 
I'm so grateful to you, Laurel and Michael, and the work that you're doing, especially, driving more equity in the coaching industry. Thank you so much for doing that.

​Michael Tucker: 
Absolutely. Hassan, do you have a book or a website or any other information that folks might be able to tap into if they want to connect with you?

Hasan Rafiq: 
Um, very timely. The book is coming. So I'm finishing up on that. I do have a website. I can share the link and my email address if people want to reach out.

​​Michael Tucker: 
Fantastic. We can pop those things in the show notes.

Hasan Rafiq: 
Thank you.

Laurel Elders:
Perfect. All right, well, thank you so much for joining us today. We hope these messages have been a lantern to your path as you expand your success as a coach, leader, or helping professional. You can join the conversation further at Integrativeintelligence.Global. Bye for now.