On today’s episode of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, you’ll be guided through the different ways power, position, and privilege show up on-site. Rather than challenging or ignoring them, Alex breaks down the ways you can leverage those existing dynamics, create a fair work environment, and create a culture of respect at your company. 04/04
What is Power? Who has it, and what does it look like?
When it comes to power, most people think of the rich and famous. However, not all power dynamics are self-evident. There are dozens of factors in play that influence the power we have over others. Even those with a leadership title must earn the respect of their peers before they are truly leading in their workplace.
On today’s episode of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, you’ll be guided through the different ways power, position, and privilege show up on-site. Rather than challenging or ignoring them, Alex breaks down the ways you can leverage those existing dynamics, create a fair work environment, and create a culture of respect at your company.
What to look out for in today’s episode:
In our final segment, The Frame Out, you’ll sift through emotions that often come up during diversity and inclusion conversations. Alex will address how to tap into your teams’ unified standard of respect, and shift your team’s conversation towards “making awesome happen”!
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[00:00:00] Alex: Hey and Heyman friends. Welcome to episode five. No Bullshit with Alex Willis. I'm super, super excited to have you here as we continue our talk on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the construction industry. In this segment where we frame it out, we're gonna frame out how do you do it? How do you do it?
[00:00:24] Alex: So, so far today we've talked in our last segment about. Respect. We talked about leadership, influence, and the levels of leadership. We talked about how we look at people and how we view people and how we rank and categorize people in our society. Now, in order to do this really, really well, my friends, what must we do?
[00:00:44] Alex: What must we do? Well, we have to overcome these four emotions, right? We have to overcome these four emotions. Well, well, before I even share the four emotions with you, we first have to understand this. Oftentimes we get respect confused. Right. What do I mean by that? Well, you have this thing of respect, which is truly where we see someone for who they are.
[00:01:04] Alex: We're willing to give them an opportunity. We are willing to give them a chance to be their best self at work. True respect, right now, the next thing that we kind of get confused is this thing of fear. Understand this. What's fear? Well, one of my favorite movies is Godfather. Godfather, or classic of all times.
[00:01:22] Alex: Right? Now, respect for the Godfather is Kiss the Ring. Kiss the ring, right? So, so understand The Godfather uses fear as a so-called respect, right? And there's the very, very bottom. If you grew up in the era that I did respect was kind of tied to this thing of obedience for my parents. It was shut the hell up and do what I say.
[00:01:45] Alex: Now, if you do that, that means you're respected, right? But oftentimes I would do what they said, but in my mind, man, I'm thinking and saying all kind of shit in my mind, right? So those three words, we tend to get mixed up in the construction industry. This thing of respect, fear, and obedience. So I wanna know, what do you see more of in our industry today?
[00:02:07] Alex: What are you seeing more of? Are you seeing true respect for each other, for colleagues, regardless of what their position is, regardless of what they do on job site? Are you seeing people operating in fear where people won't say anything? Are you seeing obedience where people just get in line and just do what people say?
[00:02:25] Alex: As I travel around, what we frequently hear is that, of course there's a mixture of all three, but most people tend to think we are moving and trending more to. True respect for each other. I hope that's true, my friend. I hope we can get to that place where regardless of a person's color of their skin, their gender, their sexuality, their religious belief, political beliefs we can truly respect.
[00:02:48] Alex: Now, understand this, I'm not saying we have to agree with them because understand, we live in a society where all of us can have our own opinions. We can hold our own opinions to ourselves. We can hold those beliefs. And we don't necessarily have to adopt other people's beliefs and we can still treat them fairly.
[00:03:08] Alex: Right. I tell people all the time, you can be against something and still treat people fairly. I may be against this, but I'm gonna treat you fairly. Right? Oftentimes in our society, when you hear that word against, we associated with hate, and I'm gonna tell you, ah, that's not the case. My friends, I can be against something for me.
[00:03:27] Alex: I'm okay with that for you. I'm okay with that around you. I can hang out with you. That's your belief, that's your lifestyle. That's good for you, just not good for me. But hey, listen, we can get along with everything else and we can even talk about that. And I can say, Hey, that's awesome for you. It just doesn't fit me.
[00:03:44] Alex: But our society tends to not be open to the, if we're really gonna go on this journey of diversity, equity, and we have to do a hell of a job of understanding that against does not always mean hate. It just means that, hey, I'm talking about what's best for me, and how do we do that? Here's how, here's how well we start off by being non-judgmental.
[00:04:06] Alex: I wanna challenge you to start off with tolerance. Just being tolerant. Tolerant of other ideas, tolerant of other people, tolerant of other beliefs, and understand in the process of being tolerant, going along that journey of being culturally curious, just asking questions. I'm not trying to win you over to my side.
[00:04:25] Alex: I'm not trying to make you believe the way I believe. I'm just gonna ask questions to get to understand you a little bit more. This is what I like to call creating a pool. Of shared information. We have a pool of shared information. Some of the information I'll pull and take for myself. Some of it I may leave in the middle of the pool just to know about some things right now.
[00:04:46] Alex: By doing that, creating that pool of shared information and being culturally curious, we can ultimately get over to the land of acceptance. Now, what do I mean by that? I'm talking about accepting of the person for who they are and for their beliefs. I'm not necessarily saying I have to accept their beliefs for myself.
[00:05:03] Alex: But I can still accept that person for who they are, for what they believe, and honor and respect that. If we're able to do that, my friends, we can do a hell of a job of creating belonging environment. But in order to do that, these four emotions that I mentioned in the beginning of this segment that we have to overcome.
[00:05:19] Alex: We have to overcome fear. We have to be willing to face our fears, face our fears of saying the wrong thing, face our fears of looking stupid at times. Face our fears of offending people. If you say things sincerely and honestly, and open trust, people are forgiven. Even if you mess up at times, shit, right?
[00:05:41] Alex: So overcome your fear number one. Then the next one is you gotta overcome shame. Oftentimes, a lot of us are shamed because of what we've learned, because of what we've heard, because of how we were raised, because of what we've done. But you gotta get rid of that. That's in the past. We have a new day getting over our shame so that we can have these kind of conversations and begin to talk about respect, talk about each other, helps us a ton, right?
[00:06:03] Alex: The next one is guilt. Oftentimes we have guilt. Guilt because of how we've benefited from different things in society. Guilt because of how we've treated other people. This is another one that I have to say, you know what? The past is the past. The only thing I can do is move forward now. And so therefore, as we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, I'm gonna do my best to try to get it right.
[00:06:25] Alex: Right. And the last one, my friends, the last one in the segment as we end the segment is sadness. Some people don't want to have these conversations in our industry because they just want to close their eyes and pretend that this kind of shit doesn't happen. To pretend that women aren't sexually harassed, To pretend that nooses, swats and racist objects aren't found on job sites, to pretend that ageism doesn't happen.
[00:06:52] Alex: To pretend that white males aren't discriminated against and viewed as racist at times, all that shit happens. My friends, we categorize and peg people every last one of us, right? So think about this. Doesn't matter who you are, what you look like, age, skin, color, gender, sexuality. At times you face discrimination.
[00:07:11] Alex: At times you face racism. At times you face being pushed aside and excluded. If we could come on the same side of the table and begin to understand that it's us, all of us in the construction industry against the problem, the problem of harassment, the problem of racism, the problem of sexual harassment, if we can come together on that, my friends.
[00:07:33] Alex: Shit, man. We can create a phenomenal environment and with all people come together, we begin to focus in on the problems and not tear each other down. We become high performing and high functioning teams. We do that. That's where we begin to do, like my arm said, make awesome. When we do that shit, we make awesome happy money.
[00:07:54] Alex: Thanks so much for tuning into the show today, my friends. Looking forward to seeing you in our next segment. Don't forget. I appreciate your watch, and I thank you for tuning in. This was Alex Willis. The CEO of Leadership Surgeon, you've been watching and listening to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the go-to source for leadership development in the construction industry.
[00:08:13] Alex: Hey, I want to challenge you. I want to ask you to subscribe to your favorite podcasting station. I asked you to lead comments. If you have comments, we want to hear what you think about the show. Good, bad, and ugly. Wanna hear it all? And if you have some challenges that you're going through, please share those challenges with us because hey, we are here to help you because we want you to be the best that you can be.
[00:08:36] Alex: So we're giving everything that we have, resources, time. If you have a challenge the problem, write it in us. We guaranteed to help you be the best you can be. Until next time, my friends continue to make awesome happen.