Keep Leading!® LIVE | Denise Hamilton | Indivisible

All right, here we are, everyone. Hello, everyone. Welcome, welcome to Keep Leading Live. I’m Eddie Turner, and I am so excited, I can’t stand it. It’s been two years since I have sat down with a thought leader and done an interview like this. And I miss it. So, I’m excited about the opportunity to come back and do live interviews with you all but even more so, I’m excited about who I have, who I have with me today.So, before I get started, please let us know where you are. We are streaming live to LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. And if you’re joining us from any of those locations, we want to hear from you in the chat. So, please feel free to type in your name and location in the chat, share this link with anyone who you are friends with who might be interested in seeing this live or certainly capturing the replay afterwards. If you ask any questions, we will answer your questions. And in fact, we’re looking forward to this for a variety of reasons including the ability to have the live access.

My guest today is a local Houston celebrity who’s just captured the nation. And she’s doing my interview but she’s done so many other great interviews – Katie Couric, Morning Joe, on and on, just across the media spectrum. And so many people are interested in my guest, Denise Hamilton, because she’s really something special. She’s a thought leader, a speaker, and an author and I am excited to be able to interview Denise Hamilton about her new book Indivisible!

Now, let me tell you a little bit about Denise before I get started. She is someone who has worked for corporations like GE, Apple, IBM, BP, and Meta. You can see her on the news outlets that I mentioned but you can also read her thought leadership in her regular column on MIT Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business Review. She lives here in Houston with her husband and daughter.

So, without any further ado, Denise, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. I can’t believe I’m your inaugural guest to your reboot. It’s exciting.

Oh, my goodness! It absolutely is. Denise, tell us what I left out that people need to know about Denise Hamilton.

Oh, my gosh! I’m obsessed with candy corn. I really love it. I live at the at the people’s side of change. Whether it’s artificial intelligence or remote work or a diversifying workforce, I’m obsessed about how change impacts people and how we can make sure we don’t leave people behind but we bring them along and incorporate them in the positive changes we want for our society.

Wonderful. And listening to you say that, I have to tell you because it’s been a little while since you and I talked, and I got a chance to get reacquainted with you through your words, right? So, we’re friends socially and kind of here and there see each other but to read your book … by the way, thank you for sending me an advanced copy. I appreciate that. One of the things is you know that you’re going to have something good when you’re dealing with a thought leader like yourself but your word choice, your word choice, really I was enamored with that and a lot of the phrases that you use, but before I get into some of the details of your book, tell us this word. You’ve taken a word that … I said this in my social post … that many people learn as not as infant but as kids at school, and you’ve taken this one word and turned it into a call to action. Tell us.

I think it’s a beautiful word ‘indivisible’. And as I thought about it, I thought like do we even know what that means? Have we committed to this as a goal? And I started just thinking about what does being indivisible even look like or feel like. I think very often we get stuck because we settle for a lesser goal, right? It’s not the difficulty of the bigger goal that stops us. It’s the ease and the attractiveness of a lesser goal. And so, what if we revisited this idea, this big lofty idea of being indivisible. I believe if we could be indivisible, we would be indestructible. And the best example, like the metaphor that I use when I think about this word, is the human body. The brain and the heart don’t argue about which one is important, right? They’re both important, right? Your legs are the strongest muscle group in your body but you’re going absolutely nowhere without the tiny little bones in your ears that create balance in your body, right? And so, it’s not about size, it’s not about position, it’s not about numbers. It’s about are you living in your optimal condition and are you bringing those gifts to the whole so the whole can do anything. And a body that is working optimally can climb mountains, can go to the moon, can have a baby, can do just incredible, incredible things. So, what can we do to make sure that each and every member of our society is contributing and has the space and the room to be the best that they can be and wouldn’t we all be better off if every part was operating optimally? That’s what it means to be indivisible to me.

Awesome! Very good. Thank you for sharing that. And I’m glad you clarified that when you said if the brain and the heart don’t argue about which one is more important, because at first what I just heard is that they don’t argue, my mind immediately went to some times before I met my wife where there were some people I was sweet on and my brain and my heart were definitely arguing. So, good, that is so, so true.I want to acknowledge we have a few folks that have joined us on Facebook. Jordan Michael Thomas has joined us and he says hello. He’s sending his greetings. And on LinkedIn, Jayvon Hamilton is joining us. So, excited to read this incredible book. So, thank you for joining us and letting us know that you are here.

Now, I was talking about just some of the things that you said in your book. By the way, congratulations on some really high-profile endorsements. I mean when you have Adam Grant, and for those who may not know, a Wharton professor, New York Times bestselling author, five million followers on LinkedIn saying that … in fact, I think I wrote the quote down about what your book is. He says that “In a world dominated by division, this book is a force for unity.” And not only did he say that in endorsing your book but tell people what list he put your book on.

He named me one of the 12 most anticipated books of 2024.

Yeah.

I’m still tingling. I’m still tingling. I think there is no greater gift than the gift of your attention, right? There’s just nothing else you can give me that matters more. And to have someone like Adam who has been so generous and so supportive of my work and my words, it’s just blown me away. It’s been incredible. And it’s a lesson, right? It’s a lesson. When I think about him and I think about the support that he’s given to this work, I think about the ability that we all have to share the stage to just pull somebody into your space and you think, yes, Adam is a big famous person but you have the capacity to pull someone in and share the stage as well whether it’d be an internship, whether it’d be supporting scholarships, whether it’d be taking a risk on that person that you want to invest in and mentor. We all have the capacity to kind of lean in and touch the lives of someone else. And he’s been incredibly kind and I feel convicted to make sure that I pay that support forward.

Phenomenal. Excellent, Denise.And I want to acknowledge that someone has highlighted a point that I don’t let past that I want to come back to that you said. William Gadison has joined us from LinkedIn and he is put in here the quote that you made – “If we can be indivisible, we can be indestructible.”

I believe it. I just believe it. I think that we spend so much energy and time arguing with each other, we have lost our focus. It’s become more about winning than about being effective. I don’t care who wins. I want the best ideas and the best suggestions to rise to the top, right? And part of that has come from a few things. First, there are people who profit from division, right?

Absolutely.

Let’s be really clear about that. There’s a lot of money to be made in fights. And so, we need to understand that there’s a lot of manipulation that happens, but then also, I think we have shifted our thinking in this country. We need to act more like owners than renters. Now, what do I mean by that? What does an owner do? An owner, because they are committed to the long-term viability of an asset, they fix all the stuff that’s not sexy, all the stuff you don’t see. They fix the crack in the foundation, the plumbing, they do the electrical work, anything that’s going to make sure this property lasts forever, right? What do renters do? They use peel and stick tile. They are here for the temporary extraction of value from the asset. And there’s nothing wrong with being a renter. We just need more owners. We are overrun with renters, people that seek to just get only their own personal gain out of this environment. And I just believe if we had more people that acted like owners, there’s a whole host of conversations we wouldn’t even have. We wouldn’t argue about whether or not we should give lunches to school children, right? That’s not an argument that we would have because we understand they’re not your children, they’re our children. I have a recurring nightmare like a theme that keeps coming up in my life that I believe that the cure for cancer has already been found, it’s already been developed. It’s just born in the wrong neighborhood, because if you’re born in the wrong neighborhood, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, how gifted you are, whatever. You’re going to have a difficult time getting that brilliance to share with the world. I don’t know about you. I can’t have enough brilliance. Give me all the genius we can access. I don’t think we can afford to waste human capacity, right? I want all the juicy goodness of your gifts and your talents and your abilities. And I can’t get that if we have these artificial ridiculous barriers that won’t let us be great. Absolutely not. So, yes, I believe that we would be unstoppable if we could figure out how to actually work together. We have a congress right now that is poised to go down in history as the least effective, least productive congress in US history. The only one that it has outpaced right now is the congress that met during the Depression, that only met five times. Think about that. We have more information, more resources, more everything than at that time in history. Why are we so unproductive? And I think it’s unproductive because we’re more concerned with winning than we are about fixing, building, enhancing. I think of this country as a big house, a big old beautiful house with great bones that we’ve inherited. We’re heirs, right? And so, it’s our turn to update the kitchen and remodel the bathroom and make sure that the landscaping is going well. That’s on us, right? Instead, what we have is a bunch of people that are moving through this country like extractors, right? Not only have they given up their responsibility of planting trees for the next generation, they’re trying to pluck up the trees somebody else planted because it’s all me, me, me, me, me. And when we move like that, you kill the golden goose. That’s what happens. And we have this wonderful opportunity to write the next chapter of America. And I just don’t think it should be a rehash of chapter nine. I think it should be moving forward. What do you think?

Moving forward indeed. And I love that chapter in your book Denise. And I closely relate it as you talk about getting to the solutions. There’s two points I wanted to ask you about. The first is one that really resonated, the statement that you made that we’re attracted to people who use our shorthand. And you set it up by talking about gamers and a pair of Chanel shoes. Tell us about that and how that leads to this bigger point you’re talking about.

Yeah, I think that we really underestimate how easy it is to be tribal, how easy it is to kind of stay in our own groups and pick people that look like us. When I work with organizations, I’ve worked with hundreds of organizations over the years, and we look at who they’ll pick as an intern. And very often, they’ll say “He reminded me of myself,” right? Well, of course, you’re going to perpetuate the same populations because you’re looking for people that remind you of yourself. And why do we do that? Because it’s efficient. It’s efficient. I think if we have a similar background, we have a shorthand, we all speak the same language. If I say Tory Burch flats, there’s a group of people that have no idea what I’m talking about and there’s a group that are like “Say less. I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

They light up.

It’s effective, right?

Yes.

Homogeneous groups make faster decisions and they’re happier with them. That’s hard to beat, Eddie. So, basically that’s efficiency and high morale. Now, notice I didn’t say they make the right decisions. They don’t make better decisions. The best decisions come out of diverse groups but homogeneous groups feel good and familiar, it feels cozy and comfy. And so, that’s really attractive. It’s a shorthand. It’s like Name That Tune. I can name that song in three notes. So, who wants to do the work of going to talk to the Immigrant on our team? And I I’ve heard that he’s smart but his accent is so thick and it’s just easier for me to ask Bill to go to lunch.

Yes.

So, we skip over that person. Little do we know he is a complete genius and if we had a better relationship with him, our work would be 10Xed, right? So, we have to understand and acknowledge the places where this work is hard and overcome that. And I don’t think we do a great job of that. We kind of do a lot of “Be good. Be nice. Be kind to everyone” but we don’t really parse why is this work hard, why is this goal of inclusion so difficult. And it’s because of things like this, of this desire to kind of operate on familiarity. It’s like they say ships are safest in the port but that is not what ships are for, right?

That’s not what they’re built for. Got to get out and navigate the water.

You are completely … with people that are just like you but if you’re really going to 10X your giftedness, you need some agitation, you need some challenge, you need somebody that’s going to stretch, you need to interact with people who have different ways of thinking, who see things totally different then you see them. That’s going to sharpen your argument, sharpen your vision. And going back to that owner-renter metaphor, if I’m an owner, I don’t care what is going to make the best result. I just want the best result. So, I don’t care if it’s your idea, it’s my idea, if it’s that vendor or if it’s that artisan. Whoever has the best solution, that’s the one I want, but when you’re a renter and you’re only extracting your individual value, it’s all about what is my immediate win. I have to be number one. So, we now have a culture where saying no and being opposed to … we celebrate the dismantling of things, not the building of things. What society can continue like that? We have to be building. And then who gets to build? What are we building? Those are the conversations I want to be in and I think we need to all be in if we’re going to survive AI because AI is coming, right? And I think artificial intelligence is such an interesting force in these discussions of being indivisible. We’re going to have to be very clear about what it means to be human, right? What does it mean …

To be human in the digital world.

Right, but what does that even mean and when you have AI that can write a symphony?

Yes.

Right? So, we have to lean into our humanity, not lean out. And so, this idea of our interconnectedness, I think, is just incredibly important. I think of us as like we’re all sitting in a big stadium, right? And if everyone drops a couple pieces of trash at their feet, that stadium is completely wrecked, it is a horror show, but the flipside is equally true. What if everybody bent down and picked up the trash around their feet? It’s an entirely different experience. We need more people to bend down and do the five feet around them and be committed and take ownership of the success or the failure of this American experiment.

Absolutely. And as we do that, I want to get to this idea that you mentioned about, doing that by moving from the middle, but I want to just share. I did not share the images before. Jordan Michael Thomas, I want to say another thank you to him. He sent you some love with a heart. Javon Hamilton, we want to acknowledge her as well. And we had mentioned William Gadison. And then my wife who has only joined another, one other person who she thought wow. So, she was excited when she saw you. So, she’s excited to learn from you as is Summer Owens. So, Summer Owens, thank you for sharing that you love the metaphors that Denise is sharing.So, yes, Denise, this idea of moving from the middle, as you talked about how we can do this to move forward, and we deal with AI and being interconnected, how does the move … in fact, let me ask you this about the move from middle principal. You bring your husband into this. I thought it was just a beautiful story. And, by the way, kudos to him because he is a bold man who did something very, very courageous. So, tell us about that and how that moving from the middle relates.

I think that we have done a lot of work over the years in DEI. I think that there have been brave people, committed people that have jumped in and who have worked to get us to this point, but I also think that it’s time for our generation to take the next step forward. We have a lot of language. Even the language of DEI centers one group. Diverse from who? Equal to who? Included by who? It still puts one group at the center with everyone trying to do whatever they can to get into the center. And what my feeling is, is that there is no center. There’s no middle. We’re all equal. We’re all valuable. How do we shift that whole Paradigm of centering any one group or any one culture? And my husband actually did this. He had an employee that was a Muslim. And the nature of his work is that his staff has to go on site to different locations all the time. So, it’s a high level of trust that you’re actually doing your work. You’re not just sitting at a local diner having a cup of coffee. And so, he came back to his office and he saw one of his employees sitting in the truck and it looked like his eyes were closed. It looked like he was sleeping. And you can imagine how frustrated he was like “Wait a minute. I trust you to do your job and you’re in your car sleeping.” And he walks up to the car and as he gets closer, he says “Oh no, he’s not sleeping. He’s praying.” And it was cold outside. So, he asked him to roll down the window. He’s like “What are you doing?” He said “Oh, I’m praying. My religion asked me to pray several times a day. I know people are very sensitive to it and don’t like my religion. So, I just thought it’d be better for me to do it here.” And he said “Absolutely not. Come on upstairs when you’re done and we’ll talk about it.” And my husband walks upstairs, and it was holiday time, and he walks past a whole lobby full of Christmas decorations that have been up for a month. He walks into the elevator and he sees more Christmas decorations. He walks into his office. There are more Christmas decorations. And he thought “How ironic. This is really unacceptable.” So, when the gentleman came upstairs, he found him a room and he said “This is your space to pray.” And he made him a sign that says “Do not disturb.” If we can make room for a month of Christmas, we can make room for a few minutes of your prayers, right? And that’s what it’s all about. It is understanding that we center ourselves. The stuff that we like, we figure out a way to do it, Eddie. We figure out a way to justify it to make it okay. You and I live in a hunting country. And I’ve worked with a lot of oil and gas companies. And it’s a miracle how many meetings are cancelled around deer season, right? All of a sudden, they figure out how to move the schedules around because it’s hunting season and we got to go, we can’t have that meeting at that weekend or that date, right? We make the things that we want to do make sense, right?

As one great person said “For everything we want to do, we make time. For everything else, we make an excuse.”

Exactly. It cost him nothing to accommodate this gentleman’s prayers.

I love what your husband did. That was courageous. And I think also it’s the realization of how much we ask other people to adapt to us, to our way of thinking, our religion, our race, our culture, our practices. We ask people … I’m a woman of a certain age and I came up where everybody had to play golf. You had to play golf. If you can’t play golf, then you’re not going to be able to do business because business is happening on the golf course. And I don’t like golf. I got stuff to do. I can’t stand like “What are we doing out here? Are we going to be out here all day?” I don’t like it but this idea that we make people adapt to what we like, right? And so, how do we shift that to make room for different ways of doing business, different ways of having meetings and interactions. And it’s being conscious that your way is not the only way. You are not the center. Move from the middle.

Absolutely. Well, I also love the story about what your husband did in terms of saving your family. So, he’s just been a workman who’s doing some great things that tie together with this whole concept. So, I love it.I want to share and acknowledge the fact as we’re moving toward our winddown, we’ve got a couple minutes left, that Nikesha Brown, she says she’s enjoying your analogies. She’s another great leader here in the Houston area. So, excited to see her joining us from LinkedIn. And you’re getting some emojis from Dr. Pearly Eatman, someone who’s known me since I was literally probably second or third grade. She was a librarian who kept us all out of trouble and taught us what we’re supposed to be doing.

We love Librarians.

We love librarians. So, thank you to everybody who’s joined us.So, as we move into the final two minutes, feel free to tell us that you’re here, where you’re located in the chat, ask a question of Denise. If we got time, we’ll take one and then also continue to let her know that you love what she’s saying with emoticons. And follow her.

So, the last thing I want to ask you is your favorite quote. On the Keep Leading!® Podcast, I always want to know what’s a quote that you use to help you keep leading.

Experts fail because they are experts in a world that no longer exists. We have a changing, dynamic ever moving world. And if you hang on to old ways, you will not be able to adapt to new realities. And the world is changing. And one of the challenges that I see … obviously, I’m in my 50s. I have a lot of friends in 50s. And I’ve seen people pull back and cede the ground and it’s like “No, no, no, we need to be right in here. We need to be learning all the tools and the tricks and the things because our voices matter.” And we need to be a part of modern conversations. And you can’t do that if you’re trying to do things the way we did it in 1983. And we have to evolve. So, I want our expertise to shine and I want us to feel empowered to be a part of these discussions, not left behind in them. So, yeah, that’s my quote. And as a wrap, there’s one thing I want to say to anybody that’s listening, there’s two enemies of an indivisible future and that’s hopelessness and helplessness. And I think we are the most powerful people on the face of the earth. We’ve never had more information and tools and resources. yet we’re the loneliest we’ve ever been. We’re the most disconnected that we’ve ever been. We have to lean into our humanity. And if you remember my muse, Harriet Tubman, couldn’t read, couldn’t write, had a disability, didn’t have a horse, didn’t have a map, didn’t know anybody in the north, had never been more than a mile from the plantation and she ran.

She did.

And not only did she run to freedom, she turned around and came back and got other people. She did it over and over and over again for a total of about 70 people over the course of years. And we don’t have less than Harriet Tubman had in the 1800s. We don’t. We have more. So, I just want to challenge us to reject hopelessness and helplessness. We are capable and we have to believe that we can change the world. I believe that the only people that can change the world are the ones who think they can. So, just remember, my big message for today. No more hopelessness. No more helplessness. Leaning into our authentic actual power to be indivisible.

All right. Well, I want to acknowledge Ms. Eatman there. Thank you, Ms. Eatman.Folks, Denise Hamilton, she’s phenomenal. Her book is being released on February the 6th. Visit her website DeniseHamilton.io to pick up your copy …

Or you go to Indivisible Now.

Indivisible Now.

Yeah. And you can buy from an independent bookseller. We love supporting independent bookstores. Barnes & Noble has a pre-order promotion going on today. So, if you’re a member at Barnes & Noble, that’s a great place to get it today or you can get on Amazon.

Phenomenal. Thank you, Denise. And I want to extend another thank you to everybody who tuned in and joined us and who acknowledged that they were here. We appreciate you. It just warms our heart.And as always, everybody, I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is action. It’s not just something that’s just idle. It’s not a garment that we put on and take off. Whatever we’re doing, we should always allow it to emanate from us. So, whatever you’re doing today, always keep leading.