A Dog Called Diversity
A Dog Called Diversity
Creating Safe Spaces for All.....with Martin King
What if your workplace could be someone's only safe space to exist authentically? Martin King, founder of Pride Pledge, reveals how organisations can become sanctuaries for rainbow communities in ways that transform lives and businesses alike.
After nearly three decades in corporate HR roles, Martin experienced burnout that led to an epiphany. His passion for creating inclusive environments could become his purpose. Seven years ago, he founded Pride Pledge, now New Zealand's largest rainbow workplace inclusion consultancy, helping organisations of all sizes to create safer spaces for LGBTIQ+ people and customers.
Martin challenges our assumptions about where people feel safest to be themselves. "Our workplaces actually have the power to be the safest place for our queer communities," he explains, noting that many rainbow people must hide their identities outside work. This perspective shifts how we understand workplace inclusion—not as a nice-to-have initiative, but potentially as someone's lifeline.
The conversation explores how authentic leadership creates psychological safety. When leaders share aspects of themselves—whether it's their family responsibilities, cultural backgrounds, or sexual orientations—they signal that bringing one's whole self to work is valued. "Vulnerability is strength, not weakness," Martin emphasizes, explaining how this openness leads to innovation, better decisions, and richer conversations.
Against the backdrop of concerning global rollbacks in LGBTIQ+ rights, Martin offers hope and practical strategies: comprehensive training programs, inclusive policies, gender affirmation leave, measurement frameworks, and certification models. His mantra that "the rainbow creates a halo" reminds us that organizations visibly committed to LGBTIQ+ inclusion naturally become more attractive to all diverse talent.
Ready to make your workplace a beacon of inclusion? Connect with Pride Pledge to discover how small changes can create profound impact for your people, and your organisation.
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Welcome to A Dog Called Diversity, and this week I have Martin King from Pride Pledge. Welcome to the podcast, martin.
Speaker 2:Thanks, lisa, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to have you here because I love seeing your work out in the world. I love seeing the things you do with organizations and I'm all about supporting organizations as well, so it's so lovely to have you here. Would you share a little bit about yourself and also Pride Pledge and the work you do at Pride Pledge?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, you can see I've got a little rainbow lapel pin no-transcript in the Bay of Plenty called Whakatane, which is a Māori place name. It's a beautiful little beachside town. Great to grow up, but being out and proud as a queer person also challenging.
Speaker 2:I moved back to Auckland because of that Auckland University, did an HR degree and really my whole career has been mainly focused on generalist HR. So, nearly coming up 30 years I know hard to believe Lisa, but I started in HR, stayed in HR, I did lots of work in the talent acquisition space, generalist roles, reward roles and in the latter part of my career really really dawned on me that diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging were actually always my passion. But we didn't necessarily have words for it back then, it was just kind of the way I led. So my passion's been supporting organizations to create high performance teams, highly engaged work forces and, fortunate for me, that whole time I've been able to be out as a gay man my whole career. I've never been in the closet since the age of 17 and that was amazing because that enabled me to be out and to role model and to lead authentically in the HR space around bringing your whole self to work and not compromising, but also that really shapes the work that I do now with Pride, pledge, because it didn't really dawn on me that that wasn't also normal, that being out and queer in senior HR executive roles for big globals, which I ended up being, is not something you see all the time.
Speaker 2:So what dawned on me is that I had this privilege, I had this power to influence and to shape other organisations. I had this power to influence and to shape other organizations. So seven years ago I left the corporate HR world. I was in a global HR chief people officer role and I actually burnt out, which is kind of a sad story, a very real story for lots of senior HR executives in global roles. Yeah, common common.
Speaker 2:And I never thought that was going to happen to me. Right, I was bulletproof, I was you know all of that stuff, but it did. And when I woke up the next morning and thought, well, what am I going to do, I was like I need to do something. That's all about purpose, all about people and all about what I'm passionate about the three Ps, I suppose. And funny enough, then we added two more P's and that was Pride Pledge.
Speaker 2:So Pride Pledge was born of the idea that any organisation, any workplace, whether you're a big multinational or the local supermarket or cafe or bar or restaurant or tourism operator, that you should be able to make a difference to creating a safe space for rainbow people, staff and customers, small or big. And so at the time, my husband and my family, we were living in Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand, often seen as what we call the adventure capital of the world, but also really as a beautiful resort in the mountains, and living there at the time it was amazing. We just had great community engagement, lots of businesses wanted to get on board, joined Pride Pledge. We started with training, started helping with policy, and then it just expanded.
Speaker 2:Seven years later, we are now new zealand's largest rainbow workplace inclusion consultancy. We've worked with our biggest corporates, government departments, um banks and um and institutions, and all we do at private each every day is help organizations be better tomorrow, um. So yeah, my husband works with me. We're a small queer little family business and we have one other person Um, he's a amazing queer trans man Um and he supports us with our um inclusion workshops. So we'll talk all about that. So that's a lot.
Speaker 1:That is a lot, but um, there was a lot in there I wanted to talk about Firstly. I didn't know that your husband was in your business with you. So, that's super cool. And how does that work out? Did you have to go through like a teething period?
Speaker 2:Well, no, like I suppose it's really interesting. I kind of go you know, husbands that gym together stay together, husbands that parent together stay together, husbands that work together can stay together too. So, just for the record, we just celebrated 30 years together this year. So we've built our home together, our family together, our wealth together and now our business together. It just worked. He's actually an educator and he worked as a teacher for 20 years and in leadership roles in education, so there's a really nice synergy. I was an HR professional, our skill sets kind of complement, but actually he does all the back end the website, the accounts, the administration, the membership database, all those things so that I can front clients and be. So it's really, really nice. And he also is there, he um, to do the family stuff when I'm busy, um, and he picks up that and honestly, it's just a beautiful rhythm that we've got and we're very lucky nice, so nice.
Speaker 1:Um, I wanted to ask you about being burnt out in people roles and I think, I think probably when I left the corporate world. I don't know if I would have said. I probably wouldn't have described myself as burnt out. I think I would have described myself as just completely fed up um and yeah, I want.
Speaker 1:I wondered yeah, was there a tension between you? Know you want to do things that are purpose-driven and purposeful, and sometimes you don't get to do those things in senior people roles. Sometimes it's about other stuff. Was that your experience as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a little bit of both. One thing I was always really clear about is I was never, ever going to compromise my integrity and my values for an organisation, and that's really hard in people's roles because it's a fine line right. So transformation, redundancies, even terminating employees through, you know, disciplinary processes, can be a very fine line in terms of how you feel as a professional doing that. And so the bottom line for when I left the corporate world, it was very much around absolutely this is not me. I'm not going to put my brand I had a high profile in the corporate HR world in New Zealand and I'm not going to put your organization brand before mine. This is not going to happen.
Speaker 2:So really poor decisions around people globally compromising on, you know, employment relations, legislative compliance for the sake of profit. And you know look, before that job, I was HR director for New Zealand and the Pacific for Coca-Cola. That was an amazing company, amazing brand. We genuinely cared about our people. I had an incredible team of HR experts and budget to do amazing things with.
Speaker 2:I never felt that at Coke. I never felt that I ever had to compromise, doing the right thing by our people. I felt compromised around the value proposition in terms of sugary soft drinks and how that played out and the reality of the media and things. But this company was just about making profit at all costs, privately owned all white men around the board table. I wasn't helping that diversity mix. I happen to be gay, but I'm still a white man and that was just too much and I said no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to make decisions, I'm not going to support them and I'm not also going to shy away from putting it at the board table and saying these are our issues, these are our risks. You need to be aware of them. And that was what burnt me out in the end. It just got too much, too stressful.
Speaker 1:Yep Makes sense.
Speaker 2:Fed up, I got fed up with stupid conversations that you shouldn't have to have about basic integrity and ethics and yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. Um, and one of the comments I just wanted to make is uh, when, when I first started working in a dedicated diversity, equity and inclusion role uh, for a global company, I very quickly had to learn the acronyms the, the LGBTIQ plus, and I know there's letters I've left out which are not inclusive but what I've loved but I've loved in new zealand. Like we don't do that, we just say the rainbow community and that encompasses everyone and I just really love that.
Speaker 1:I really love it, yeah, well look, we do in our training.
Speaker 2:We talk about the acronym and we've expect we have expanded the acronym, but we give people try and help people go. You know, look, trying to get the acronym right for 90% of people is too complicated. You don't need to. If someone sees it or you read it, you need to know what it means. But Rainbow is about including all identities, sex, gender and sexuality diversity in the spirit of trying to be inclusive rather than getting it wrong and getting confused and looking like an idiot. Um, so and more so now, definitely here and depending on where you are listening. Around the world, the term queer is also being reclaimed and young people are using the term queer to be inclusive of identities and fluidity and nuances, and even I'm getting used to getting comfortable with the term queer all the time, but it's definitely here and it's a pretty amazing and powerful term. So expect to hear more and more about queer being used rather than the acronym, and rainbow too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had someone in our rainbow ERG, in that organization I just spoke about, who said, lisa, you can use queer. And I was like, oh, I don't, I don't know if I can. And he's like, no, no, you can, it's okay. Because I felt like it was a word that the community uses to represent themselves. But perhaps, if I'm not in the community, I shouldn't um, but I've, I've learned, it's okay which is amazing it's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 2:And the other thing is too. You know, um, we say to our clients all the time it's okay to get it wrong, it's okay to make mistakes. We'd rather that you try and that you lean into the conversation than to retract and and and shy away, and sadly, that's what we see. And I think, um, we'll talk a little bit about the global political environment in the moment, but, you know, rather lean in, make a mistake, making the mistakes, not the problem, it's learning from that and trying again. And I think that's a really important mantra. Not engaging because it's too terrifying to get it wrong, because someone might yell at you, is the worst thing we can have as communities. We need allies to speak up and be involved yeah, and.
Speaker 1:And that principle just try it and see what happens. That holds for everything in life when we're trying to learn something new, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah, and any diversity, dimension doesn't matter what we're talking about, right we? Um, we should all be. I always say we should all be curious, um, what we love about what we're talking about, right, we, we should all be. I always say we should all be curious. What we love about what we do is trying to dial up curiosity. Like you know, you come to a rainbow occlusion workshop. You're not going to walk away being perfect, but hopefully you'll be more inclined to jump on Google and go. I've never heard that before. Or did you know? You know, and same with learning about our indigenous populations, our different ethnicities, different cultures, different languages. You know, don't go to France and not try and speak French. Give it a go. Yeah, you know, just try. What's the worst that can happen? Yes, the person might bite your head off because you didn't know how to say. You know, ask for a baguette, but most people don't. Most people are kind and will appreciate the effort.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that has been completely my experience in France.
Speaker 2:So I'm with you A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wanted to talk a bit about and get your views on what's been going on, particularly this year a little bit last year, but particularly this year and you know, for me, when I look to the United States often they are leading the way in a lot of diversity and inclusion work and they have for many years because of racial discrimination and structural discrimination that's existed in the US, but certainly for the queer community. We've had a lot of support and rallies that have, I guess, come out of San Francisco that's a very well-known part of the US for supporting the rainbow queer community. But it's all been turned upside down this year and it's it's kind of to the point. I'm finding it really upsetting to watch, to watch it, and so I can't imagine, if you're part of that community, how much more upsetting it is. What are you seeing, I guess, in new zealand and what's the impact that you're seeing, I guess, from what's happening in the US?
Speaker 1:Yeah it's a tough question, it's a big question.
Speaker 2:It's a tough one, so lots the reality is that we do look to. The US. Lgbt human rights movement started Stonewall riots, new York, 1969. That's where the whole pride movement started. It is the home of Pride that we all celebrate around the world today. Without that moment where trans women of colour fought for my rights as a cis, white, gay man, to even to be married, to exist, we wouldn't be having this conversation. So Pride is deeply rooted in US and diversity, queer inclusion, is right. So what we're seeing now this huge about turn and and weaponizing trans communities and and erasing queer identities it's horrendous and it's traumatic and my news feeds, because of the work that I do, are full of stories from around the world and news and it gets a lot. It's a lot to deal with. So it's hard. It's especially hard for trans, non-binary and genderqueer communities around the world to be seeing that and it's starting to make an impact, even if you're not in the US, in many ways. One, it's loud, it's constant and it's telling people that they're not valid and they can be erased through the law, which is what's happening there.
Speaker 2:What's happening here in New Zealand is a couple of things. One is we are a small little economy on the bottom of the world and lots of our connections economic ties, trade and organisations is with America. America is our second biggest trading partner. Lots of New Zealand companies that we think are New Zealand companies are American owned. We are seeing a rollback of DE&I here right now, despite the fact that our laws haven't changed, our policies haven't changed, our culture hasn't fundamentally changed, but organizations and particularly this month we've seen some US-based privilege clients not renew their annual fees with us. So we're seeing that. The other thing that we're seeing is New Zealand companies hear lots of loud noise from America and they're reacting in ways that we're saying hang on a second. There's no actual change to our legislation, there's no requirement to do this. So what's going on? And so sometimes they're getting a little bit confused. They're not necessarily sometimes overreacting and making adjustments and change almost in anticipation that the same legislation is going to change here. So to some extent that's impacting here.
Speaker 2:Politically. We are seeing noise with our right-wing extreme parties around making some stupid, horrendous and hurtful changes to legislation here. Whether that will even get through, whether it'll happen probably unlikely, but it's possible Probably unlikely, but it's possible. So it's a tough time. I think our view here is that most New Zealand organisations are staying true to their values. Most of our clients are just hunkering down doing the hard work behind the scenes, maybe not being as visible, but they're not giving up, and it is just a minority of organisations that are immediately impacted.
Speaker 2:What we hope is that this is going to blow over in a year or two. Our legislation, our core of our organizations will come through the other side and we'll come out stronger and better. But in the meantime it's causing a lot of hurt, a lot of harm and a lot of hate that is given a platform that it wasn't given in New Zealand before. We're seeing that with anti-Māori. We're seeing that with other anti-DNI, anti-woke conversations that are not targeted towards rainbow. Rainbow it's just a bit of an easy target, but we see that. Look in New Zealand, the removal of, you know, changes in pay equity. You know our government have just wound back generations of fight for women who are in low paid professions to get treated the same. So it's happening to women, it's happening to our indigenous people, maori, here in New Zealand, but it's not the same disabilities yeah, our son is disabled.
Speaker 2:Um, his funding's being questioned and chopped and changed in ways. That's confronting. So what I see here is it's a little bit of moving deck chairs. It's not a sea change. It's just lots of little pokes and little, you know, like lots of pokes and prods and it. It's random and it comes from weird angles and people like oh, I didn't think that was up for discussion in new zealand, where did that come from? Oh, I didn't know that that would impact me.
Speaker 2:So I definitely think, from a rainbow lens, we're not, we're not special. Right now. It's d, I and b across the board and literally no matter what marginalized or diverse group you come from, tomorrow there could be a weird policy change that you're like whoa? That's really confronting.
Speaker 2:So I think it's a challenging time globally. I think we're all impacted by and large. Unless you're a white, straight, cis man, women are absolutely impacted and I think we've just got to really tighten our connects, our collaborating, our sharing and our allyship for all groups so that we can get through and, in two years, come out, actually be better and stronger, but also realise that complacency is really dangerous where we can all go, but in New Zealand, everything's perfect. We're the safest country in the world. We're doing really well with this. We're really liberal. We've got all these human rights, all the rest of it. It can be eroded with a swipe of a pen tomorrow, and that's what's happening in America right now, and it's trickling into little old countries like ours on the bottom end of the world into little old countries like ours on the bottom end of the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like what's happening in the US is giving permission to people who would never have stood up and said the things that they're saying to actually stand up and do that. And you know, part of me goes oh, these are just people who you know they'll go away once the government changes again. But a few weeks ago a man put in a submission I'm going to get this wrong, but to parliament to take away the vote from women.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you're like what?
Speaker 2:The first country in the world for women to get the vote, for women to vote, and that's even on someone's like. What?
Speaker 1:The first country in the world for women to get the vote For women to vote, and that's even on someone's mind, right?
Speaker 2:Never mind, then, put some pen to paper. That's what I don't get.
Speaker 1:Right. And then a number of people posted it on LinkedIn and, of course, women were horrified and men were posting well, that's just some stupid idiot. And I'm like, yeah, but we've got stupid idiots in the US taking away the rights of women to choose to have a baby or not. Um, there's talk of removing gay marriage and now in the US, um, like so you can't, you can't let go of, like you can't let that stuff slide.
Speaker 2:I don't think, and um, no, and that I mean, and that removing the right to vote is is like it's so fundamental in terms of basic human rights, and the bit that I don't get with with that piece, because then it's like okay, this is everything's up for discussion.
Speaker 2:If that's up for discussion, right, right literally like these are our mothers, are our sisters, they're our friends, are our neighbors. Um, well, in this country, we're doing pretty well when it comes to gender balance and um, so hang on, you know. Um, so you know you don't have a right to vote now. You don't have it then. Well, you don't have. A woman can't have bank accounts. Woman can't own property, woman can't be in leadership roles. You know that's a slippery slope to a terrifying world yep, I agree.
Speaker 1:Um, one of the things I often think about is we, we need more leaders with courage. We need need more leaders who stand up. But interestingly often when I'm talking to leaders, they'll say to me oh Lisa, I want to be inclusive, I want to, I want to be a good leader. Just just tell me what to do and I'll do it Right, which is not allyship, because you can't just tell someone what to do and do it. We're not teaching you to drive a car. This is human skills that you have to learn yourself. So I think allyship is really important during this time. And like what are some of the things that you would say to people listening? I don't want stuff to go backwards. I want to support the rainbow community. I want to support the. Support Maori. Go backwards, I want to support the rainbow community. I want to support them, support Maori people. I want to support people. Like, what does that allyship look like?
Speaker 2:cool, it's a really great piece, and I, you know, talked about my journey, being out my whole career and, um, authentically, I've always authentically just being Maori, um, and I didn't realize how powerful that was, and I think the lesson for me is that, pca, you can't teach that it's it's you've got to. Leaders have to be authentically them, but they've got to give a bit of themselves, they've got to let their guard down. Vulnerability is strength. It's not weakness. Um, authenticity as a leader and sharing who you are with your people isn't unprofessional. Um, you know, I think about my time at Coke and, um, it was an immense opportunity to to let be the chief people officer in that business and I.
Speaker 2:There were some takeouts that I hold really dear in what we did there and one of the there are a couple that that blow my mind. So one of our senior leaders had worked there for 25 years. He dropped his children off at school every day and got to work at nine o'clock. His team were always like, oh you know, he just gets in at nine and that's what he does, that's his routine. He'd never told his team that the reason he gets there is because he dropped his three kids off in the morning because that was his job, because his wife was a senior professional in another business. They had to balance juggling the kids. As soon as he told him that they're like oh, you're a parent too, you've got other priorities. He didn't expect us to be in the office at 7am in the morning before him. That was just our perception of him. One of the things we took from that was we got our senior leaders to just talk about something in their lives that was important to them. That was really different.
Speaker 2:My passion is sailing. I love. I'm part of the scouts group. I work in the weekends at a food bank. People have rich, interesting lives that no one ever shared because it was this old school idea of leadership is control. Leadership is power. Professional and personal don't mix and those ideas are all just all redundant. They're really redundant and we know there's new concepts of leadership. Look at the Jacinda Ardern School of Leadership. Our former prime minister, if you don't know, for those joining globally now revered globally as this really inspiring female leader, also really controversial and a lot of people don't like her leadership.
Speaker 2:So my thing is be vulnerable, be authentic, share something of yourself. What I found amazing was the people who were like I've got a child with a disability. I'm actually Māori, even though I don't look Māori. Māori is the indigenous population of New Zealand, but a lot of Māori might have red hair and white skin. You know, for me I'm gay, but I was also adopted at birth. My mother was a child in care and people like, wow, I thought that you went to a private boys school like everyone else on the executive team. No, I went to a small school, a rural community, and I don't have that background. And people are like wow, tell me your story. I'm also adopted. So my message around allyship and authenticity and vulnerability is that we're all intersectional and intersectionality.
Speaker 2:The idea is that we're layers of diversity. None of us are one dimensional. You're not just a white woman with blonde hair. You're a parent. You've traveled and lived all over the world. You've got, you know, all of these rich things without even talking more about it. You know my husband and I we're gay dads, um. We have a child who's also pacifica, um, so he's Polynesian heritage. He's also intellectually disabled and autistic. So we live in this very. My husband's also African, not, um. So we live in this crazy diverse little household which is a microcosm, but for people to think about me on the surface.
Speaker 2:If I didn't open up about that, people like, oh, you're just another with cis straight. They might even think I'm straight. I'm like what? No, I'm not straight, don't know where you got that, but nevertheless. Um, so allyship is just something about. You give it up, open up, share it, and what you do is you create a safe space for someone else to snuggle up under, and it doesn't matter. Diversity is not a competition between dimensions, and what I mean by that is no matter what the diversity dimension is that you're opening up about. That creates a safe space for someone else to open up about something about them that you didn't know. It creates rich, high-performing cultures and teams.
Speaker 2:I can bring my whole self to work. You value my background, you respect that, you want it, you value it. You want me to share that lived experience and, honestly, I can't imagine working in an organization and having teams that didn't want to be that. It makes no sense. You don't innovate, you don't get better decisions, you don't have rich, interesting conversations, and so you know. That's my message.
Speaker 2:All boats float on a rising tide. I'm a sailor, by the way. I'm a captain. I love sailing. I'm a sailor, by the way, I'm a captain, I love sailing. I always say gays can sail as well. Wow, that's amazing, I didn't know gay people could captain boats. Look at you, you know. It's that piece of you. Know, if I improve outcomes for women, if I improve outcomes for disabled people, that improves outcomes for everyone. You might like this. I don't know if you know this, but anyone who deals with Pasifika cultures, from Hawaii right through to Aotearoa, new Zealand, we have this saying in Te Reo Māori. It goes like this he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. It is the people, it is the people, it is the people, it is the people. Our job as d and I hr professionals no matter what part of that ultimately our organizations are about people, and I love that maori proverb because fundamentally, that's what it comes back to, right um? But I think sometimes we just need to remind ourselves of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, and I wanted to pick up on a couple of things that you were talking about. So the first was about being vulnerable and you clearly demonstrated how to do it. You shared so much of yourself, which was amazing. But sometimes I work with leaders and they're like I don't want to tell everyone. I work with everything about me and it's like that's okay and I often talk about there's a spectrum of vulnerability and there's a spectrum of people who are very, you know, around their willingness to share. So for you, you're very high on sharing everything about you. I am up there as well.
Speaker 2:So I have a child with a disability.
Speaker 1:Your daily posts I let you on this morning about your jeans, I love that it's just well you know, because LinkedIn won't share anything else about what my work. I actually do, so trying something different trying something. No, it's great, right um but I'm very open and vulnerable right, and so people connect with me easily. But some leaders aren't comfortable and what I say is like you don't, you don't have to be right down the end of Martin and I, you could just start with oh, actually I dropped my kids off at school yes that's not.
Speaker 1:That's not too open and vulnerable and emotional. So you start with that and when you start with that, it's a great example.
Speaker 2:Right, it's just a simple thing. It's like oh, you're human, you have children, you've got other responsibilities out of work, which means that you might not be clock watching like I thought you might be. You might value family time, which means that if we're planning work events that after five o'clock might not suit you as a dad as much as you know, then having to argue, hang on. This doesn't suit parents, not just about women, but we know it disproportionately affects women as caregivers. Having after work events and networking drinks and golf and those things. But that just already shifts that conversation. It's a great example of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that one's not too hard, and then you get some confidence. Go, oh, that wasn't too bad. I didn't give up my power as a leader.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm still the leader, you know, or?
Speaker 2:even you know, like the caring responsibilities, when I always say, you know, often we focus on young people, but lots of us have I got called the sandwich generation. I mentioned to you earlier before the recording. You know we've got elderly parents who now, you know, on both sides of our families and very ill and vulnerable, and so that's another whole dimension. So even if you were to say, hey look, I'm leaving early today I've got to pick up my dad from hospital because they're going for an appointment, they're like whoa, you've got aging parents. That's amazing. You're doing a little door open to the fact you're a little bit more human.
Speaker 2:I say to leaders, this might be confronting to all the leaders out there, and I used to say this to my colleagues as kind of the coaching element of my HR leadership role was. You know, every time you go to the toilet, people notice and they're like what do you mean? I'm like you're on show Everything you do or you don't do. Everyone in your team notice and they're like that's disgusting. And I'm like, no, it's just just the reality. How many times have you been to the toilet today?
Speaker 2:Every time you go to the toilet, if someone notices, so think about turning that into something else. Someone notices, so they stop noticing you, go to the toilet, yeah, um, you know, like it's that simple bit of those. You always know these leaders right, who walk past everyone's desks every day and never say good morning, versus that leader who doesn't have to say hello to everyone, but they'll stop intermittently at different people's desks and just check in and say, hi, yeah, how hard is it? Hang around the coffee machine for extra five minutes, maybe. Just offer to make someone a coffee and they'll be like, oh no, no, you're super busy and you're like no no, it's fine.
Speaker 2:Hey, what do you want? I can make a coffee. Those little moments of magic yeah as leaders make immense difference to your credibility, or you're all of a sudden just a cool person. Doesn't matter all the bad things you might do for the rest of the year, you've got some brownie points, you know, yeah yeah, I often talk about that as the leadership shadow.
Speaker 1:What you say do measure act. All of those things have to be congruent.
Speaker 2:Um on that note, lisa, just to bring it back to a little bit about rainbow before we maybe move topics I do want to emphasize to to queer leaders um, I know that sometimes it's hard and depending on your age I mean, I'm turning 50 this year I'm kind of this borderline, you know, being out and proud and in organizations, um, it can be really hard.
Speaker 2:But don't underestimate the impact you can have as an out queer leader on young queer people in your organization and queer people across the board at them, feeling that safe for them to be out, the, that rainbow leadership shadow you can create is immensely powerful. And again, you don't have to share your whole life story. You don't have to share what you do in the weekends just by the people in the organization knowing, like in my case, hey, I'm married to a man, I'm, I've got a husband, um, or that I'm a parent. I know that other young queer people in my last organisation said they didn't, maybe they were thinking of leaving the organisation because they didn't know that being a queer parent, if they were thinking about having a family, would even be supported, you know. So out role models as queer leaders is really really enormous and we don't have that many, yet We've still got a lot of work to do.
Speaker 1:No, you know where I saw that, where I think it was the most important was in Singapore, or in Asia generally, because, particularly in multinational organizations where you might have queer people employed, um, often those organizations are the safest place for queer people to be, and it's the place that queer people can be themselves and be out. So, um, I had a transgender woman come on the podcast. I've had to take her episode down because her family and friends she was getting terrible bullying, harassment about it. It was awful. But she came on the podcast with her manager, uh, who is a gay man lovely, lovely man, um, and they talked about the process of her being able to transition gender at work and some of the practical things they did at work, and so that was a safe place for her.
Speaker 1:So at work she was a woman. She appeared as a woman, dressed as a woman, had all her emails changed, all of that. It was beautiful. But on the way home she would have to get changed to live in her house, and in Singapore a lot of people don't live out of home. They stay in their family home until they're married, and so it was a very difficult circumstance for her.
Speaker 1:So what you're saying holds true in New Zealand and Australia but in other countries where it's not as safe. It's really important in the workplace is safe.
Speaker 2:It's really important in the workplace. Yeah, I say to organizations all the time you know, often we think you know that people might be out to their friends or family at home in their community and they come to work and then they hide who they are at work and they're in the closet at work. That's not always the case. It can actually be the reverse, that our workplaces actually have the power to be the safest place for our queer communities, because when they go home, when they leave, they actually have to go back into the closet. And I think that that can seem totally counterintuitive. But I don't think our organizations until I mean I've been doing dedicated rainbow D&I work now specifically actually for 16 years, focused purely on that dimension, nearly 30 years doing D&I work now specifically actually for 16 years, focused purely on that dimension, nearly 30 years doing D&I and B across the board. But that bit is quite confronting to organizations because they were like they've never really stopped and thought about that, like, oh, but like our job, you know what do you mean? Like we can make it safe for people to be out here, regardless of whether they're out outside of work. That seems really crazy and you're like queer people need somewhere to be safe. It doesn't matter where that is. It could be in the rugby team, for all you know. It could be at church, it could be at work, it could be at the gym. Just one space to be safe can be enough to save someone's life. Be that place.
Speaker 2:There's also a saying, too, that it only takes one safe person one Lisa, one Mari, one you to enable that person to be seen and safe across all aspects of their life. They just need one adult who loves them and cares and supports them to get them through those tough times and those moments when they don't feel that. So that can be you. That's allyship. Whether you're queer or not, you can still be an ally for queer I'm. I'm an ally for trans, non-binary, genderqueer and other. Identities aren't privileged. Like me, we can all still be allies. You don't have to sit outside the rainbow to ally yeah, would you talk about it is heavy.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering. I want to celebrate some of the things that our organisations are doing, and the reason I want to get you to talk about that is that our workplaces, our organisations, are now the most trusted institutions in our societies trusted more than governments, than the media, than not-for-profits and I don't know if organisations all realise that responsibility they now have about caring for their people. So I wondered would you talk about, maybe not your clients, but some of the projects that people have put in place with you that have really made a difference for the Rainbow community?
Speaker 2:Yeah, look gosh, we every day we get to do amazing work with clients and there's so many incredible clients and they're often not even brands or industries or sectors that people I mean we work in the building industry, we work in engineering, we work airlines, um, I mean, uh, banks, um, gyms, you know. So you know, queer people exist in every industry, every sector, every organisation. That's a newsflash to some people. So there's lots of hard work happening all the time. Honestly, our connected community of organisations, our vision here is that in New Zealand, we can have the safest, most welcoming and inclusive workforce in the world, and I genuinely believe that that vision is possible here in New Zealand. We have all the right ingredients. We really do A little bit of a bumpy ride right now, a bit of turbulence, but that we just buckle up and we'll get through the turbulence and then we'll take our seatbelts off. So what are we doing? Immense levels of training. We train thousands and thousands of people in workplaces every year. Train thousands and thousands of people in workplaces every year.
Speaker 2:Rainbow diversity, trans pronouns data and research around the rainbow. Every day we're doing workshops up and down our country. It's amazing. That builds capability, it reduces stigma, it reduces discrimination. We do a lot of work with leadership teams and executive teams in that space, understanding the why behind that, not just for talent but commercial. More and more people are self-identifying as rainbow. Your customers, your consumers, your staff are going to be remarkably queer in future. What are you doing about it? So that's incredible. We love doing that. Every time we walk away from a workshop we get stories about how it changed someone's life. Someone came up, someone started using they them pronouns. Someone came up with a way to improve our systems or forms, immediately going oh, we can fix that. Why don't we have non-binary on our forms? I can just change that today.
Speaker 2:The other thing that we're seeing is lots of policy change updating our parental leave policy, so it's parents and caregivers, not mother and father. Inclusive benefits, you know health benefits, travel benefits all being extended regardless of your gender or sexual identity. Inclusive bathrooms being rolled out in new factories, new hotels, new conference centres. We have inclusive bathrooms as normal here in New Zealand every day. Gender affirmation policies supporting our trans people transition at work A big movement here. Gender affirmation leave, paid leave to support you, to affirm your gender. In New Zealand now, the gold standard is 20 paid days on top of your normal leave provisions and we already, as you know, lisa, have pretty good leave provisions minimum four weeks annual leave, 12 public holidays, you know, 10 days sick leave, all statutory required. So lots of companies do better. So this is something we're implementing all the time and we have the gender affirmation policy registered for companies who offer that, so you can see the workplaces who do it.
Speaker 2:We've got this really cool tool at Pride Pledge called the Rainbow Inclusion Stock Take so companies can self-assess, look at all your policies, systems, programs, practices across seven dimensions and it generates a heat map and report on what your priority should be. We've got hundreds of clients working on these rainbow diversity, equity, inclusion strategic plans. From that they actually have a rainbow plan. They've got rainbow networks working on those plans. They've got rainbow networks involved in events and initiatives and celebrations. Not just drag bingo, they do that too. Pride parades they do that too but authentic engagement with their people. So that's happening up and down the country, all shapes and sizes, all the time, despite what's going on globally.
Speaker 2:And then ultimately in New Zealand we also do certification. So we've got these two certification models here. There's Pride Pledge Certified we offer for our most mature clients, and that basically means a global best practice. We're working with clients right now and they're doing that big gap there measurement, data reporting. So we'll talk a bit about that. And then we've also got a framework here called the Rainbow Tick, and that's our competitor, but that's a model that lots of people use too, and it just accredits them.
Speaker 2:Measurement reporting is really hard right now. Who are our rainbow staff? How are they experiencing our workplaces? Are we underrepresented with queer people? Are we doing well? How are we tracking? Are we looking at we tracking? Are we looking at talent? Are we looking at equal pay? Are we looking at discrimination, bullying and harassment with a rainbow lens? Our mature clients are doing that, which is amazing and it can be quite confronting. But that's our next big push here in New Zealand right now is getting more data, getting more measurement, getting more accountability. Um, and we've done it quite well with women you know the gender agenda uh, equal pay, we're doing well with ethnicity, um, a little bit in some spaces. But rainbow we just need to do better. So, yeah, that's a, that's it, um, that's what we're doing awesome, that's a Awesome.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of stuff that's a lot of stuff and we've talked before about data. I think I don't know if we're doing across the board well on data at all, on any identity, but particularly for the queer community. Most companies are not collecting that data, and you know you've got to get up that data and you know you've got to get up some courage right.
Speaker 2:You've got to start saying so many great case studies globally. You know, um, that if they've shown the case study, they've collected the data, they've worked with it, and then they show five years later hey, we've doubled the number of people who self-identify their engagement scores through our surveys show that they're at least as engaged and feel well compared to the general population. You know, et cetera. Like we know, it works. What measured matters? What measures get measured gets done and what gets measured holds people accountable. We can do it with our finances.
Speaker 2:Our most important asset is our people. We need to do it for our people. Answers Our most important asset is our people. We need to do it for our people. But there's a lot of pressure in the D&I space, as you know right now, and the whole what's happening globally, for people to shy away from that and kind of hide it in the back room because we don't want to talk about D&I. So let's not show the numbers, let's just kind of bury it and that's the worst we can do. At minimum, I say let's keep measuring in the meantime so that when we come out of this horrendous anti-DNI pushback that we still can show that the work we're doing is making a difference and that it always mattered and it was just a blip in our D&I journey.
Speaker 1:Yes, couldn't agree more. How can people find you, martin?
Speaker 2:Oh well, through wonderful people like you.
Speaker 2:Funny very much of what we do is through word of mouth. That's important. People who are committed to Rainbow Jersey inclusion need to do it because it's the right thing to do. So. Taking the Pride Pledge you can go to pridepledgeconz. Go to Pride Pledge on LinkedInin. You can look at me on linkedin, martin king. Um, I'm a linkedin lgbt top 20 voice. Um, I'm a bit of an influencer on linkedin with what I share. If you follow me, um or pride pledge on instagram, you can see what we do, events coming up. Lots of what we offer is free. It's um. Lots of our resources on our website are free.
Speaker 2:Um, our view is that once we've created it, get it out there. Um, so, yeah, um, easy to find. Um, take a look. Um, get involved, sign up to our newsletter on our website if you want something direct in your inbox inbox and become part of a small but important movement. And what we do is obviously helping create safer workplaces for rainbow people. But we've got a mantra at Pride Pledge the rainbow creates a halo. Organizations globally that are committed explicitly to rainbow communities. They're more attractive for women, more attractive for diverse cultures, races and ethnicities and they're more attractive for people with disability If you can show that you're committed to the rainbow, shows you're deeply committed towards people. So don't shy away from it. Be brave, take the first step, get visible.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love all that and I'm going to put all your details in the show notes so that people can get in contact if they would like to work with you. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to mention?
Speaker 2:much. Um, just really thanks, lisa for for inviting me on today. I know I talk a lot and I've got lots of crazy words of wisdom. Um, probably, as we wrap up, I think, a couple of things. Um, right now, just be brave and, if nothing else, be resilient. Resilience will get us through and to do that, we're stronger together. Work with people like we're working to support each other.
Speaker 2:If there's an event coming up in the D&I space, it doesn't matter what. Share it on your post. If there's a date of significance coming up International Women's Day we've got a date called Pink Shirt Day here, I know, celebrated in lots of places around the world Share it. Keep it visible on your LinkedIn. Don't shy away from it. Step into uncomfortable spaces with your bravery as a vulnerable leader. Go along to an indigenous event, a disability event. All of us showing up at D&I events will keep D&I stronger. Don't just stick in your little box. I'm not sticking to rainbow. I support our diversity national organization, our gender organization, our disability organization, anyone working in the D&I space. I'm high-fiving all the time, so please do that. It'll ultimately pay us dividends because otherwise, lots of people in the D&I space won't survive it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Not alone.
Speaker 1:Not alone. Yeah, not alone, not alone. And we do have a fantastic community and, and more than any other community, support each other, which I love. So great advice. Thank you so much, martin King. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on A Dog Called Diversity.
Speaker 2:Thanks, lisa.