Unilever's Secret to Building an Equitable & Inclusive Workplace
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, Evelyn Maria Espinal, Global Head of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at Unilever.
Evelyn has over 25 years of human resources experience, including serving as Chief HR Officer for Mexico and the Caribbean. She took on an expatriate assignment to gain valuable experience working in another culture.
In her current role leading Unilever’s global ED&I strategy, Evelyn has focused the approach more holistically across both internal and external lenses to drive better business performance outcomes.
“ED&I is about broader, bigger, faster success for your business because your people are more committed, they own it, and they feel valued and respected.”
A key focus is an equity report they are developing that examines how increased diversity and inclusion can unlock enhanced organizational performance. This business-focused perspective gets more buy-in than just pursuing ED&I initiatives for altruistic reasons.
For future D&I leaders, Evelyn advised the importance of listening first to understand why organizations operate the way they currently do before trying to change them. She also encouraged transcending organizational silos and engaging cross-functionally across product development, manufacturing, supply chain, HR and more.
⬇️ With Evelyn’s wise perspective and Unilever’s holistic strategy, focusing on equity and inclusion as a way to drive better business performance seems like a recipe for success.
Episode Highlights:
How her personal journey and experience has shaped her as an HR and DEI Leader
How Unilever is Building an Equitable & Inclusive Workplace
How to navigate DEI across multiple cultures and countries
How to Make DEI Work Inside and Out
See Greatness Everywhere
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🎙️ Automatically generated Podcast Transcript
Evelyn 0:00
knowledgeable organisation development leaders said to me, yes, feedback is a gift, but you have the right to carry a bucket. And when you get the feedback, Evelyn, you let it go right into yarn, put it in the bucket first, then look at it and decide, is this my stuff? Or the other guy's stuff? Because some and he didn't say stuff. Because sorry, I know. Sometimes feedback is masking what the other person's values are what they believe, and it's not useful to you. It's more useful for you to understand who that person is and how they think, than it is for you to then decide that you're going to incorporate that feedback. So feedback is a gift, but you get to decide what you take what you don't.
Chris Rainey 0:47
Hi, everyone, welcome back to the HR leaders podcast. On today's episode, I'm joined by Evelyn Maria Aspinall, who's the Global Head of equity, diversity and inclusion at Unilever. During the podcast evidence shares her personal journey and experience and how it shaped her as an HR and di leader. She also talks about how Unilever is building an equitable and inclusive workplace, how to navigate dei across multiple countries and cultures. She also talks about how to make DIY work inside and out. And lastly, she says a number one piece of advice for DIY leaders. As always, before we jump into the podcast, make sure you hit the subscribe button, turn on notification bell and follow on your favourite podcast platform. But that being said, let's jump in. Welcome to the show. How are you?
Evelyn 1:34
I am well thank you very honoured to be here with you. Yeah, finally got your in person. Exciting in London Nola.
Chris Rainey 1:40
Yeah, exactly. Firstly, how are you? How you been?
Evelyn 1:43
I'm doing really well. Yeah, family's doing well. Work as interesting as it always should be. Oh, and I have a new team that I've been developing over this year. Oh, wow. They are, as we say cooking with gas. They're an awesome team. Distributed or they're based here in London.
Chris Rainey 2:02
Oh, your New London team. Yeah. Interesting. I will get into that before jumping into the podcast more detailed TerraForm a little bit more about you personally. And your journey to where we are now.
Evelyn 2:12
We're born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. And my parents are immigrants to the US. So they're both from Honduras and Central America. So I grew up speaking only Spanish at home. And only English right at school and outside. So sort of married both cultures. And I think from a very young age, I had this sense of you're different. Right? I lived in a community that was primarily Irish and Italian. And you can see my elementary school pictures. I was the darkest person and you can always find me, right. Even in Brooklyn. Yeah. In Brooklyn in the 1970s. Okay.
Chris Rainey 2:52
When I think of Brooklyn, I think if so, that's why I asked you. Yeah, wow,
Evelyn 2:59
I went to an all girls high school, very important to my parents that I was college bound. And it was a religious high school. So they wanted to make sure that I kept the family values. And that's when I got interested in student government, sort of as a way of connecting to people. So I tended to have, you know, my, my geek friends and my Latin friends and my black friends. And so I moved around a lot through the different communities, but also kept myself a bit apart, right? Because even when I was around the Latin kids, their backgrounds are Puerto Rican, or Cuban. And then eventually a Dominican, hundreds just were not in the picture. So even my food was different than the Latin kids food. And so there I went to the Mayor's Office for young people in New York. And I worked as a volunteer with other young people, sort of advising government officials on what did young people need in order to become positive citizens. That got me into diversity work, there was a an incident of racial discrimination in Crown Heights, where two African American children walking to school were harassed and then painted white. What? And it caused quite a stir. So painted white painted white. This was in the early 80s. Wow. And then there was another incident where a person had a car accident. They were Jewish, Hasidic Jewish, and they hit a black person, and the first ambulance that came was a Jewish ambulance. And the driver was not injured, but they couldn't or they wouldn't take the children because they were taking them specifically to a Hasidic hospital. So that caused a lot of uproar. And the mayor's office said, you know, we really need to think about how do we defuse situations how do we teach children to come back? Bullying, but also to stand up for diversity.
Chris Rainey 5:03
You spent quite a few years in HR. So he's the vice president of HR for a number of organisations, a bit of Unilever how long now? 10 years, 10 years, which is complete surprise, surprise, but also something that you see a lot of Unilever did incredible job of retaining talent and giving them multiple careers within one business. Right? How did multination How did this Dr. Rowe? So he was VP of HR, if I remember correctly, how did this role come along? That you're in now? Sure.
Evelyn 5:30
So the role that I had prior to this was the chief HR officer for Mexico and the Caribbean. And when I joined Unilever, one of the things I said is I really want to relocate out of the US, I want to give my family that experience. But I also want to practice what I believe in another culture and learn from another culture, and every multinational that I've ever joined. That's always been my ask. But as an HR person, you then see that companies don't know what to do with people after they've done that expatriation. And they sometimes don't know where to bring them back to, or the people that sent them aren't there anymore. And so now they're trying to lobby for themselves within the company to take the learning that they just in were invested in and actually apply it back. And many of the companies I worked with, that never happened. So with Unilever, when they said do you want to take this opportunity? I just said yes. And my husband said, what's the offer? I was like, huh, like there's an offer? Like, I didn't know, I just said yes, this is what I've always wanted. When people heard that I was going to Mexico, the reaction is, is this a good thing for you? And I was like, it is a great thing. If I fail, I'm going to learn. If I do well, I'm going to learn. So I'm going when the roll was coming to an end, right? It's a three year tenure, I had a conversation with Lena and Lena NIRS was our former chief HR officer. And now she's the
Chris Rainey 6:53
CEO of Chanel. And amazing person,
Evelyn 6:57
amazing person. And we had the most candid discussion around. So what did you learn about yourself in this role, and I learned that I can do this role. But I don't want to do this role at Unilever. If I'm going to do another CHR o job, I want a smaller company where I can wrap my hands around everything. And she said, Well, if what role do you want at Unilever? And I said, If I stay at Unilever, I'd love a strategic role. Something that has global impact. And you know, I'm really passionate about change and diversity. And so I don't know if it's that diversity was the last thing I said. But she said, Let me think about it. And then it wasn't like, Let me think about a job for you. It was let me think about, you know, what you're telling me around your skill sets and what you want. And then about, I think three days later, the HR for HR called me and said, you know, Lena and Alan, our former CEO had a conversation about what we want to do in the diversity space, and how we'd like to really expand it and integrate it more into HR. And we'd love to offer you an opportunity to be the global head of DNI reporting to the chief brands and chief diversity officer. And so I said yes. And then I told my husband and he asked, What do we stay in Mexico? Do we move to London? I'm like, I don't know. He's like, what's the salary? I'm like, I don't know. I mean, it's not a good example for negotiating. I didn't know but
Chris Rainey 8:18
I'll speak later. What you're trying to say, though, is like it gets to a certain point, and has me totally wrong in your career where, and it sounds and this is the luxury, that money isn't always the most important thing. Right? When you when you get to a certain level and just be clever, well listen, and that's no like, and I realised that, because I've always, always chasing the next job title. And I was chasing the money in my career. And I realised I wasn't happy because I was chasing the wrong thing. So is that what you mean? But like you don't, it's hard to explain to people sometimes they
Evelyn 8:46
look at my LinkedIn profile, I'll you will find the role where I made a decision for money. And it was the shortest tenure because it doesn't satisfy you. If in the day to day, you are not feeling that you're valued, that you are having impact and that you are creating value. Yeah. And that's what matters, right? That's what gets you out of bed and gets you excited. What
Chris Rainey 9:09
do you wish that you knew going into that role that you know now,
Evelyn 9:12
though, so I think I went in very traditional. And so just thinking about the HR organisation, and how can HR be more strategic around EDI? And what what are the policies and practices. And I've done a phenomenal amount of work and the HR team at Unilever is incredible. So they've been just completely integrated with us. I think I was too narrow minded, because I was thinking about internal we need to help our employees, but we actually need to help the whole company. So the strategy now is internal and external. There's a role for Ed and I around product development, around marketing around supplier diversity, so around social impact. So it really you have to think about it in a holistic way. And I think the beauty of that vision that I'm in today is my leader is in marketing. She is a marketeer. Right. So she brings a different, completely different lens. But she's still focused on behavioural change, right. That's what marketers do get people to change their habits, right to adopt something different. And I'm coming in with the theory and the academics and the knowledge of HR systems, right. And so then we like, I'll give you an example, we've created a document that we will hopefully launch next year, which speaks to our journey around equity, defining equity, understanding it, looking at ways that our company can be more equitable, driving equitable outcomes for our consumers, but also for our employees. And in doing this fantastic piece of work, my leader looks at it and says, Is it readable? Are people going to get attracted to it is there going to be a value and it's great everything that you've written, but you're gonna sit through a 75 page paper. So that changes the approach. And so now we're creating it in same content, more of a learning guide. More about if you're interested in equity. It's not just let's toot our own horn. But here's the learning, here's what didn't go well, so that you don't make the same mistakes, right. And so you've got to really think, not just in the, I was more of a purist about the role. And what I've learned today, and if I could do it over again. And by the way, you can always start again, right, I've on boarded in this role, probably three times already, you just re onboard yourself with the new love that. So I've re on boarded into helping everyone think about performance, right? That's what my company's focused on. How are we going to grow? So how is anything that we do in the DNI going to drive better business performance through that lens?
Chris Rainey 11:44
through that lens? And then and also, I'd have so much to tap into the one thing I wrote down, which I wanted to ask you is we spoke so long ago is you said to me? How do we move from a quality to equity? Yeah, could you share a bit more on that.
Evelyn 12:02
So I grew up in this world of social activists are always talking about, you know, women's equality, right, and women are equal to men. And the same for race and ethnicity, right. And I firmly believe that, right, that's a US tenant of belief, we are all born equal. And I grew up those words resonate in my head, what I've learned in the work around equity is that there are systemic barriers to being equal. Those are either commonly held assumptions or belief about people that become either self limiting, or the external world limits you through that. But also, organisations are built, they're constructed for a purpose, to get the most out of people not to give anything really back, right. So you're constantly fighting a system that wants to grow faster, do more with less, and can create if they're not careful, quite oppressive and toxic environments. So equity brings in this idea that you actually can find those barriers to equality. And by addressing those, it doesn't just become now a pie in the sky, we're all born equal. That's what somebody says, when they fit the predominant characteristic that the organisation they're working in, is looking for. So if you are in a tech company, and you are the top of your class, you fit the profile, you're going to work all night. That's the view. That's the company for you. But if you have creativity and innovation around tech, but you don't fit that model, it's very difficult for your ideas to make it through. What equity says is, if you really want a company to benefit from all of that diversity that's sitting in there, it's not just about hiring the people. It's about who's leading them and how is it how are they leading them? It's about do they actually have the seat at the table to give advice, they don't have to be the title of the VP in order to have an opinion that matters. So equity is really is recognising that we are not designing organisations today to get the best out of people. And we could, we don't just have to do fixes. We actually could re onboard organisations and think about how do you create environments where every voice matters, and you look at your team as the group that's going to help you get to be that winning organisation, and not spend 90% of your time trying to hunt the 10% that you need to get rid of. Right. So if managers role becomes I need to eliminate the roadblocks and really develop you and I can't develop you to be like me. I need to find out who you are and develop you to be the best you that's going to create a much more equitable and inclusive culture than if a manager's role is to assess judge and basically doing that based on their own unconscious unconscious bias. That is a Much more limiting and could then become a very toxic type of organisation. Yeah. Does that make sense? 100%
Chris Rainey 15:06
Because it makes total sense. Everyone listening can relate to that. And so in some way more than others obviously. The
Evelyn 15:14
other thing it does for me is that when you talk about E DNI, you immediately tune in one kind of person and tune out another. So in my organisation, one of the views that I have is, white males are just as important to the DNI strategy as Asian women, as black men, because they have their own needs of where they are in terms of their career development. Ed, and I is for everyone. Yes, there's a specific job to be done about understanding why some companies may not be able to attract or retain specific underrepresented groups. But ultimately, you're trying to create culture, work process, behaviours, that make an organisation when, why would that only be done with the 50% women that need to fit in? It really needs to be done with everybody in the business?
Chris Rainey 16:02
Yeah. Do you believe that true equity could ever be achieved?
Evelyn 16:06
I've seen it and I've lived in in small pockets. Right? When I worked for that small consulting firm, we actually use our own skills on ourselves. So it wasn't the emperor, the cobbler doesn't have shoes, right? It was okay, so let's get together as a team. And what's the problem that we're trying to solve in the organisation about how our marketing materials go out, or that all of our assessments are last minute or, and everyone got to contribute into that from the admin, to the CEO of the company can call it a culture, it became part of the culture. And when people are part of that kind of an experience, then when they notice, hey, there's a bill here for $500 for printer ink. This is real. Why did what is that? Right? And basically, it was a new person that came in and a vendor called and said, yeah, they always order from me. And so they ordered it, right. But the person that noticed that was a consultant, who happened to see it on a bench, right. But the whole company felt that they were trying to make this business thrive. So that person doesn't get fired, right? That person gets trained. That mistake doesn't get made again. But the realisation was that we created this sense of ownership, that we weren't partners. None of us were we didn't have that model. But we all felt like we owned that business. Yeah. And every penny was our money. So yeah, I do think that you can create equitable systems. But you need to be willing to be uncomfortable to not know what the answer is. And we keep using the word light, right to shine the light into the dark, hairy corner with the cobwebs of things we've done, that were wrong in the past that we want to fix.
Chris Rainey 17:51
Was this also one of the inspirations behind the report? Right? Because the equity report? Yeah,
Evelyn 17:55
right. What I loved about the equity report is, so in 2020, when I joined this team, they were the DNI team. And I said, Okay, I've been I studied diversity. But I've been working for 25 years in everything, except diversity, what's happening in the diversity field right now that I need to learn to bring into this new role. So I took courses on how to be an anti racist. I pulled out all my old old D books, I called all my old consultants, and the big thing was equity. So I needed to understand this idea of equity. And I boiled it down in my mind, it's about fairness. It went viral at Unilever. When when we first started talking to leadership about this adding this concept of equity. It was I think leaders felt that
Chris Rainey 18:43
it was a misconception if asked a good question, what's the common misconception when it comes to that? So
Evelyn 18:47
I think for leadership, it means vulnerability. It means admitting that there's things that we have in place that don't fit what we're doing today. We sort of tried to move away from that by saying, Yeah, that's exactly what progress is. So we might have had a policy about global mobility that didn't factor in single mothers and what accommodations they would mean need. We don't have that today. Today, we've actually talked to that consumer for HR to understand what do they need from global mobility, right? That's progress. What the employees heard, when we talked about equity, it was easy and is for everyone. It's about fairness, fair outcomes. And it's about meritocracy, really being recognised for what you do and what you contribute. Nobody comes to work to say, I'm going to slide today and not doing anything or I don't want to do a good job. People come to work to get some level of fulfilment, while they're feeding their families and going after their own goals, right. So people want to be treated fairly. And that concept landed so incredibly well. And before we knew it, not as part of a specific strategy, but organically, parts of marketing started to do things around equity. So Valentin started to do things on equity, social business models with changing in Ben and Jerry's as an example, they started looking at their scoop shop model. And how many investors have enough money to come into that model the way it was currently designed. And the average black investor in the US has, I think, a third of the funding than the average white investor, therefore it is in. In that not equitable situation, you created a barrier to inclusion. So does that mean that you need to change the model? And if you change the model, you don't just change it for the black entrepreneur? You change it in a way that it supports online to help everyone?
Chris Rainey 20:38
Yeah, yeah. Do you know a common theme that's probably weaved into this conversation? You probably don't even realise how valuable it is, is the fact that you're tying in for business at all points. And a lot of companies struggle to get buy in for DNI, to get budget, you know, etc, we're seeing right, I'm seeing di teams and leaders being let go left, right and centre at the moment. But also, if you're seeing it in your network I'm seeing it's kind of going the opposite direction than what we we've kind of built a lot of momentum over last couple of years. And now it's like, but with what you do, everything you do is looking at it through the lens of how do we create value for our customers and for our business?
Evelyn 21:19
Now? I mean, this wasn't my brainchild. Right. It was a conundrum, it was a question that our CHRO asked, so help me understand how EDI is going to unlock performance. So it changes all of your thinking. My previous questions were, how do we help employees be their best selves at work that drove activities around culture, team development manager capability that doesn't go away? You still need those things. But now if we're talking about how does, how does having a diverse team actually give you a better result than Yeah, the way the leader listens to that. Right? The who has the real expertise shifts, the way that you listen to third party data changes, we do a lot of third party data were a huge company. But if you ended up having people on an inadvertently sick and advertising team, who are working on a master brands, and maybe in a different part of the world, because that's where the brand is actually, you know, thriving, and they create a campaign that's holding the efficacy of the brand. And then they try to roll that out globally. And they don't listen to what's contextually not going to work because of the culture, the attitudes, the norms of that particular market. That's when disaster happens, right? That's when you do some shady time, and you have to apologise for. But that's why to me the DNI is not a capability that I should hold that what I'd love to see my colleagues and myself spend more time on is building the skill set around advocating for equity, being aware of diversity, driving psychological safety, confronting your own unconscious bias as something a manager has to do, and a programmer has to do. We've, I've just seen an amazing piece of work. Our company has been really focused on the crown act, and looking at hair discrimination. Well, I did not know that 50% of gamers are black, I did not know that. The avatars that they have to work with, do not allow them to represent themselves. So is there a specific dotted line business model from Unilever supporting the, you know, AI libraries and how they texturize hair that goes into the avatar? I don't know. I don't know if there is, but I know that if we do that, we're telling our consumers that we care about you being individuals and how you show up. And of course, gamers use deodorant. And gamers use x and gamers drink tea and they eat mayonnaise, right. So there's a business model. So interesting connections that you need to make, right. But I think if you only think about the self serving aspect, right and totally, Edna is about making money. That's not the message that you want to give to your employees. EDI is about broader, bigger, faster success for your business. Because your people are more committed, they own and they feel valued and respected. If a manager gets that and creates that kind of serendipity in the team, you don't know what kind of incredible business results they're gonna have. I think the problem is when we we check the box and we say, Oh, we want 5050 gender balance check. And then you have a team of people, where 50% of them are not considered on what time the meetings are being set, or where the meetings are being set or what they do have to work or not even getting a chance to, you know, they get mansplain or they don't get a chance to speak. That creates more difficulty in getting positive, the opposite of what you're trying to create. As you're trying to create. It's not a check the box. It's a holistic approach. It's a total system's approach.
Chris Rainey 24:58
That's obviously a Uh, who was interviewing for a role recently who's formerly held DNI roles for some amazing organisations? And she said that one of the questions I always ask is, why do you? Why are you hiring for? Why are you building a DI function? Why hiring it? And the C? And I still can't believe I'm saying this, the CEO said, to keep our to keep our employee resource groups in check. This is a real answer from a if I wish I could tell you who the CEO was and accompany you all know it. As well, like, how do we avoid that you've done an incredible job of and obviously, you have an amazing leadership team that gets it clearly, as well, right. But we have
Evelyn 25:42
the most diverse board Unilever, executive board that we've ever had, in terms of representation of people from Asian backgrounds, European backgrounds, Latin American backgrounds, male to female, different industries, I think, and they are all there, because they had the experience, they were in the pipeline, and they earned the right to be in that job. But consequences that it's diversity. It's not the reason why you hire somebody. That That to me is what getting it means. Yeah. But your point about keeping employee resource groups in check. This was where I cut my teeth and diversity work. I had made that before
Chris Rainey 26:25
why? Yeah. Okay. It was the first time I've heard something like that. It's, it's why I was pretty sure.
Evelyn 26:29
I mean, a big part of my career in the beginning was setting up and developing the strategies for affinity groups, for that group, just so many different names. Yeah. And so you did this work on? What is their values? What is the mission and vision? What's their name, right? And what are their strategies. And inevitably, it goes from people who come together to say, we're not crazy, right? Like we're experiencing similar things in the organisation. And then it turns into, what can we do to help our community. So either they end up doing something in social right outside of the company, or they start lobbying for development of their own people are more hiring or referral programmes. And then it goes to, this is not an equitable organisation. And there are things that are happening to us, as it happens to other affinities, whatever they are, that have to do with how the organisation is defined. And that's when they then start really adding value, because now they're giving the organisation feedback, your own internal glass door, that tells you what you need to change. So yes, I've gone from, let's give them something to do. So give them project like, let them go work on something, so that we look good, too. Let's use them to actually understand a market segment that we don't understand. Now don't change their jobs, they have other jobs in the company, but they can be a bit of a barometer. So I think it's all in how strategic the leaders are in thinking, open system and holistic, right? If you think that what you've created is what you need to preserve, and nothing should change about how you operate and how you get things done. Then, of course, you want to keep them in check because they're disruptors, right? The mere moment that you look at an elevator and you say, I had this experience in a building, there are three of us in the room, an Indian woman in an elevator and Indian woman, a black woman and me and Latina, dark skinned woman. And we formed the black, the brown girls club, because first of all, we'd never seen each other. Second of all, we didn't see we'd never had a quorum, oh my god, there's three of us. That makes you a disrupter, that these are people that are not satisfied with the status quo. So organisations that want to preserve the status quo, probably don't need to hire an internal EDI person, they probably need to hire an advisor, external who can coach them. But why make someone suffer to come in? To change culture? When that's not what you really want? From
Chris Rainey 28:57
the Yeah, yeah, I see a lot in our leaders leave just as quick as they came, you know, they leave just as fast sorry.
Evelyn 29:03
So you know, that old expression I know who said it, culture eats strategy for breakfast, I've moved around from different organisations. And I would think, I can work in any industry, I can work in any culture, my skills are to learn how to be successful, what I actually learned is, I was picking cultures that could work with me, the time that I picked a culture that couldn't work with me, I couldn't work with them. When you come into an organisation, the first thing that you have to do is understand the existing culture and use the 16 culture for the changes that you want to create. Trying to change culture is this. It's a conundrum that is never going to be resolved, right. Because the culture happens over time. And it's not going to happen because now you're telling people to behave differently and
Chris Rainey 29:47
just pockets right. Yeah, country. Yes. All right. Yeah. I'm sure when you worked in that role. Well,
Evelyn 29:55
that was my biggest learning and working in Mexico was I I should have said that I didn't speak Spanish. So I speak Spanish fluently. And if you hear me talking Spanish you think I'm a native Latin person day. No, no, they might. They believed me. Well, it worked again. Okay, my brain is not wired like a Latino. I am wired as an American. So the way I view things the way I argue, the way I present myself, I never realised how American I am. Because even though you're still speaking the language in the US and Latin American, there's this distinction, right? People ask me, where are you from? Because I don't look bright blue eyes, blonde hair and apple pie. But I was born and raised in a culture that has some very specific ideas around the world, self determination, manifest destiny, anybody can be president. So with those kinds of ideal, I go into organisations, where they want me to come in and help them think about how to make change. When I went into Mexico, that's not what they wanted from me. They wanted a leader that was going to help them achieve what they want to work in. I was so diametrically opposed their power dynamics. I don't understand power dynamics. I don't understand hierarchy. I mean, I know how to navigate it. But naturally, I can talk to a work of like an entry level person and the CEO in my mind. Yeah, that's not how it works in Mexico. And the US, I would say to my team, tell me what you think, in Mexico, I would say that, and they would look at me like, Well, you're the boss, you tell me what you think culturally? Yeah, it's a whole different culture. And the language made us think we were more alike. And as soon as a leader son was a very wise woman who coaches and mentors me at Unilever, she said to me, you are not there to change Mexico, you're not going to change my chi style, and all of the other elements of that culture. You need to work within that, yeah. and achieve your goals in your career and learn how to do that in a, in a culture that's very different. I was like, Oh, my God, now I am no longer just trying to give somebody a global mobility package, I now understand why we send people to other countries and why that helps drive maturity and self awareness and makes people better leaders when they've had to struggle in that kind of an environment.
Chris Rainey 32:16
Yeah, it's well, it's shaped the leader, you are now writing the decisions you make. And by the way, so a perfect example of why feedback is a gift. Because, you know, if you wouldn't have done that you've been like, what's going on? I don't I don't get it. I go. So last question would be the last one.
Evelyn 32:32
So this was a very knowledgeable organisation development leaders said to me, yes, feedback is a gift, but you have the right to carry a bucket. And when you get the feedback, Evelyn, you let it go right into your heart, put it in the bucket first, then look at it and decide, is this my stuff? Or the other guy's stuff? Because some and he didn't say stuff. Because I know, sometimes feedback is masking what the other person's values are what they believe, and it's not useful to you, it's more useful for you to understand who that person is, and how they think, than it is for you to then decide that you're going to incorporate that feedback. So feedback is a gift. But you get to decide what you take what you don't. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 33:16
I love that. Because I think then we actually for most people, and I'm definitely that person is you take it to heart. Yeah, right. And as an attack, you don't mean to just naturally how we're wired to be a little bit defensive, right? But put it in the bucket first. Give it a time to like, think about it gives you time to kind of and then I love that is a really good bit of advice. They give you lost space. Last question. What advice would you give to the the leaders of tomorrow, they're going to be sitting in your seat one day.
Evelyn 33:48
I think the first piece of advice is listen to the organisation, not just to what they want to change, but why they are the way they are. Because it served the purpose. The reason they operate the way they do today was because they were getting some level of success. And you're not going to be able to institute a change if people aren't willing to let go of the past. And I think the second part is there's a lot of the theory says that Ed and I should not report to HR, I actually don't think it matters where you report. What matters is that you're able to transcend the organisation, from product development, to the manufacturing, to the ecosystem of of suppliers, to the HR policies to the learning curriculum. Our jobs are not just siloed into one aspect of the business. And the more that you can do that go to where the energy is, if the company right now is more interested in how do we speak to our consumers in a way that really understands who we are engaged in that work, because inevitably the answer If you don't have people that speak the same language as your consumer, might you want to think about how you diversify your workforce. If you go right to, we need more diversity in here, then you have to justify, why is that diversity, the thing that I need to do? So whatever they're asking you to do, diversity is at the heart of it. It's every session that I ever facilitated. As a consultant with that small consulting firm, they said, We need a strategy. We need team building, we need new policies, at the products, we need new innovation, we need innovation process. At the end of the day, it was people dealing with other people who didn't understand each or respect each other's backgrounds or ideals, who made misalignments and just normal everyday conversations. I want to shake your hand, don't touch me. Whatever that was, its diversity is at the heart of everything that we do.
Chris Rainey 35:51
Amazing. Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so happy we finally got to meet and let us know soon as the reports out. Yes. So super excited to share it with everyone.
Evelyn 36:01
And I hope that this was useful for folks. Right. I mean, I think sometimes we can talk about our own ideas, and it doesn't resonate to others. But I honestly I think your the work that you're doing, just bringing different voices into this conversation is phenomenal. So thank you for that.
Chris Rainey 36:17
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. On that point. That's one of the focuses of the show is all right. It's bringing the diversity of force perspective inside. So everyone agrees, yes. You don't have to all agree. That's okay, too. As well, I appreciate you sharing your journey and story. And I don't think anyone's surprised now after hearing how you got aside that you ended up where you are now. It was kind of meant to be. I wish we were still we next week. Thanks so much. Thank you very much.
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Richard Letzelter, CHRO at Acino.