 Good morning. Thank you for welcome to the third day of DevConf. My name is Imogen Floodmurphy and today we're going to be talking to you about Better Inclusion is a bigger piece of Gregal for everyone. We will talk about diversity, inclusion, agile, resiliency, neurodiversity and much more. As you can hopefully see there are three presenters today. My name as I've already said is Imogen Floodmurphy. I'm a manager within Red Hat's customer experience and engagement team. I also lead the D&I advisory group in Fornow and I will be moderating today. If you have any questions please feel free to ask them in the chat and we will try to get to them as we speak. Sarah. Thanks Imogen. My name is Sarah Finn and I'm a senior agile practitioner at Red Hat and I'm currently working with CPE teams, so the community platform engineering team, who are at the forefront of support for sentos and fedora communities and I also support the agile and devops community of practice within Red Hat as well. So creating space to allow reps from teams across Red Hat to come to our syncs to practice some techniques and tools and to help their teams. I'm absolutely delighted to be here today and I'm going to speak about inclusion in relation to agility and resilience. Over to you Aliska. Hello everyone my name is Alishka Manikawa. I work as a project manager at Red Hat Check. I'm located in Burnow. I'm passionate about D&I and most of all about neurodiversity. So I am representative for neurodiversity community for my location and recently I'm also a student of psychology and management too. Feel free to reach to me every time. You can see my email address here or we can chat if some time remains after this talk. Thank you. So here's the agenda, what we're going to be talking about today, starting by introducing the topic of inclusion, then moving on to neurodiversity, the actual mindset and resilience, and finally psychological safety and the business value of all of this. And before we dive into neurodiversity, resilience, agile and other terms, let's start with a little reminder of what inclusivity is. What does inclusivity actually look like? What does inclusion actually look like? Inclusion is embracing differences in people and perspectives so that we can all use our individual strengths to contribute our best. It's inviting everyone to bring their authentic selves to work every day, treating each other fairly and respectfully and recognizing that we all have something uniquely valuable to offer. The definition that we actually use for inclusion is embracing differences in people and perspectives so that we can all use our individual strengths to contribute our best. In regards to agility, inclusion is a vital component to the overall success of a project, be it within our everyday life, homeschooling or work life delivering a valuable product. Looking at our resilience, inclusion of others to support ourselves and build connections is key. Yeah, let me describe and explain as best as this picture. You can see a few circles demonstrating the differences between inclusion, exclusion, segregation, integration. We have a variety of colorful dots to see the differences here, to demonstrate the differences here. So exclusion on a left down shows how it could look in exclusive environment. All dots that are not the same green color are excluded are not part of the circle are outside of it around. Yeah, segregation, excuse me, segregation, look at the middle picture, there are two circles, one main with only green dots, and one small circle full of full of colors. So it's being separated from each other. This is great. I really like this illustration here, the differences between each. Just looking at this, what is the difference between inclusion and integration? Well, integration, it is pictured here as two close circles, small colorful circle is part of big circle, but not really a part, it is in there, but it's still kind of kind of separated, right? So inclusion at the top of the picture shows all colorful dots together in in one circle, cooperating, being together dots of whatever color in one circle to the difference. So the difference is that the inclusion truly is a mix. It's cooperating together. Yeah, integrated work place is, is a setting where neural are typical work alongside neuro typical, or whatever diversity we are talking about everyone is held to a standard set of working. Yeah, inclusion is the actual merging of all of it, of the needs with the belief that all people are different will learn differently and should have access to resources. So the workplace expectations are adjusted so that everyone has their needs met and everyone can do their best. Okay, that makes sense. And it's a really good distinction between the two. I wonder by integrating in an organization by integrating, do we feel that we feel like we're actually practicing inclusion, whether we might not be, but not know us? Oh, yeah, we are. And you're right. Yeah, we have some space for a few further steps. That's for sure. Okay. Next slide, please. Before I speak about neurodiversity and explain this term. Let me please refresh and explain the word diversity. As we touched by the inclusion here, I believe that most of us heard this word very many times. Diversity can be defined as the range of human differences that create our individual and shared experiences. And when we talk about diversity, we usually tend to think about gender, national origin, ethnicity, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. All of it definitely belongs under it, but diversity spans many more dimensions. Emo will talk about those in a moment. Physical and mental ability or attributes. So neurodiversity, all of it belongs to the list and much more for sure. So neurodiversity Next slide, please. Neurodiversity is the concept that the neurological differences between people should be respected and recognized. So it basically is one of the diversity perspective, as I already mentioned, only focus on the fact that each mind is different. Yeah, and instead of using terms with this, like dysfunction, disabilities, this orders, this term neurodiversity is enabling, it takes into account the neurological differences. It's not one size fits all. We're all different. And neurodiversity celebrates the difference. Yeah. It just refers to variation in the human brain regarding social ability, social ability, learning, attention, mood, and other mental function. Next slide. Not all minds are created equal. And that's okay. Maybe a little example would help with the perspective on neurodiversity. So few names of famous persons with some diagnosis, for example, Bill Gates has autism, John Chambers, so who's a former Cisco CEO has ADHD, and the list could surely continue. So why would neurodiversity matter? Yeah, for that reason, that not all minds are created equal, right? And the chemical balance in my brain is unique to me, as yours is unique to you. More neurodiverse persons are cited with having higher levels of creativity, and different capabilities than others who are neurotypical. Yeah, for example, dyslexia, autism and ADHD all result in the ability to see connections. Others cannot. Yeah, so this person can create a narrative set helps to simplify complex projects or tasks. And it's not only the condition we were born with it could include also situations happening around us like the recent situation with the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic, for example, it affects us all a lot. And it could affect or challenge our mental health. Some of us might recently experienced a world more like neurodiverse person. So given given the recent situation now more than ever, we need to innovate and we need more allies, more understanding and educated people in this area, just the creative and diverse minds. I would like to also mention that neurodiversity is the idea that the neurological differences like autism and ADHD and the other result of a normal natural variation in the human, human genome. Yeah. What else? neurodiversity covers. In addition to addressing what makes us unique neurodiversity also addresses how we take care of ourselves. So based on these factors, these are also known like mental health or mental, mental wellness. Now, when I talk about what neurodiversity is, let me please let me tell you what neurodiversity is not. It's a very important part to know. It helps us understand this even better. So this is not a perspective. It's not an approach. It's not a belief or political position or paradigm. neurodiversity is a biological fact. I think that's another great distinction there. Let's go back. So definitely thanks so much for sharing that. That it's not, as you said, a perspective or a belief that is part of our makeup. Is there a biological fact? Thanks for that. So we just want to talk a little bit about what diversity is. There are different levels of diversity. I won't list everything that's written here. However, they are linked to identity, such as age, for example, thinking someone is too young to know something or too old to keep up with the latest trends. It could be upbringing, your native language, having not having English as your native language will impact you and your ability to interact. Socioeconomic Group, what financial resources did you have access to as a child or now? Organisational, where are you based within your organisation? What job do you do? How long have you been in your role? Company culture will also impact on the business outcomes that are listed here, such as a better understanding of our customers, creative leadership, a diverse workforce and important for every company, a strong financial performance. Yeah, I'd like to mention the best companies have realised neurodiversity is a competitive advantage like HPE, SAP, IBM or Microsoft, just for example. So there are surely much more of companies focusing that way already and it's just not about only the hiring initiative. Managers and associates needs to be equipped to collaborate with and lead in a way that is psychologically safe for people who see the world or experience the world differently. Okay, thanks for that, Leska. So let's jump in to the world of agility. Agility is the ability to adapt and respond to change quickly. We practice agility naturally every day by adapting to our changing environments. You might wake up one morning after a great night's sleep and are ready to take on your ever growing to-do list. But to discover that you're out of coffee, what would you do? You naturally practice agility and adapt in that moment. You may decide to try and manage without coffee for the morning and drink tea. But let's face it, that to-do list is going to be a little bit harder to tackle. Or you might decide to leave to the shops, resulting in you maybe have to do prioritise an item on that to-do list or move it to the next day. Having the ability to adapt and make the choices with the information we have comes naturally to us. And we always gain an opportunity to chalk down some lessons learned. So for example, doubling up on your coffee intake or your coffee shop during the week or building some wiggle room into your daily plans. So 2020 and 2021 has had us practicing agility on another level. This could be from building in time into your day for home schooling or checking in on family members to ensure that they are minding themselves and minding their health. We manage better when we include others in our plans. So reaching out maybe to a teacher for further insight into that maths problem that you might be having with your son or daughter or reaching out to siblings to help with the load of caring for your parents. We can have a greater impact together and even have some fun in the process. Aliska and I know I'd be really interested to hear how we had to adapt throughout last year or so. Well, I guess we all learned a lesson about that during 2020 and so on going. It was a year that challenged me quite a bit and made me realise how lucky I am in some areas. Yeah, for example, I was able to keep working from home. That's that's great. And also I had the option to adjust my living space for for my hobby. We build a pretty decent gym in the in the garage to keep exercising. So for me, I would usually travel back to the UK every couple of months I'd appear in the Czech Republic. But with COVID that just wasn't possible, not without spending weeks on ending quarantine. So I needed to find ways to recharge my batteries without travelling home to see my friends and family in London. Okay, that's great. You know, to hear how you had to adapt in the moment and to find ways of building in exercise at home and connecting with people differently. And so thanks so much for for sharing that. Okay, so let's take a deeper look into agility in the world of work. When we refer to agility at work, we refer to it as agile. You may be familiar with the term agile, or maybe if not familiar with the term agile, definitely probably with the terms scrum and kanban, which are agile frameworks. This is simply bringing the ability to practice agility into the workplace. So allowing us to quickly adapt and change based on the information that we have at hand. Agile frameworks, practices and tools are built around this and recognises the importance of information to deliver a valuable product or service to our users. These frameworks, tools and practices enable us to collaborate, communicate and gain feedback to fuel continuous improvement. There has been a recent shift over the last couple of years in work and organisations to spend just as much time supporting teams to embrace the agile mindset as it is to encourage them to experiment with using some frameworks and tools. So what we're trying to do is to tap into the right side of the brain, so our emotional and social side. They recognise that for us to change your ways of working to be more inclusive and collaborative, we need a lot more than just frameworks and processes. We need to spend time training our minds to be more open, curious, trusting and courageous to ensure our processes and frameworks are effective. So combining an agile mindset with these frameworks results in sharing information and collaborating together on new ideas to deliver the best value to the market and our communities. So we know the frameworks, we know the tools, the practices, but how do we suddenly start being agile? It's not as easy as following steps in a framework. It is a complete mindset shift that may take us a little bit out of our comfort zone. Building on our resilience can really help support you on this journey. Let's look at resilience. Resilience is the ability to redact openly in the face of adversity and change. A Greek philosopher once said, change is the only constant in life and how true you are. Change will happen and in our world today it's changing at a much faster pace. Constant change is the norm. A lot of the time we have very little control over that change, but what we can try and manage a little bit better is how we react to change in adversity. Not trying to control and stop the change, but becoming more open to explore the opportunities it may bring. Yeah, Sarah, would you please help me understand better why the word positively is crossed out? Yeah, no problem, Inesca. So I crossed that out and swapped in the term openly here. Sometimes there's a lot of pressure on people when change is on the horizon or asked to do or work in a different way or try out a new way of working. There could be pressure on us to accept that change as positively as we can. And we do try to do that, but I think it creates a barrier and it breaks down the reality of the actual situation that it can be a little bit unnerving, a little bit unsettling and to try new things. So I think a more a better term here is just to embrace a little bit more openly, feel it a bit more curious and inquisitive instead of positively. Yeah, thank you. I agree. I was asking about it because my thinking is that sometimes we just insist too much on positivity, like being positive, optimistic, it actually could cause more harm than good, I think, being ourselves and looking for brighter sides. Yes, but staying optimistic and positive all the time doesn't really seem to me like an healthy perspective or sometimes even an option. Absolutely, no problem. And sometimes it can actually be a barrier to change when we're told we need to react to it positively as well. So thanks for sharing that with us. I appreciate that. OK, next slide. So to trivially adopt an agile mindset, we need to build on our resilience to be ready for change, to be inclusive and to seek out the opportunity. Yeah, I really like that you mentioned the opportunity that awaits. Yeah, because with change comes opportunity. So it's trying to focus a little bit more on, again, if it is the term opportunity, like what can it bring? Who else can I work with? What can I learn? What can I help out with? And things like that, and trying to embrace the excitement even of change. Next slide. So let's look at resilience here and how we can spend time on building that to allow us to adapt a little bit better and become more open to change. So when I'm building a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and effort, and it will look different for everyone. So I won't wake up today and say, today I'm going to be resilient, and my mindset is going to change like that. And that's it. No, unfortunately not. We need to work on that. We need to work on what that means to us. So what might mean, but I'm sure I've taken plenty of breaks throughout my day to allow me to decompress and digest, building some exercise, building time to get out for fresh air. And especially with COVID-19, we've been really restricted in what we can do there to help us decompress and to unwind. So we've had to become very creative in that. And it will look different for everyone. So for somebody it might be that they have a morning yoga session that sets them up for the day and they listen to a meditation at night to unwind. Or for somebody else it might be going for a walk during lunchtime and connecting with others through box sets of Netflix and things that they're watching as well. So it's really just trying to find what works for you and ensuring that you're spending enough time on prioritizing that to support yourself in it. Next slide. So these are the four cornerstones of building a resilience. First is to build your connections. So to ensure that you're reaching out to people. As I said earlier, working together is much better. It creates a connection. And we could actually have fun as well even when we're working to be able to reach out to your colleagues and to obviously work together on valuable pieces of work. But to enjoy that and get to know each other as much as you can. So you can do that to have a social sessions with them maybe pub quizzes, maybe having a celebration cause each quarter, whatever that might be. And also connecting with family members as well. Definitely ensure that you're building that in. Feed yourself healthy thoughts. So again, it's been quite challenging last year and this year being confined that sometimes we can spend a little bit too much time in our minds. And we might be in a, we're juggling a lot at home. We're juggling maybe looking after parents, maybe homeschooling, whatever that might be as well as our work, we might be self doubted having to look at the self doubt around things. So ensure that you're feeding yourself healthy thoughts knowing that you're doing really well and the situation that you're in and that what you can do every day is good enough. You're brilliant. I second to that. Just to mention the building the resilience could be different for everyone. As you already said, neuro typical or neuro atypical but it makes us no less valuable. That's it, exactly. And key as well is to have a purpose. So to know your why and to strive towards that every day. It doesn't necessarily need to be work-related. It can absolutely be on a personal level as well. But building small little goals that you feel you're achieving each day or each week to kind of help you on that journey. And last but definitely not least is wellness. So to ensure that you're minding your body and your mind. So as we all know, when showing we're having water, healthy food, obviously the odd little treats now and again, but ensure we're getting enough sleep, exercise and just minding ourselves in general and trying to prioritize our general well-being will support you on your resilience journey. So now I'm gonna hand you over to Emote who is gonna chat to you about how you can be more inclusive. And of course I forgot to unmute. So there are many ways to be more inclusive including creating opportunities for people to share and contribute. Valuing your contribution as well as that of others making sure that they are aware that you value that contribution. Being accepting of your own strengths and weaknesses and knowing when to ask for help. It is often especially difficult to ask for help. I think engineers have this built-in thing that we must fix this. We must know how to resolve this. And so we're less likely to ask for help. Viewing challenges and disagreements as opportunities to learn. You know, every, it's just a different point of view. And if you can learn from that you will grow as a person as a result. Acknowledging that change is constant as Sarah already mentioned. It's the only thing that stays the same. And looking for those opportunities to grow. Listen more. Listen to your teams. Listen to the people who perhaps don't often speak up. Just listen and listen to yourself. If you're tired, go to bed. Be kind to yourself. Actively advocate for inclusion. If you know that there is somebody who is a little more quiet in meetings or in your friendship group, ask their opinion and do it in a way that works for them. So if you know they don't wanna speak up in front of 10 people, ask them on a one-to-one. And last but by no means least, instill psychological safety. Make sure that the area is safe for people to speak up. And Alicia is going to talk us through what psychological safety is. Yeah, thank you, Imo. It was really nicely said, all of it. So psychological safety, the cornerstone. Psychological safety can be defined as being able to show and employ oneself without a fear of negative consequences of self-made status, career. It can be defined as a shared belief that the team or the environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. And psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. So they feel like they can express themselves, disagree, say no, be authentic, even make a mistake. Good news, it's within our control. So individual contribution matter very, very much. Your attitude can change a lot. As Imo mentioned in her previous slide, value contribution of others. For example, just for example. There are a few good questions we can ask ourselves within our teams, groups or communities, whatever environment we would like to apply it at. So do people feel comfortable saying no? Can meetings be declined or rescheduled without fear? These are just an example of the questions we can ask ourselves. Big part of psychological safety is to show vulnerability or fallibility, openly ask for feedback on how you deliver, gracefully admit when you're wrong or just admit when you're wrong, right? We ourselves can be the leading example and model behaviors we would like to see by assuming a good intent. So in addition to that, let's not jump to conclusion and blaming but ask a few more questions first. Being said, replace blame with curiosity. Engage in exploration together to find a solution. And please remember, safety looks different for everyone. And in light of COVID-19 as we touched it a few times here and restrictions related to the situation, more people than ever before might be experiencing life as a neurodiverse individual and the stigma and lack of safety may prevent them from seeking help. So I would like to encourage you to be open-minded and look out for each other despite most of us work from home. Rethink the way we work so that it is safer and more productive for all the team members whether biologically neurodiverse or just temporarily coping. And also these neurodiverse persons maybe your peers, maybe your direct reports or your manager and you never know, you might never know it especially if they don't feel safe sharing, yeah? So one more thing, as statistics shows some interesting numbers like one in four people will report a mental condition in their lifetime. So it's not really that small number, right? Just one of the reasons why, one of the many reasons why psychological safety is important. Sarah? Thanks for that, Aliska. Really important points on psychological safety there and especially around the vulnerability. So if you get more leadership and senior leadership teams and managers asking more questions and showing their vulnerability hopefully that will ensure others will feel safe doing so as well. So let's look at what business value can inclusion deliver. So when we include others into our conversations it can limit group think. So it creates an opportunity for us to learn from a range of workplace skills. And obviously then that was going to transpire into more valuable conversations and more innovative ways of working and even on our solutions. When we recognize that our contribution is value and considered we also actively engage a little bit more. So if we see people actually listening and actioning some of what we're suggesting we're gonna keep suggesting things. We're gonna push the boat out and try new things. So it's ensuring that we keep that in place and inclusion really helps that. Yeah, our companies are embracing diversity of identities as Emo described to you previously. Neurodiverse employees for example bring a unique experience and skill sets to your environment. So neurodiverse individuals are and could be an untapped pool of talent and with just an example 80% of autistic people in Ireland are being unemployed but there is a huge resource to help fill the skills shortage gap especially in IT or finance sectors. Yeah, so neurodiverse companies have been proven to outthink and outperform some heterogeneous spaces. And one more thing to add people with dyslexia often have average or above average intelligence with excellent creative thinking skills. So they tend to have strong problem solving capabilities. This allows them to see variety of solutions to the problem or people with autism tend to excel in areas like a rule-based thinking. So many organizations are experiencing the benefits from including individuals with these strengths and I just touched this, but yeah, definitely limit the group think. Yeah, but by working with the diverse team employees have people in that groups have more opportunity to learn from a range of workplace skills. Absolutely, Liska. They're really, really great points there. So yeah, just touching base on some others. And so we've innovation and exploration so SOAR has barriers to contribution are removed. So as I said that previously, we start thinking outside the box and exploring a little bit more what we can do. The group feel more empowered. The organization of teams feel more empowered as an open culture and a happier workforce. And they take pride in the collaborative effort to deliver a valuable quality product or service. So they feel proud in their contribution or what the end product is. Thank you, Sarah. So we are coming to the end of our time and it is up to me to recap what we've spoken about today. Neurodiversity that is part of diversity and inclusion. Psychological safety is particularly important for neurodiverse individuals as it really is for everybody. And it's often hidden. It's often not immediately visible. You don't necessarily know if your colleague or your manager or your boss's boss's boss has neurodiverse issues. Agility, which is all about communication and collaboration and the continuous improvement both in our work and personal lives. Resilience, being open to new ideas and support, valuing the contribution from others and the importance of connection to everybody. We called this talk Better Inclusion equals a bigger piece of Fregal for everyone. For those of you who don't know, who perhaps haven't been to the Czech Republic, Fregal is this sweet Czech pizza kind of thing that is really good. And I recommend everybody the next time that you are here to check this out, I will happily take you for Fregal as I'm sure will, Mishka. Yeah, yeah. But the main point is that with these tools, with these empowered teams, you end up with a happier workforce, better products and services and just a better quality of life. We have here, Mishka, do you want to... I'm sorry, I just wanted to jump in and say what you were about to say. Anyway, here you can see the list of references and the resources used for this presentation, for this talk, but more links and resources are on each slide. Feel free to explore all the mentioned topics further or get in touch. We would be happy to, all of us would be happy to discuss with you any further questions now or later. Thank you. Thank you very much all for your time this morning. We really appreciate you getting up early on a Saturday to listen to us. Thank you, Alishka and Sarah, for your insight and perspective on this. The slides will be available. We will be sharing them so that you can follow all those links that we just shared with you and as Alishka mentioned, feel free to reach out to any of us if you have any questions or just want to touch base on any of the topics that we've discussed today. So I think we have, we are right at the end of our time. So unfortunately, we won't be able to take any questions. There were a couple in chat and some conversation in the chat that we will be following up on. So thank you everybody for your time. That was great.