Stepping into Inclusion

By Jaclyn Weitzenfeld

Stepping into Inclusion encourages business leaders to examine the way they make decisions about talent when hiring, promoting, and developing the people they lead. It's a personal journey a leader must take to connect who they are to what they do.

 

Author Jaclyn Weitzenfeld uses her positive experience with Alcoholics Anonymous to develop a framework that brings inclusion to the forefront of how one leads, and create an environment filled with diverse experiences, stronger working relationships, and better business outcomes.

 

By consistently working these steps, you will be equipped to reconsider your beliefs regarding talent and decisions at work. And in so doing, you'll optimize your organizational performance and build a better workplace culture.

 

Stepping into Inclusion's framework is designed to evolve over time, because inclusion—and how we define it—will evolve in the workplace. As you grow as a person and as a leader, what is important to you will naturally evolve. The way in which you create a sense of belonging will need to evolve with the inevitable change companies face in our ever-changing world. As leaders, we are responsible for continuing to lead inclusively so people can find their place within the organizations in which they work and thrive (for the company and their career). This work offers you the tools needed to make thoughtful, inclusive decisions with the purposeful intention to make you excited about changes that lie ahead.

 

Are you making the necessary leadership choices toward inclusion and diversity?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jaclyn Weitzenfeld
• Release date: Aug 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986583501

Jaclyn Weitzenfeld

Jaclyn Weitzenfeld was raised in Chicago in a well-known, locally diverse neighborhood called Rogers Park, which was her first step in a lifelong journey into inclusion.  She has a BA, with a major in psychology, and is a certified addictions counselor. Her extensive 14-year career as an executive assistant, coupled with her experience in talent development and inclusion and diversity, led Jaclyn to become adept at understanding how leaders think, make decisions at work and the effect they have on others. Jaclyn has a passion for authenticity, vulnerability, and genuine human connection. She believes personal development is a lifelong journey that is refined over time. 

Book preview

Stepping into Inclusion

Jaclyn Weitzenfeld

Copyright © 2022 Jaclyn Weitzenfeld

All rights reserved.

Ebook ISBN: 979-8-9865835-0-1

Print ISBN: 979-8-9865835-1-8

Book Cover Design by ebooklaunch.com

This book is dedicated to everyone who taught me, showed me, embraced me, pulled me in, and believed in me, even when there were times I didn’t believe in myself.

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

-Herbert Spencer

Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Appendix II page 567

Contents

Introduction

Step 1: Acknowledge

Step 2: Guide

Step 3: Inventory

Step 4: Discovery

Step 5: Prepare

Step 6: Maintain and Continue

Community Portal: A Place to Share

Introduction

I held my first executive administrator role back in 2000 for a man who created and owned television sports shows. It allowed me to work alongside some of Chicago’s most famous athletes, both active and retired, and taught me how to provide support to people in executive and prominent positions. It was an exciting place to begin a career in this profession. Eventually, the show lost its sponsor and was canceled. It was right around that time that I finally hit bottom with my twelve-year drinking run.

I got sober and decided to go back to school to become an addictions counselor. With my exposure to people with addiction challenges through my own process of getting sober, I was equipped with the personal experience, and I knew with the proper education and professional training, I could really give back to those in need. I kept an administrative job on the side since the salary of a counselor wasn’t enough to support me. Unfortunately, people working any type of job in the human services field are unjustly compensated.

It wasn’t long before I decided it was time to move on from counseling as a career path. My husband and I had just bought a house, our son was starting kindergarten, and even if I went for my master’s and had ten-plus years under my belt, I still wouldn't be making half of what I do today as an executive assistant. Since the money and time didn’t add up, the decision and timing felt right.

I joined a small, but growing, public health-care company where I stayed for the next several years. Working for companies that are still in their early stages of growth comes with the benefit of being exposed to different functions, leadership, and the ability to get involved in as many projects as one can handle. Over the years I rose through the ranks, starting with supporting the SVP of customer operations, and gradually supporting more and more senior leaders until I became the senior executive assistant to the chief financial officer.

The admin role has certainly changed throughout the years. The days of being called a secretary, typing eighty-five words a minute, and answering telephones are a far cry from what an admin is today. Now, an executive assistant is an extension of the executives they support. They are trusted partners in ensuring the teams are as successful and effective as possible. They integrate themselves into their team to help support the executive’s goals, as well as the team’s needs. To do that, an executive assistant needs to understand the organization, so they know who to collaborate with and the right questions to ask. They need to be able to assess people, personalities, working style, and communication style. They need to know how to handle people and situations with tact and diplomacy and be an excellent communicator.

The admin works incredibly close with their executives and becomes ingrained in their work life. You see firsthand how executives run the company, how they lead their people, and how the teams they lead feel about them, but only if you have been successful at integrating yourself into the team and gaining the trust of the people. In short, I became adept at understanding how leaders think and make decisions at work and the effect they have on others.

This experience gave me a big-picture view of the strengths and weaknesses of an organization and helped me understand the roles people played to help execute results. Leaders carry the responsibility and have the power to change people’s lives, through encouragement, financial renumeration, responsibilities, and a strong network. Leaders may not even get to see the changes they implement, but seeds are planted all the time, and their efforts may come to fruition somewhere down the line at another time, even at another company with a different leader.

I do not have an MBA from Wharton, nor did I grow up learning at the knee of a parent who was an executive businessperson. I come from humble beginnings, where work was a means to an end, a method of survival. My decision to become an addictions counselor was clearly rooted in my personal life: I am now eighteen years sober. However, I didn’t realize there was a strong connection between the work I do in sobriety and the value I bring in other jobs I’ve held until much later in life. I began to piece together that there were certain parallels between the work the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous asks of you and the path a business leader can take to acknowledge, identify, and change behaviors to become more inclusive.

While I was at the health-care company, it grew from 1,500 people when I began to over 20,000 by the time I left. Consequently, Human Resources didn’t have enough time and manpower to implement the policies and procedures that came with supporting such a large organization at such rapid growth. So I proposed a plan to create and execute a talent and development process for the finance organization I supported as a way of investing in the development and retention of our top talent. Part of this process included walking the finance team through the difference between a performance plan versus development plan, how development happens, the blind spots we all have about ourselves, and how we need feedback from others to help us build on our strengths and identify our weaknesses. It was through this process that I started to see the crossover between being an addictions counselor and a talent and development leader. I realized I was applying the same skill sets I developed as a counselor to a corporate environment, as I walked team members through a development plan process.

I blossomed in that talent and development role, and it paid off when the company’s HR leader tapped me on my shoulder and asked if I would be interested in being the program manager for the Inclusion and Diversity program they were about to launch. Naturally, I said yes. We formed a council of ten of the most senior leaders in the company and worked with Accenture to create a three-year road map.

My work as an addictions counselor gave me firsthand experience of how unconscious bias shows up for others and in myself. When you work with this population, you start from a place of mistrust with your patients, given all the trauma and disappointing experiences they have encountered in their lives. Every time you meet a new patient, you are confronted with the question, Are you qualified to help me? whether they say it or not. You learn early on that you can’t determine one’s success based on their financial status, insurance coverage, or how much or little family support they have. I have seen the most hopeless cases recover. Similarly, at work, I had also seen the most overlooked talent in an organization rise to the occasion when given the chance. These experiences enabled me to thrive in this new role.

Then COVID hit. And so did the tragedy of George Floyd’s death. COVID greatly impacted the company’s profits, given their business model was structured around getting paid by a percentage of cash they collected for the hospitals they managed. And, if you remember, hospitals were telling people not to come in and canceling all non-emergency surgical procedures. Unfortunately, I was part of the restructuring plan, but by then I had already gained enough knowledge about myself and my transferable skill sets to redefine what I wanted to focus on next and contribute to society in new and meaningful ways. I had realized that every experience in my life, both personal and professional, had some significant intersecting roads that I could use for the greater good of others.

The notion of inclusion and diversity at work is not a new one, but it has taken on a deeper, more critical meaning since the summer of 2020, when many Americans began to question old, trite definitions of inclusion, racism, and giving others opportunities at work. As a moral issue, it isn’t (and never was) enough to pay lip service to the notion of I&D and move on.

Smart leaders understand that inclusion is not simply the right thing to do; it’s essential for a company’s success. Julie Johnson, director of human resources for VHB in Orlando, noted in 2019 in the Orlando Business Journal that a Deloitte LLP study found inclusive organizations are eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes, six times more likely to be innovative and agile, and two times more likely to meet or exceed financial targets. Additionally, an inclusive work environment is more attractive to young professionals, who will make up 75 percent of the workforce by 2025. "So, if you want to be a magnet for talent, now and