Mother of two takes a DIY approach to DEI

For Monica Gould, teaching workplaces about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is personal as a minority woman and a parent.   

“I’m a mother of two daughters,” she said. “One of the things I wanted to make sure my daughters didn’t experience was some of the discrimination that I experienced as a woman in the workplace – the lack of flexibility, the lack of understanding as to what it is to balance motherhood and work.”  

Her journey to help businesses and organizations create more equitable, inclusive environments has spanned 26 years. Gould is the president and founder of Strategic Consulting Partners (SCP), a management consulting firm through which she works with clients from a variety of industries to define and achieve their strategic goals and objectives, including DEI training, cultural assessments and Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) data analysis.  

In the Q&A below, Gould shares some of her insights on the impact of DEI work with Women in Leadership.   

Answers have been edited for length and clarity. 

How did you get involved in DEI work?  

As a woman, I recognized very early on in my career that there were inequities between men and women in the workplace. I was an executive in corporate America. I moved my way up into senior leader positions, but what I found was there weren’t other women at the table. I was often the only woman there. I was often spoken to in less-than-respectful manners. I don’t think people had the level of empathy and understanding as to what’s appropriate to say in the workplace.   

When I started my own business, one of the things I really wanted to do is make sure that I could further women’s initiatives in the workplace and bring awareness and light to the unique qualities that women have. It’s not to say men don’t have their own unique qualities – of course they do. The unique qualities women have in terms of nurturing, multitasking, having a softer approach, those qualities – I wanted people to see that these are things to value. I started doing some speaking around women and the communication differences between men and women, and I got a lot of requests from people to talk about generational differences.  

I came to understand diversity is a lot larger than just gender or age. It is also race, religion and all these other components. It fascinated me, and I became a quick study on what these differences are and how it can impact – positively or negatively – workplaces if not handled correctly. I really was fascinated with how we can come together as a world and a community. It is important to note that I am also a minority. I am an immigrant to the U.S. Even though I may not look like I’m multicultural, as a child, my last name, I got teased a lot.   

I was just frustrated with the fact that people weren’t seeing me, or seeing the world in the way that I saw the world. So, I thought how better to address it than to actually do the work and expose people to what it is and make it OK for people not to know, right? We don’t have to know everything. I don’t know everything about every religion and culture, and I don’t claim to be an expert on every nuance of diversity, but what I do know is we can find common ground together. I felt a calling to help people see that and help people understand that the unique gifts that each individual provides or has adds to an organization and doesn’t detract.  

What are some common misconceptions among businesses about DEI training? 

I think the biggest misconception is that it’s going to be painful, that people aren’t going to enjoy being a part of it. I think one of the challenges is that people think it’s only about race. Another misconception is, “Hey, we do the training, we check the box and we’re done.” No, you’re not. You just began.   

Anyone who says they know it all, any DEI expert who says they know it all, is lying because you can’t know it all. We don’t know everything about every other culture. I make it a point to learn, and that’s what we should all be doing because the only way we’re going to find common ground with each other is to, at a human level, acknowledge and respect people for what they bring to the table.  

Describe the power of being able to come to work as one’s authentic self. 

From a human level, it feels good when you can be accepted for who you are, that you don’t have to go to work pretending parts of your life aren’t important to you. If you don’t feel welcomed or included, think about when you were a little kid at school. Think about when you weren’t picked for the team to play sports – it does something to your self-esteem, confidence, your ego to the extent that it potentially can detract from your personal productivity. It has a business impact.  

You’re going to give everything you got to somebody who cares about you, loves you, respects you, acknowledges the good and bad things you do. They’re honest, and there’s trust there. It erodes trust deeply if employees are not engaged and valued. Trust is the foundation for any relationship. If you don’t trust someone, it’s hard to engage with them fully, to share your ideas, to want to debate, have healthy conflict and challenge silly ideas or things that won’t work. You’re stifling that thought process, that individual, their confidence, productivity and willingness to collaborate. You hire this diverse person because they bring something to the table that you don’t have, and then you don’t use it. It’s like wasting it. It’s wasting the opportunity to really take advantage of the unique talents and gifts that each individual brings. And we all have them, the question is, can we find them? Are we willing to look for them, or do we want to just look at people on the surface and just make a judgement?