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Monica Williams (MBA 2013) is a people-centric strategist that has spent the last 15 years designing both equitable and high-performing workplaces. But her work didn’t start there. She made the transition to the people side of the business from, of all places, the accounting field. Monica’s career has taken her from spreadsheets to organizational heartbeats, as she’s led large-scale people efforts at both CenturyLink and the Denver Airport. In this episode, Monica shares more about what makes people-centric strategies successful, how transferable skills helped her discover her passion and how to stay centered in challenging times.
Show Notes
Monica Williams is the CEO and principal consultant of TIED Leadership Consulting.
Table of Contents
1:03 Designing equitable workplace cultures
2:03 How non-managers can create inclusive cultures
3:01 Monica’s path from accounting to diversity
5:47 How inclusive cultures lead to better business outcomes
7:12 Monica’s decision to pursue an Executive MBA
9:09 Challenges and strategies at Denver International Airport
12:26 Identifying and addressing performative equity efforts
18:32 Staying centered in challenging times
In this episode:
- TIED Leadership Roundtable
- The Equity Project
- A Case for DEI Success – Daniels Newsroom
Related articles and information:
- Denver Broncos President Damani Leech praises NFL’s diversity commitment as corporate America, government roll back DEI – CNBC
- How the federal diversity review is impacting Colorado schools – 9News
- Monica Williams on LinkedIn
Transcript
Nick Greenhalgh:
Today, on the Voices of Experience podcast, how do equity efforts impact the bottom line?
Monica Williams:
Companies experience better outcomes when their people are able to contribute and do their best work.
Nick Greenhalgh:
That’s Monica Williams, a Daniels Executive MBA alum and a people-centric strategist that has spent the last 15 years designing both equitable and high-performing workplaces. But her work didn’t start there. She made the transition to the people side of the business from, of all places, the accounting field.
Monica’s career has taken her from spreadsheets to organizational heartbeats as she’s led large-scale people efforts at both CenturyLink and the Denver Airport. In this episode, Monica shares more about what makes people-centric strategies successful, how transferable skills helped her discover her passion, and how to stay centered in challenging times. Monica, welcome to the show.
Monica Williams:
Well, thank you for having me, Nick.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Let’s jump right in. You say you’re an architect of inclusive workplaces. What do the blueprints and scaffolding look like when you’re designing an equitable culture?
Monica Williams:
Being an architect is all about constructing and designing systems, policies, practices that may not have existed before or need to be redesigned. And so that architecture work, as it concerns inclusive cultures, is all about understanding that people are different. Understanding that people have similarities also, but may need different things depending on who they are.
And designing an inclusive culture means that we are paying attention to the workplace culture the workplace design, whereby people are appreciated, they’re valued, they’re respected, and in consideration of their unique differences.
Nick Greenhalgh:
That makes good sense to me at a higher level. How do non-managers help in this effort?
Monica Williams:
Well, non-managers can help in creating inclusive cultures by being accepting of difference, by being in a place where you value connection with other people, getting to know other people, not expecting everyone to fit into a one-size-fits-all approach, where we can make accommodations for people that have different needs. They might have different ways that they process information, have different ways that they think and need to communicate. And so having those structures in place where we consider those differences so that everyone can thrive and so that I am intentional about being inclusive, especially when differences are present.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Yeah, those are the small actions that everybody can take, right?
Monica Williams:
Yes.
Nick Greenhalgh:
You started in the accounting field, moved to the sales side of the operation at CenturyLink, and eventually led diversity and inclusion efforts at the same organization. How does someone change career paths like you did from accounting to equity?
Monica Williams:
Well, I’m glad you noticed. It actually was not by plan of my own. It wasn’t by design.
I didn’t set out to do those things. And so if I had to sum it up, I would say that opportunities presented themselves to me based on, I would say, my transferable skills. It had to do with the way that I would dig into understanding processes or understanding the business and becoming a consultant to the business and therefore being able to lead new efforts or lead efforts where there wasn’t anything before I started that role, like finding a gap in process or finding a gap or a challenge and then being able to concept and build what needed to fill that gap, what needed to exist to fill that gap or creating a program. In 2011, when CenturyLink purchased Quest, I was asked to join the diversity team.
That was when I didn’t even know that was someone’s job. And so that’s where it started.
Nick Greenhalgh:
You talked about those transferable skills. Were those things that you recognized in yourself or did it take a mentor or a manager to sort of point them out to you?
Monica Williams:
I would say managers, leaders, other people around me noticed those skills in me that maybe at the time I would not have been able to articulate. And those were those transferable skills like being able to have difficult conversations in a diplomatic way, being able to engage with all sorts of people and influence others.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Do you feel like you landed in the right spot? Is this what your true calling was all along?
Monica Williams:
You know, I would say yes. This is my life’s work. I was doing this work where I would want it to, I would speak up for those that were more disadvantaged than others.
I was always the one that would want to fight the bully to say the thing that no one else would say. But we’re thinking, so yeah, it’s my life’s work.
Nick Greenhalgh:
I think business outcomes sometimes get lost when we’re talking about people’s strategies. How does building an inclusive culture lead to a better bottom line?
Monica Williams:
Building inclusive cultures is all about people being able to be their best selves. When someone is able to be their best self, they’re able to create and do their best work. And so even in my own experiences, I learned when I was able to be my own and authentic self, I advanced more quickly.
When I started to understand my strengths and I leaned into those strengths rather than adapting to what maybe I thought others expected of me, that’s when I was living my full and best self in that particular role. When I was bringing the best value of what I bring to the table to the role. And I learned that being you and being your best self is going to lead to the best work.
And companies experience better outcomes when their people are able to contribute and do their best work.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Your switch from the sales focus to diversity and inclusion efforts happened right around the time you received your executive MBA from Daniels. Did that experience reaffirm your desire to make that switch?
Monica Williams:
Yes, it did. So when I began leading work around diversity, it was diversity and inclusion at the time, mostly diversity. I wanted to be able to communicate to business leaders in the language of business.
And so I decided rather than to go to law school, that I was going to go and get an executive MBA so that I could understand the language of business and speak to business leaders about the value of, you know, culture and diversity and inclusivity. And that that did lead me to that.
Nick Greenhalgh:
You’re now an adjunct in the same program. What’s one thing that you got from your MBA that you’re trying to include in your curriculum now?
Monica Williams:
One thing I appreciate about being an adjunct in a program that I was a part of is I feel there are still shared experiences. And I can relate to the cohorts that are coming through now because we do have some shared experiences and they are leading in organizations. And I have some insights on how to build more competencies in leadership.
And so the ability to pass along, you know, not just from my MBA experience, but my professional experience and expertise to leaders where I know like here are some fundamental competencies that all leaders need to have and be able to pass that along is a gift.
Nick Greenhalgh:
I want to talk a little bit more about another stop on your career. You oversaw equity inclusion at Denver International Airport for more than three years, a place that has over 40,000 employees across its facilities. What does it take to make real, meaningful change at an organization of that size?
Monica Williams:
It takes everybody. It takes everyone realizing and recognizing that it’s not just one person’s job. It’s everyone’s job.
And in that, it’s understanding that in your individual roles and responsibilities, how can you create a culture that everyone can thrive in? And so from the top of the executive leadership team, all the way to those people who are the most essential assets to the airport, people who are in the ramp tower, people who are repairing the snow equipment, people who are using the snow equipment, everyone matters and the people are its greatest resource. So for people to be able to recognize that if everyone decided they didn’t want to work at the airport anymore, or even if some of those positions decided, I quit, the airport would not be transporting anything, right?
There would not be any planes taken off. And so galvanizing people to recognize that everyone has a role in this work would be the best way that I would say.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Large organizations have a reputation for moving slowly and making change slowly. When you’re working at a large organization, as you have in your career, do you have to set small, achievable milestones to prove that things are happening, changes are being made?
Monica Williams:
Yes, I would say so. So the way that I tackle the work that I did at the Denver International Airport was to start off with employee engagement. And employee engagement was a huge focus at the time.
And a lot of my time spent was on employee engagement and also employee enablement. And enablement to me is a critical piece. So I can’t, you know, just say my employees are engaged if I don’t enable them to be engaged.
Meaning, if I have a process that prohibits or limits employees’ engagement, then I need to look at what those opportunities are there.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Where do companies most often make mistakes when it comes to equity efforts?
Monica Williams:
They make mistakes when there are not commitments from the top of the organization, when the commitments are made and they’re not connected to the business strategy are also mistakes that are made. It’s when those efforts are sitting on a table, sitting on the sideline, waiting for people to pick it up and put it down, and it’s not fully embedded and incorporated in how we execute on the business strategy. That is when I see organizations make those mistakes.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Is that something you’re able to identify quickly? That this is a, you know, box checking effort or, you know, something like that?
Monica Williams:
Yeah, pretty quickly. Pretty quickly you can see when things are more performative in nature. And when people, you know, are really, you know, they’re counting people and counting, you know, how many of these and how many of those.
But there’s not a process or a practice to engage employees. You’re not necessarily seeing outcomes as a result of your work.
Nick Greenhalgh:
And what’s the remedy for that if you are working with a client that is, you know, doesn’t have the strongest start in terms of their equity efforts?
Monica Williams:
Well, one of the things that I am a strong proponent of are assessments. Understanding where organizational opportunities are. Where are people the most engaged or not?
Meaning, are employees able to contribute or to offer their best ideas and make decisions that impact their work? That’s a key indicator. If employees aren’t able to make decisions that impact their work, that’s going to impact their levels of engagement.
If there are not feedback mechanisms, places where employees can give feedback and others can listen, then I can also see that that 360 communication is not happening and I might miss something.
Nick Greenhalgh:
We’ve talked a little bit about it so far, but you moved to the consulting side of the business now at the Equity Project. What are the questions your clients are most frequently asking? And are those different questions than maybe were being asked a decade ago?
Monica Williams:
So I spent four years at the Equity Project and now have started my own consulting practice called Tide Leadership Consulting. But to answer your question, the time that I spent at the Equity Project was invaluable. And the organizations that I’ve worked with have taken hard looks.
Sometimes when we do an organizational assessment and look inward, we don’t always like what we see. And some things may be surprising and other things may not be surprising. But the key is to learn where our areas of opportunity are and then build a strategic plan to address them and to hold ourselves accountable to those plans by tracking and measuring the success of our goals.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Great. How can students that are graduating maybe in a few months from Daniels, how can they enter the workforce on the strong side as it relates to equity and inclusion efforts?
Monica Williams:
Well, I would say students and those that are entering in workplaces need to be agile and be able to adapt to the changing dynamics in workplaces. Every workplace is different, not the same. There are different cultures that are operating in different workplaces.
And so what I recommend the most is that people come into a workplace asking a lot of questions, understanding how decisions get made, understanding how employee feedback and listening is happening, understanding how they will be measured, how their success will be measured, and then being open to learning and adapting where needed, but also bringing their full selves, understanding what their value strengths are and bringing those to bear in the best way possible.
Nick Greenhalgh:
You talked about this in your own career, but if you’re in a place where maybe the culture isn’t adequate or acceptable for you, how do you affect change as an employee?
Monica Williams:
Well, you’re going to have decisions to make. Some cultures aren’t going to move because you showed up. And oftentimes a culture will teach you how to survive in that culture.
And you might have decisions to make of whether that’s the right fit for you or not. The way I like to think about culture, especially when I’m bringing in new employees, I’m not looking for a culture fit. I’m looking for a culture add.
What is it that is missing on my team that I might need to consider? So for instance, if everyone on the team are strategic thinkers, then I need people who are going to be more tactical. I’m going to need people who are action oriented.
Otherwise, we’ll just be dreaming and we won’t necessarily be implementing strategies.
Nick Greenhalgh:
That’s really interesting, especially when it comes to hiring, because I feel like oftentimes we hire people that are most similar to us. Is that something you have to think actively about trying to buck?
Monica Williams:
Yeah, I really do believe. I believe that we are drawn to people who are like us. And that’s a natural tendency to be drawn to people who are like us or have similar experiences to us.
And in another effort of being inclusive, we do have to challenge those proclivities in terms of building the best team, because having a bunch of Monica’s might look good, but it may not be the best thing for what I’m trying to build or what I need to accomplish.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Great. Our final question is one that we ask each of our guests. As a voice of experience, what is one piece of advice that you’d like to share with our listeners?
Monica Williams:
Understanding who you are, why you are doing the work that you do, understanding your why, and keeping that at your forefront will keep you grounded. It will keep you centered on what’s going to bring you joy when you understand what you’re good at and also why it’s important to you to do it. It will help you through challenging times because I’m centered on my why.
I’m doing this because of this, right? That will keep you centered, especially the changing tides, the changing dynamics in workplaces. We have to be purpose-driven and people-centric.
Nick Greenhalgh:
Awesome. Well, thank you, Monica. We really enjoyed having you.
Monica Williams:
Thank you so much.
Nick Greenhalgh:
If you’d like to read more about Monica’s career and see her current work at Tide, be sure to check out our show notes. You can find those and past episodes at daniels.du.edu slash voe-podcast. The VOE Podcast is an extension of Voices of Experience, the signature speaker series at the Daniels College of Business, sponsored by U.S. Bank. Sophia Holt is our sound engineer. Joshua Muetzel wrote our theme. I’m Nick Greenhalgh:, and we’ll talk again soon.