Diversity, Equity, and Creativity with Sam Berg

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Diversity, Equity, and Creativity

June 1, 2023 Brand Leadership Business Growth Career Growth Creative Agency Design Leadership Strategy

Guest Speaker

Samantha Berg

Head of Design at Chime

Samantha Berg is an award-winning design leader breaking barriers to shape an industry of excellence and equity. She has 15 years of experience building and leading teams with proven success–from larger, publicly-traded tech companies to mid-sized design consulting firms to smaller, venture-backed startups. Her teams envision, create, and ship next-generation consumer products that fundamentally change the industry and empower the underrepresented.

It’s time to flip the script on your models of creative leadership.

Your early creative training might not have taught you a whole lot when it comes to being a good leader. Wherever you’ve been—or are—earning your creative chops, making diversity, equity, and creativity the foundation of your role as a leader will help you build the best kinds of teams and the best kind of work.

In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, Adam’s guest is Sam Berg, Head of Design at Chime, and a leader shaping the landscape of inclusion and opportunity in creative industries today. Their diversity-focused conversation covers everything from designing innovative hiring and working systems to adopting collaboration to getting comfortable with not being the best at everything.

Don’t miss this masterclass on changing your leadership practices for the better.

mentioned in this show:

Chime

Adam Morgan

Creative Leader and RCL Host

The Stoke Group

Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency

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REAL CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

Season: 4

Episode: 3

Episode Title: Diversity, Equity, and Creativity: with Sam Berg

Guest Title:

Samantha Berg, Head of Design at Chime

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OPENING QUOTE

So having a diverse team, regardless of what kind of team, not just a design team or creative team, but any kind of team is going to make it so that the team can tackle more problems, can think about things differently, and has more inputs into their decision making.

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Adam Morgan:

Hello, welcome to Real Creative Leadership.

I think we can all agree that creativity is at its best when multiple perspectives, creative styles, and even life experiences are represented. When we’re able to push past our own comfort zones, that’s when real inspiration strikes. Today we’re going to be talking about the importance of diversity and inclusion on creative teams and how prioritizing both can make you both a better creative leader.

I’m joined by Sam Berg, an award-winning design leader who is currently head of design at a FinTech company called Chime. For the past four years, Sam’s been growing Chime’s design and creative teams, with creative spanning across brand, marketing, and product. In addition to scaling the team from five to 35+, Sam co-leads the Chime resource group for women and non-binary people called ChimeHers. Did I say that correctly, Sam?

Well, Sam. Welcome to Real Creative Leadership.

Sam Berg:

Hi. So excited to be here.

Adam:

Yeah, we’re excited to have you here. First, why don’t you talk about yourself? Tell us a little bit about you so we get to know you before we get into all the questions.

Sam Berg:

Yeah. Let’s see. I’m Sam. I am obviously a design leader. I am a passionate and avid world traveler. You’re actually catching me, I just got back from a long weekend in Paris and Lisbon, so I am at my most energized, excited version of myself. I grew up in New York, spent a lot of my life there and moved to the Bay Area 13, 14 years ago to start working in Silicon Valley and working in tech. And outside of work, beyond travel I’m really into fitness and I coach fitness classes.

Adam:

Oh, that’s awesome.

Sam Berg:

So that’s some about me.

Adam:

Well, and first going back to world traveler, isn’t there some statistic that if you’ve at least visited one foreign country, you have more empathy towards other people? I think that’s…

Sam Berg:

I don’t know the exact statistic, but I can’t imagine that’s not true. And honestly, it’s part of why I love traveling. I’m much less of a go sightseeing kind of person, a much more of a hangout in a bar, restaurant and chat with people and really try to get a sense of what the culture is like and what makes the place unique. And I feel like that really does inform all of my life’s views and experiences. So.

Adam:

Well, this is perfect, and it’s no wonder that you were the guest on the show for this topic because this is absolutely ideal. And I know early on when we talked before, you talked about how passionate you are about diversity and inclusion. Let’s just talk a little bit about how focusing on that creates better teams and better leadership. So what’s your experience around that topic?

Sam Berg:

Yeah, I mean there’s so much that is really important to me, and I’m going to try not to ramble and talk about it really succinctly. I think first off, let’s talk about why diversity is better for outcomes. So having a diverse team, regardless of what kind of team, not just a design team or creative team, but any kind of team is going to make it so that the team can tackle more problems, can think about things differently, and has more inputs into their decision making. So if you’re trying to create a product and everybody on your team is from the exact same socioeconomic status, or all went to the same college, or all went to college, there’s a very certain way that you’re going to be thinking about that product or what that product needs to achieve or whatnot.

If you have folks who have a much more varied set of life experiences, then they’re going to think about this a lot in different ways, and so you might uncover problems that you hadn’t thought about initially, or you might be realizing that this product could be really great for a certain type of person that maybe you wouldn’t have thought about before. So hard there to speak in generalisms, but I think the more that you can have different types of thinking, different types of experiences, different types of perspectives on a team, the more you can take on because there’s going to be more people on the team who have a point of view, or who have seen that thing before, have that experience, can really talk to it, can help others have empathy.

When it comes to why diversity is good for the team though, and not just the outcomes, and I’m sure we’ll get into the details of this, I think for so long in the tech industry, but really in a lot of industries finance also, there’s been a perceived way of leading, a perceived person who can be successful in these industries, a perceived set of behaviors that make you successful. And so what that ends up creating is an environment where a lot of people don’t feel like their authentic selves and they’re working a lot harder. They’re spending so much more mental, emotional, physical energy every day to show up in a way that isn’t authentic for them, but that they believe will help them be successful in their career.

And the more that you can show on a team that there are different types of leadership, that there are different types of behaviors that can make you successful, that being your authentic self is something that benefits everybody and is encouraged and required even, then what you do is you open up the doors for more types of people to come in and to be successful in that environment. So it’s kind of a self-creating prophecy, but you can’t create it without showing that and really bringing it to life yourself.

Adam:

Well, this is awesome. And there’s a couple things I just want to point out. First and foremost, we’re talking about how this is all applied in creative teams and creative jobs and careers, where it’s super obvious because we’re looking at big ideas, and new ideas, and new ways of building things, and products, and advertising, and marketing, and all that good stuff. So this really expresses itself pretty quickly. It’s not just a philosophical exercise, it’s got really hands-on reactions and results just because of the way you do it.

The other thing that I like that you pointed out is that it’s not, I think sometimes when we start talking about this topic, some people can start to feel excluded and that’s not it at all. This is diversity and inclusion, not exclusion, meaning everyone has a place, everyone has a different background. We’re just talking about making a good mix of things. So every company’s a completely different mix and just not all the exact same person.

Sam Berg:

Exactly. And that’s not to say… I think mix is a really good word. So one of the things I hate is when somebody will get in touch with me, be like, “Hey, we have a diverse candidate for you.” No one person is diverse. That doesn’t make any sense. But at any point in time, at least for me, if I’m hiring, I’m looking at my team and saying, “Okay, what do we have? What do we not have? And where do we want to add?” And I do really think a lot about diversity, inclusion, belonging as “add.” How do we want to change the shape of our team? What do we want to add to it? What kinds of perspectives do we have that we can really benefit from? And if we’re going to add, what do we also need to add to our culture, to our way of working that makes folks from different perspectives also feel very welcome and included.

Adam:

And you’re already jumping right into it, which is exactly what we want to talk about is leadership around this. Not just philosophy around why we need diversity and inclusion, but how does it make you a better leader? How is it actually changing your style? And I know I’ve gone through plenty of my own journey in moments where it’s like, oh, okay. Handling this and understanding and having empathy with these different groups actually makes me learn and understand a little bit better so that I make the right environment for people. So before I give away anything, just talk to me about leadership styles and how diversity makes you a better leader.

Sam Berg:

Yeah, so it’s interesting. So at Chime, when I first started at Chime, brand, marketing, creative, product design was all one team. We’ve since split a little bit and spun off the marketing folks over towards the marketing side of our house, but when I was building that team at the start, what I don’t think I understood from the get-go was how big of a difference there was in working styles between the product side of the house and the branded marketing side of the house. To me, we’re all creative people, we’re all designers.

Adam:

Yeah.

Sam Berg:

We must all work the same way. But there were things that I thought were little at the time that I realized made a really big difference. So for the product designers, their work was much more collaborative. They’re spending a lot more time with their product folks, with their engineering folks, with folks in legal, compliance, and finance. And the way that the work comes together there is very much through, what’s the word I’m looking for, agreement. There’s a word. Why can’t I think of this word?

Adam:

Consensus.

Sam Berg:

Consensus. It’s a lot of aligning, a lot of consensus, and it’s a lot of behavioral analysis. So what do we want somebody to do? How do we create UI that helps them do that? Or what does the person want to do? How do we create UI that helps them do that? What are things that we want to make sure people don’t get stuck doing? And so there’s a lot of that kind of analysis and upfront and in a lot of ways the pixel work is the last 5%. On the creative side of the house, it was a lot more about the pixels and it’s a lot more about upfront getting a brief and that’s 5% of the work. And then there’s a lot of creative iteration, creative iteration, creative iteration, and especially let’s say performance marketing had a designer who’s just putting out hundreds of ads a day.

What I realized was that at first I’d kind of created this one size fits all, here’s how we’re going to review work together as a team. And really, after hearing from some of the designers and seeing the ways that they weren’t engaging with the process, I had to sit down and think about, wait, we have really different working styles here. And so that’s not to say that we shouldn’t spend time reviewing each other’s work and giving each other feedback, but what’s the right way to do that so that folks who can’t necessarily take feedback or don’t want it still feel comfortable showing their work and other people can learn from that and be inspired by it. And the folks who do want feedback can get that from people who are engaged in who want to give feedback. So that’s just one example.

I think another one is as we’ve gone through COVID and people going remote and working from home, our team went from being completely Bay Area based to being probably like 80% Bay Area based, 75% Bay Area based, but 25% kind of across the country. And so all of a sudden we had time zones that we’re dealing with. And so I think before it had been roughly okay culturally to have meetings between 10:00 AM and 5:00 PM but all of a sudden you have somebody in New York and a 5:00 PM meeting’s kind of cruel.

So one of the things I did with my leadership team was we sat down and we looked at time zones and we kind of said, okay, for our team, we will not schedule meetings before 10:00 AM Pacific, which is 7:00 AM in Hawaii, and we will not schedule meetings after 2:00 PM Pacific, which is 5:00 PM in New York. And so across the country, no one should be working too too early or too too late for our team meetings, and that can be acceptable collaboration culture. And so these are just things I don’t think I would’ve thought about even five years ago. And so really giving that attention to the different types of people, different working styles, different locations, all of that forces me to be a better leader and to think about how do I create a team environment that isn’t just acceptable for everybody, but really supports everybody and helps them do their best work.

Adam:

Oh, that’s interesting. That’s great. There’s just a question that came to my mind when you were talking about that, and that’s you were talking about feedback, and it just made me think, oh man, there’s probably, we definitely want to be respectful, but you still need critique in design. You can’t get away from critique. So how have you balanced that in terms of giving feedback but also not pandering too much and trying to be too soft about it?

Sam Berg:

Oh gosh, that is such a complicated question. There are a few different pieces there. So one I think is setting expectations really clearly with the team. There will be feedback. Some of it will be constructive, some of it will be positive. This is the norm. And really just setting the standard of “the work you do will get reviewed.” It should be reviewed by your peers. It should be reviewed by your manager, occasionally by me or by upper level leadership. You are very talented and you just don’t know everything. None of us know everything. And so the more that we get feedback and input from other people, again, the more diverse kinds of perspectives that we have, the better our work will be. So let’s all come from a shared value that we think our work is better with feedback. And then let’s not be afraid to show our work, even when it’s really sloppy and get that feedback. Especially early on, while we can still make directional changes.

And part of what I try to train each person to do, and what I hope the managers are training their people to do, is really how to ask for feedback. So it’s not just, here’s my stuff, what do you think? But it’s really learning how to guide the conversation and get the right types of feedback. So there’s a piece that the designer really owns of how do they guide the conversation? How do they ask the right questions? How do they ask why and why, and why and why. So they really get to the heart of feedback and they know how to address it.

And then there’s a piece for all of us when giving feedback, which is number one, I like to think about work shopping more than critiquing. And so I think about it as kind of Walt Disney had this idea of plussing, how do you take something right to the next level, make it better, make it better, make it better? And so for my teams, the culture, I try to create as much further away from the art school critique beat down, you walk away crying. And it’s much more of a like, “hey,” “let’s,” “yes,” “and.” It’s improv rules. It’s like, I see the work you’ve done, you had some really good ideas, here’s what’s really successful, and have you thought about this other thing that might make this other part a little bit more successful? Or how are you thinking about X, Y, Z?

So a lot of it is how we phrase the feedback. A lot of it’s making sure that when we give feedback, we’re giving it in a way that is actionable and helps somebody think differently and grow.

And then kind of tying all of that back to the diversity piece, there are so many cultural norms that I don’t think we’re aware of that can affect this culture of feedback. And so there are cultures, for example, where women should not be speaking unless spoken to. And even then it should really just be to agree. And so it’s really interesting to see somebody who comes out of a culture like that and how they don’t typically engage in a big designer view. They’re not just going to voluntarily give feedback because that goes against every cultural norm that they’ve been taught their whole life, or they’re going to be much more hesitant to give constructive feedback. And so how do you identify that as a norm for them and talk about it and open it up and make it a safe space for them to break those norms.

And I think without kind of understanding that, you might just be like, oh, that person doesn’t engage, or that person never has feedback that’s not okay, as opposed to, gee, I wonder where they’re coming from. And in other cultures, people have big loud families and talk over each other and yell at each other and it doesn’t mean anything. And for other people, that’s terrifying. And for some of those same people, like a culture where people aren’t really talking out is terrifying. We’re like, why aren’t we just saying our feelings? And so I think it’s not just as simple as like, hey, we want to have this type of culture. I think you really have to understand all the different dynamics on the team and then figure out how to make this a safe space where everybody can, within their own comfort zones, be able to give feedback in a way that is compelling for them.

Adam:

Wow. I love it. It sounds like this is a good tip. Be intentional about the culture of how your team works, how you give feedback, how you interact, how you are in meetings. I think just at least setting the ground rules of an intentional plan in the beginning that everyone can agree to is really, really good. After you dig into it, of course.

But anyhow, as you talked about the design school feedback system, which is very funny, that takes us to the next topic of, all right, so for me personally, I started my career in the mid- nineties it was an ad agency life. There was definitely a specific culture that was very harsh, a lot of bravado, and it was like if you could be a bigger turd than the next person, you’d go up the ranks. But tell us about your experience, because I think we had a similar experience and I’d like to talk about where things were in the past and then how we’re moving forward.

Sam Berg:

Yeah, I mean, I’ve seen those days. I think a lot of us have. I’m not sure I understand who it benefits at the end of the day, and I’m not sure that I understand what that type of culture, how it moves work forward. Again, I think in those cultures, I don’t want to say too many generalizations, but in my experience in cultures like that, there is usually some amount of ego and some amount of a leader who wants to lead through command and control somebody who thinks that they have the answer and they are waiting for other people to get to that answer. And if other people are not getting to that answer fast enough or in the exact path that this person would’ve taken to get there, then they feel the need to correct that and to speed things up.

And I’m not going to lie, very early in my career, and as a leader, I was guilty of that. When I was at an agency, there were projects I led where I thought I knew what the vision was and where I wanted the work to be. And I was frustrated with my team members when I felt like they weren’t getting there fast enough and they weren’t just doing it the way that was like so obviously the right way to do it.

And one of the things I learned early on was, and I really believe in this ethos, that you should hire and work with people who are better than you. But then when you do that, you have to get out of their way and you have to let them surprise you. The way that they’re going to tackle things because they are better than you will not be the way that you would’ve tackled it, and what they’re going to bring back is going to be different than what you would’ve brought back. But if you know that they are better than you are, they’re more talented than you are, they have a skill that you don’t have. That’s the whole point is you want them to bring back something different. Because if they bring back the same thing that you would’ve done, what was the point in working with them or of hiring them? You could have just done it yourself.

And so I do think, going back to the original question, that style of leadership to me does not produce great work, and it doesn’t make people happy. And I think you’d be hard pressed to find somebody who’s really rooting for that kind of culture, like a great time in art school or a great time at those types of agencies. And I want to be very clear, not all agencies are like that. So I like to think that we’ve come a long way since then, and that we’ve gotten much more open to the idea that different people have different skill sets, and we can create a team of people with a lot of different superpowers, and that we can lean into people, and we can admit when we have weaknesses. I think that’s been such a big learning for me as a leader, is being able to be candid about things I’m not good at or things that I’m working on and want to get better at. And being really candid with other folks about, I’m not good at this, this is where I’m leaning on you, or this is actually something I love doing that I think I’m really good at. Can I take this thing on?

I think back in the day especially, it felt like you couldn’t admit to not knowing something. You couldn’t admit to having a weakness or to not being good at something. That would open you up to not get promoted or to get fired or to just be not respected or whatever. I don’t know. I just think it’s easier. We’re all carrying… Back then, then you’re carrying this load of like I’m not good at these three things. I can’t let anybody find out. And so half of your brain all day is just in protect mode.

Adam:

So what have you done to be very intentional about how you’re changing your leadership style? Maybe it’s advice to others of how we break that mold moving forward, because there’s still a lot of those people out there. There still are. But how do we fix culturally all of us moving into a better leadership style?

Sam Berg:

Yeah, I think mentorship, feedback, and a lot of soul-searching. So I’ll start with feedback, which is something I have found very useful in my career, is to have people around me who I really, really highly trust, who I know will tell me when I’ve messed up. For example, back in the day when I’m just sitting there trying to force the team to do my vision and to go under my creative direction and take the route that I wanted to take, I had a good friend sit me down and be like, “Dude, you’re being an asshole.” Sorry, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that word in this podcast.

Adam:

You are totally allowed.

Sam Berg:

My New York potty mouth coming out. But I didn’t realize it, right? For me, I was deep in my own version of “I’m frustrated. Why isn’t the team getting there? Why aren’t they good? Why isn’t…” Whatever. And I needed somebody to pull me out and be like, “Dude, this is you. You’re screwing up. You have a team of super-talented people, and you’re not using them correctly.” So I think getting really good feedback from people you trust, people who can be a mirror is super important.

Mentorship is really important. And maybe not even mentorship, but I think having role models and thinking intentionally about how to use them. There was somebody I worked with who was easily maybe the most talented designer I’ve ever met in my life, and what was so great about working on projects with that person was that that person always leveled up the work. You did the foundation, and then they would take it one step further. And the work came out so amazing, and you felt so, so proud of yourself and so proud of the team and of the actual creative. So I took that into my leadership style of what can I always do to plus one somebody? How can I just pump it up a little bit more?

There was somebody else where, as a leader, they were never, ever, ever rattled by a client, ever. And I saw some really, really tough rooms. But especially if you were a newer designer, it was one of your first clients or whatever, no matter how bad the project got, you were never scared ever because this person was just always calm and was always like, “Yeah, don’t worry. It’ll all be fine. We’ll fix it. It’s not a big deal.” And that was something that I’ve tried to incorporate into my leadership style. As a leader for our team, how do I always seem like a rock to them even if I’m freaking out inside? I go freak out to a peer. I go freak out to somebody else, my mom, my husband. But do not freak out to the team because they need to see that there’s steadiness.

So feedback, role models. And then I think the last thing is soul-searching. I think it’s one thing to think about and to know that you can and should show up as an authentic leader. I think it can be very hard to figure out what that actually means for you. So how am I, Sam, different than you, Adam? And how do I show up in different ways? And if I’m thinking about these role models and incorporating pieces of their leadership style into mine, how am I any different?

So one of the things that was really transformative for me, I was in a leadership course some number of years ago, and we did this exercise where you kind of closed your eyes and you thought about this most perfect day, whatever the most perfect day in your life has ever been. And you think about the smells and the colors and what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing and what you’re touching and who you’re with and all these things. And then you describe it to somebody else. And at the end, they kind of tell you what they’ve heard, and you kind of start to sort through that and be like, “Oh, these are the things that are really important to me.”

I think for a while as a leader, I felt like everything had to be important, right? I have to be great at this. I have to be great at that. I have to be so good at hiring, and building a team culture, and representing diversity and inclusion, and a really great product strategist, and an operationalist, and this and that. And at some point, you just can’t do all the things, and you’re not actually that good at all of them. And so really starting to think about what do I want to be known for? If there are only two or three things that I can be known for, if there’s only one thing that I can be known for, what is that, and how do I put all of my energy into those things? And how do I let go of the other things, things that are really important that I’m still going to care about, but that I’m not going to care about as much?

And so you think about Mother Teresa. She’s not known for being a chef. She has her one thing. And that was really clarifying for me, kind of figuring out, hey, these are the two or three things that are really, really important to me. These are the things that I want to be known for. Therefore, these are the things I’m going to work really hard at doing for my team and at being as a person, and I’m just going to try to let the rest of it go.

Adam:

Oh, that is awesome. For everyone listening, this is awesome advice on how to use your leadership to empower a diverse team. I love that. So we’ve got feedback, mentorship or role modeling, and then deep soul-searching, which I love this thought of like, “Yeah, what’s my legacy?” I just had a job change recently, and so I was thinking a lot about that. Going into this new place, what is it that I want to have that lasts beyond just getting through the list and getting all the stuff done? What’s the legacy you really want to have? Which is… It’s a deep conversation. We’re not around very long, so how can you make the biggest impact?

Sam Berg:

It is. And I think when you think about it that way too, it transcends jobs. It’s not just like, what am I doing at this place at this point in time? But if there are a thousand people that I work with over the course of my lifetime, do they all think about me the same way? Am I known for the same thing to all of them? And do I want to be? And if so, what is that?

Adam:

Well, that takes me to the next question. How are you using your position of power to help others in their career? So not just soul-searching for yourself, but how are you helping the other people as well?

Sam Berg:

Yeah. This is a tough one for me because I always feel like I’m not doing quite enough.

Adam:

Well, you’re in good company.

Sam Berg:

I had a very long conversation with my therapist about this a week or two ago, about recognizing when I’m doing what I can.

So especially early in my career, as soon as I did have a full-time job, my immediate “how do I use my power to empower” was like, “How do I turn around and help people get jobs from my university, from my program? How do I teach them what a good portfolio looks like? How do I teach them what a good resume looks like? How do I put them in touch with anybody I possibly know in the tech industry so that they can make those connections and get those first conversations? If my team has an internship open, can I help them with that?” So definitely student mentorship, early grad mentorship is something that’s always been really, really close to my heart and something I’ve spent a lot of time on.

In the last few years, I would say that has kind of up-leveled to how do I help more types of people in that way? I went to an Ivy League college in New York. Speaking in generalizations, a lot of people coming out of that school are pretty privileged, have pretty good connections. It’s great for me to help them, and those might not be the people who need my help the most, or who need these connections the most, or who need feedback on their resume and portfolio the most. So what I’ve tried to pay a lot more attention to in the last few years is what are those communities who don’t traditionally get looked at for things like internships or jobs? Which communities are underrepresented or just kind of looked over?

One that is super interesting is I think there’s been an assumption for so long that you need a college degree to do this work. And I just don’t know that that’s true. I think you need to really, deeply — for what I do — really deeply understand how human brains work and how human bodies work and how you create things that work the way that our brains and bodies expect them to. But nothing in there says you have to go to college or take college level courses to understand that. And so what can I do to go help high school students learn about internships or entry level jobs? What can I do to go help folks who are no longer students but never went to college, be looked at for these opportunities or help them get the right types of experience so that they can be looked at for these opportunities?

So that’s a lot of what I think about. The other piece is just female representation in the industry and in the workspace. I think when I was younger and starting in my career, I think I wanted to ignore some of the troubles or some of the friction that women faced in the workplace, or I thought I could use it to my advantage. So especially early in my career, I’m young, I’m a woman, people are just going to underestimate me. And I’m like, cool, let’s play that game. And it’s so easy to exceed expectations cause no one expects anything of you and you’re like, cool, I’m doing this with my eyes closed. And you’re like, wow, because you had thought so poorly of me to begin with. And so in some ways it was almost like fun when I was younger. But the further I’ve gotten in my career, honestly, the harder it’s been because the more you move up, I think the more that we still see the historic way of leading the ways that we’ve talked about that we used to see at agencies, that we see in art school. The idea that there is one right answer, and so we’re only going to hire people who can also see that right answer as opposed to thinking about, hey, there might be multiple right answers and maybe we should bring people into work and to point out the other right answers.

And a lot of what I have faced personally in my career development, I’ve been up in a lot of, for example, promotion conversations where the reason I’m not getting promoted is because they just don’t feel I’m ready yet. Or, they want other people to be really excited about it, which is code for you’re not nice enough, which we would never say to a guy, but women get told that all the time. So I think the more and more that I face that, the more that I have felt really passionately about trying to make workspaces more welcoming for women and trying to make workspaces where women can do their best work and have all of the same success as men.

Adam:

Well, this has been fantastic. I’m just sitting back here thinking, oh, how have I failed at that one? Or I need to try better there. That’s a good point. Here’s something that came to mind though when you were talking about all of the reaching out to underserved communities or people who are not getting the internships or whatever that may be, and I think there’s a tendency in sometimes when we have to hire for a role, we’re like, I don’t want to deal with this. I want to get the absolute best candidate for the position. I don’t want to have to do half the job if I get someone who’s under qualified or inexperienced. So how do you give advice to someone around that to how do we look past that to give the opportunity to someone?

Sam Berg:

How can you know if you’ve hired the best person if you haven’t looked everywhere?

Adam:

That’s a fair point.

Sam Berg:

I think we have to break down these preconceived notions that we have. So I think historically we have thought that the best candidates for our job are the most highly educated, the ones who come out of certain companies, the ones who have certain types of experience on their resume. And I don’t know if that’s true, but even if it is, to go back to where we started, if every single person on your team has that profile, you’re only getting one point of view.

Adam:

Oh yeah, no, there’s even been some great research on those who do really, really good at tests and get good on the SAT or whatever it may be at the LSAT aren’t necessarily the best for the actual job itself. Whereas someone who’s more deliberate and consistent might do a better job even if they’re not great at testing. So that’s a fair point.

Sam Berg:

And I think we have to adjust our interview processes accordingly. And I’m not going to lie and say that I have an answer here. My interview process is something I am working on every single day and trying to make better. But our interview processes historically don’t allow everybody to succeed. So one of the examples I like to use is back in the day when I was hiring, we would do a whiteboard exercise. We’d have somebody come in, kind of give them a prompt or a challenge, and they’d talk it through on a whiteboard. And it was so we can see the way that they tackle the challenge and how they think about things. And we’d get into some really interesting conversations by way of this. What does it mean to be fair, for example?

And we’d get to these really, really cool things. Something that I never thought about was if you have any kind of issues with motor skills, being able to physically hold a whiteboard marker and write on a whiteboard for an hour is really not something you can do. So even just something as simple as say like, “Oh, this is great, we’re not asking people to do homework ahead of time. They can just come and talk in real time,” wasn’t great in that way. Anybody who’s very introverted and likes to have information up front and digest and synthesize before speaking, this exercise sucked for because we’re asking them to think on their feet. So we saw people shut down. It’s like, does that mean that they’re not talented or that they can’t do this job?

Adam:

No, It’s just the circumstance.

Sam Berg:

Yeah, it’s the circumstance that we’re putting them in. That is a place, I think the industry still has a long way to go. Something I’m trying to fix where I can. But again, gonna make a bunch of mistakes, going to ask for honest feedback and I’m going to keep trying. But I do think there’s a lot that goes into that.

Adam:

Thank you. That’s good things to think about. Anyhow, I want to thank you, Sam, for joining us on the show. This has been a masterclass on just trying to take our leadership skills to benefit others, and how we can change the mold of what we’ve been taught into something new. So such great advice. In closing, how can people follow you? Where can our listeners find out more about you or learn from you?

Sam Berg:

Well, first off, this has been incredible. Adam, thank you so, so much for having me and for having such great questions. And for anybody who wants to follow me, it’s really easy. You can find me at sberg75 pretty much anywhere, Gmail, Medium, LinkedIn, Instagram.

Adam:

Awesome. Well, thanks again. Thanks for joining us on the show.