Joy Stephens is a Board-Certified Life Coach specialising in corporate leader coaching. She focuses on executive and individual coaching, specifically around Career Transitions, Relationship Building and Inclusive Leadership Skills. Seeing the need for a more in-depth understanding of the impact of empathy and inclusion, she developed a series of workshops in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion space. She believes that empathy and compassion are the keys to better leadership, better communication, and stronger working relationships. She imbues all of her workshop facilitation with the goal of recognising the humanity in each other. How did Joy get started in her industry? (01:05) Joy says she spent about 20 years working in corporate America in research and development, manufacturing, sales and marketing, and corporate training.Throughout her journey, she started to realise that we don’t pay attention to our people anymore.She decided that she has to get other managers to understand if you want people to be their best, instead of just work harder, you have to get to know them.Getting to know them means you have to show empathy when it is needed, listen to them and apply soft skills or use something that is called inclusive leadership. When did she decide to get involved in her field? (2:32) She became aware of the connection between what she was feeling and what she wanted to do and realising that she could turn it into a profession in 2012.When she realised she could have a career helping companies with their inclusion sparked the interest in her.Joy says that she was also interested in coaching people and got her board certification to become an executive coach.She went on to put an inclusion and diversity curriculum together and shared it with the company she was working with at the time.She decided she could do more for more people by going at it on her own and left corporate America in 2018 to start her own company. What was the most significant catalyst in Joy’s career? (03:59) Joy says she started on her journey by being exposed to real team building. She says that people use the phrase team building and then go out to get dinner and don’t get to talk to each other and get to know one another.The team building she was a part of was more in-depth, where they talked about how they became the person they are.She says by talking to one another about who you are, and what you experienced, you discover so much more about the people you are working with, and you end up seeing them as a three-dimensional being. You don’t see them as someone with just a title anymore but as a person with a family who has hopes, dreams and aspirations, problems and baggage. Through this exercise, she got to know the people she worked with, and it helped her trust them more and build stronger relationships with them which helped inclusion in her workplace.The event that had the biggest effect on her was the death of Michael Brown, who was shot dead in Missouri. The event had such an effect on her that she considered quitting her job to march in protest.She says the fact that other people were having shallow conversations at the time and were not even aware of what happened and what she was going through started her journey towards diversity and inclusion and helping other people understand someone else’s experience. What is one of the problems Joy identified in HR throughout her journey? (10:44) From her point of view, HR tends to be more about systems and compliance. In addition to that, HR has become a function where we ensure that everyone received a certain set of training modules.To keep the employees safe and keep the company safe, HR has to ensure everyone meets the letter of the law and makes sure that when something goes wrong, it gets handled.Joy feels that HR has become a profession where everything is a checkbox exercise. She is not denouncing it. She says that there are specific requirements set by law, and HR professionals must ensure they meet those requirements.She says that many companies put diversity and inclusion under the same HR system, although it is a personnel development function and should go along the lines of leadership training. What are Joy’s top tips for new HR Professionals? (26:25) Joy says to remember that everybody hurts, but when you understand that everyone comes in with their own set of experiences that shape how they see things, you give them more grace and space to be who they are and helps you to meet them where they are and bring them to where you need them to be.People should set the standard of how you and your work will be viewed. Joy’s book recommendation What if by Dr Steve Robbins Connect with Joy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joy-stephens-newheights/
