MSMP 85: Genesis Amaris Kemp on Diversity and Equality
Genesis and I started the episode talking about passion and I shared how fortunate I was to have stumbled across my passion via a great boss. She was such a great manager that I ditched my planned career path to study management so I could become as good as her. One of the problems I run into when I chat with people is they aren’t getting out there often enough to find their passions. Pro tip: you’re not going to find your passion sitting on your couch.
Part of being a great manager is being able to give feedback, but it’s also the hallmark of a great employee to be able to take feedback. I’d love to say that I was a natural, but it actually took me years to be able to just say “thank you” and thoughtfully consider what had been shared with me instead of just getting defensive and resentful, which of course led to total lack of productivity on my part.
Part of the “feedback” that the corporate world has been receiving is the need to be more inclusive and diverse in the workplace and in leadership roles. This has even led to a quota system in Norway that mandates that 40% of the seats of boards of publicly traded companies must be held by women. That’s actually been discouraging to friends of mine who earned their spots before these quotas. I also recently fielded complaints from those who looked at our speaker list for the SEO Mastery Summit: “Why aren’t there more women?” We simply didn’t have a lot of women apply. Genesis and I talked about the relevance of quotas, the importance of making sure there’s a wide range of individuals of different ethnicities and cultures in given businesses, and the need to ensure that those individuals can see a path for them to rise and spread their wings, to not just be seen, but be heard.

Key Learning Points:
Resources Mentioned: