Chief Change Officer
#95 Greg Morley: Turning DEI Drama into Workplace Wins – Part Two
Tue, 10 Dec 2024
Greg Morley isn’t your average HR guy. He’s the former DEI and HR head at Moët Hennessy, Disney, and Hasbro—and the brains behind Bond, the book on belonging your workplace desperately needs. In Part 2 of this two-part series, Greg breaks down the complexities of implementing DEI in global organizations. He shares how rewiring systems—not just setting quotas—creates real inclusion. From tackling unconscious bias to aligning leadership with grassroots energy, Greg highlights the power of authentic cultural shifts. He also contrasts Eastern and Western DEI strategies, showing how understanding local values can foster belonging. Key Highlights of Our Interview: The Crisis of Workplace Loneliness “Workplace loneliness isn’t just a personal issue—it’s a challenge organizations must tackle to foster belonging and inclusion.” The Employee-Employer Power Flip “The workplace dynamic has shifted—it’s now a buyer’s market for employees who demand recognition, safety, and belonging.” Redefining Diversity “Diversity isn’t just what you see—it’s also life experiences, generational perspectives, languages, and abilities, visible or hidden. Most of our diversity at work is invisible. Who someone marries, whether they have kids, or cognitive differences often go unnoticed—but they matter.” Start With Yourself “Change begins within. Reflecting on personal experiences of inclusion or exclusion can help leaders empathize and create a more welcoming environment for others.” East Meets West “In the East, inclusion feels more organic, driven by community and connection. In the West, it’s often about achieving measurable outcomes and hitting diversity targets.” _________________________ Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Greg Morley Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI, JP 2.5+ Millions Downloads 80+ Countries --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What is the focus of Greg Morley's book on belonging?
Thank you for having me back. Really pleased that you and I met each other more than a year ago, and I'm really proud of you and the work you're doing and what you're bringing to the conversation about humanity. So thank you for that. Today, what we're going to talk about is this, the book that I've written called Bond, Inclusion and the Keys to Belonging and Connection. A little bit about me.
So I've spent most of my life in HR as an HR business leader and a good part of the latter part of my career in inclusion and belonging and diversity. I did write this new book, which I hope is a guide to inclusion and belonging in the workplace.
I've had the experience and great good fortune of leading diversity initiatives in the US, Europe, and Asia at major multinationals such as General Electric, Disney, Hasbro, and most recently my experience with LVMH Moet Hennessy. And I wrote the book to share what I believe are really life-changing lessons I've learned
for how leaders and teams can be more inclusive and embrace company diversity to be even more successful in the companies in which they're working.
First things first, starting with belonging. What do you mean by belonging in the workplace? And why is that important?
Sure. It's a great question. And let me maybe start by why I wrote the book, what inspired me to write the book as a way of addressing sort of the belonging, inclusion, and connection terms of the book.
Over the decades of experience I had, both in and in HR roles, but also in roles such as marketing, sales, and communications and distribution, what I saw was there is an essence of crisis of loneliness at work for some people. And there's a very important role that organizations play in fostering a culture of belonging and inclusion.
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Chapter 2: Why is fostering a culture of belonging important in the workplace?
And the fostering of that culture of belonging and inclusion is not just a nice thing to do and everybody feels good at work and we go and we have parties and we're happy and we have lunch together. There is data that reinforces that when an organization is diverse, inclusive, and has leaders who lead in an inclusive manner, On many measurable aspects, those companies do better.
They do better in terms of innovation. They do better in terms of avoiding risk. They do much better in terms of getting profitable products to market. And they do much better in terms of what would be obvious, which is keeping good people and attracting good people. So there is a business imperative to being good at these things.
And what encouraged me to write the book was I saw all of these sort of good and bad practices over my career, both within the companies I was working with and with others that I had become associated with. And that's why I got to the point of, okay, there's something to be talked about.
And I think finally, what was a driving factor for me was I believe in my core that these things I just talked about are important to individuals and to businesses. And what I saw was we were in the world of diversity, equity and inclusion getting too far away from what I believed was the important part.
Part of diversity, actually, and inclusion was diverse workforces working well together and creating great business outcomes and great outcomes for individuals. And so that's how I got to the point of writing the book.
I agree with you 100% when it comes to belonging versus loneliness. Early in my career, I was immersed in big organizations, and it was all about work and climbing the corporate ladder. Belonging was seen as more of a soft feeling, something you didn't really think about much. You worked hard, made your boss happy, and got along Maybe you'll get promoted faster and better.
Some would call it luck. Others would call it politics. That's just a normal corporate life. But when you talk about belonging in the workplace, especially now that you absorbed it and you've been involved in different cultures, I'm curious, why is it so difficult to develop a true and sustainable sense of belonging for employees?
And how can we nurture that sense given all the complexities of corporate life?
There are many aspects to this, but let me focus on a couple of them. The first is that the world is changing in terms of the work, and especially since COVID. And I just read an article this morning which highlighted this. The arrangement or the agreement that employees and employers have has flipped.
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Chapter 3: How has the employee-employer dynamic changed post-COVID?
we all get hired and we get a job description and it says all the things that have to happen the reality of jobs is you know people do some things on the job description and some things off the job description and many times a career like the one you were talking about vince where you work hard you put in a lot of effort and you get ahead and you get promoted comes from the fact that somebody's doing something beyond their job the incremental effort
So belonging is important because it creates this connection somebody has with their role, with their company, with their boss, with their peers, which allows them to feel encouraged to do the incremental effort. And that's how companies win when employees are fully engaged and doing the incremental effort.
As you were sharing. It reminded me of an incident from about 20 years ago when I worked at an international financial institution. At that time, I was a store employee. I received a lot of positive feedback from clients. I was sent to the headquarters for special training, first of its kind, and my boss rewarded me for all the hard work I put in.
My clients recognized it, and I was working incredibly hard, 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. I genuinely enjoyed the work. In your terms, I felt a strong sense of belonging to the role, to the company, and to my clients. The pay wasn't anything special, even under industry standards. But I was so motivated and invested in the work. Then something changed. My boss left.
and her replacement had a completely different style and approach. I wouldn't place blame entirely on this new person, but we didn't get along the way I had with my previous boss. The entire culture and team dynamics shifted. The vibe, the chemistry, the sentiment, everything fell off. That's when I lost my sense of belonging. I kept working hard and professionally to serve my clients.
But there was an internal conflict with my new supervisor. This eroded the connection I had felt to my work. The result? I quit the job and came as a surprise to everyone, clients, colleagues, even those at headquarters. They couldn't understand it because I had been such a hard worker, talented analyst. For them, it was a real loss. For me, the damage was deeper.
That's when I experienced my first episode of mental illness, what we would call now burnout. And that burnout spiraled into depression. I'm sharing this now because it ties back to what you said about the sense of belonging or the lack of it. When that sense is lost, especially in a role where I had thrived and found purpose, the consequences were severe for both my career and my health.
It was a perfect example of how critical belonging really is.
It's a perfect, it's a case study, which makes the point of the lessons of the book. And I think it's important. I want to recognize you for sharing that story because many people go through those kinds of episodes. And oftentimes the loneliness occurs because we don't. believe other people have had that experience or are going through those things either in the past or people that we work with.
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Chapter 4: What are the unseen aspects of diversity and inclusion?
So when we define DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion, most people think of diversity, equity and inclusion is relating to things like gender and skin color, perhaps because they're the most visible forms of diversity.
What I would say is also critically important, and I've seen this in my experience, is it's just as important to understand what experience, both life and career experience, somebody brings to their job. You know, what generation they come from, what languages they speak or understand. Who do they have any disabilities? Do they have any exceptional abilities?
Those are all things that are important in determining how you build a diverse workforce. The reality is most of the diverse elements that we bring to work are unseen. Now who I'm married to is unseen. Do I have children or not is unseen. Do I have a cognitive ability or disability is unseen in most places. So this is why we have to get to know the people that work for us.
And when we talk about then why is that include, why is the word inclusion important or the concept inclusion is it's to me, I always imagined the image of an orchestra. So in an orchestra, there are many different instruments and they all have their own role. And at some point they come together in a piece to create a beautiful piece of music and experience a feeling.
And it's the job of the manager, the leader, to understand which pieces they need to bring to different projects, different work streams, different situations to create a beautiful piece of music. which can only be done in an orchestra by an incredibly diverse field of instruments, which is also what we see at work.
Outcomes at work are better from an innovation perspective, from a profitability perspective, from a risk and compliance perspective when you have diverse teams. And going back to this diversity of all the different elements which are seen and unseen.
So the manager is the conductor?
Yes. So the manager is the conductor, but also think about the conductor as a rotating role. If you're project managing, then you could be the conductor. If you're running a business or employee resource group, you could be the conductor. It's just a matter of appreciating the differences in the workforce. trying to get the best out of the people so that they feel included.
And then what does included mean? It means that when I'm at work and I'm doing work, I feel like my voice is heard, I feel like I'm respected. I feel like I am in a safe place. I feel like I'm recognized for the work that I do.
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Chapter 5: How can managers foster a sense of belonging among employees?
So there are a couple of things that I picked out from my own experience and in the interviews I did with others, which I think are critical. The first one is that leadership matters. So inclusion starts with the CEO or the most senior person in the organization or a manager. and assume that your own team is a company, the manager is the CEO. Inclusion is not a matter for HR.
Inclusion is a matter for the organization. And when employees see leaders practicing inclusive behaviors, calling on people in meetings, making sure that people have a voice, recognizing good work,
um sharing their own stories as you've shared your own story these are all the things that make a difference and just the physical present presence of a senior leader in moments that are important to the organization as it relates to inclusion are important and i'll give you a specific story that happened when i was in hong kong the last time so i was doing a talk about the book and the lessons of the book at a pretty large organization
And I was told that the senior management don't normally come to these kinds of events, which is unfortunate because they matter. Right before the talk started, the senior management team, the CEO and the senior managers all came into the room.
I took the opportunity during that talk to them and encouraged them to be there and be present because what I saw when they walked into the room was a room full of a hundred plus people really brighten up and lighten up. And so that's what I say when leadership matters, just being there makes a big difference. I think there's maybe one or two other things that are particularly important.
It's important that we start with ourselves. So there are many things in an organization that we can and cannot change. And the more senior you are, maybe you have more impact over a larger group. And the more junior you are, your impact is narrower. But we can all start with ourselves. So we all have stories of feeling included or excluded.
And I like to, when I'm talking to groups, I like to ask people to reflect on that. What's something that they think about when they were included or when they were excluded? How did that make them feel? And I think that's a real source of power for creating a sense of inclusion for yourself and your coworkers and even your customers. So if you start with yourself, you can impact a lot.
Then you have to build out from there. And I think the last thing I would say in the keys of inclusion is it's very important to search for common ground. It may sound counterintuitive to say we build these very diverse teams and then we wanna search for common ground. But in fact, we all wanna rally around something. It could be the mission of the organization.
It could be a project that we're working on. It could be a colleague who's stressed and we're trying to help that colleague. I had a situation with a very good friend of mine from university. And when marriage equality was being talked about in the U.S. 15 years ago, it was a very important topic to me because as a member of the LGBTQ community and as somebody who was in a long-term relationship,
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Chapter 6: What challenges arise when implementing DEI initiatives?
Chapter 7: What role does recognition play in employee engagement?
It could be a project that we're working on. It could be a colleague who's stressed and we're trying to help that colleague. I had a situation with a very good friend of mine from university. And when marriage equality was being talked about in the U.S. 15 years ago, it was a very important topic to me because as a member of the LGBTQ community and as somebody who was in a long-term relationship,
Access to marriage was important for us and for myself and my to-be husband. But for my friend who's straight and has four kids, he wasn't interested in marriage equality, which at first took me very much by surprise. And we had a discussion about it and I said, why is this important?
It's important, I believe, to everyone because it has to do with people being able to love and build relationships and family and support structure with people that they love. And so we came to this point of common ground because that was important to him too. Whether we called it straight marriage or gay marriage was not the issue.
So I think it's critically important to search for common ground as a way to bring people together and create a sense of inclusion and belonging in the workplace.
Yes, you are absolutely right. The visible involvement of leaders is crucial, especially in large organizations. That public display of support from the top sets the tone for the rest of the company. When the CEO or key decision makers visibly endorse an initiative, it creates a ripple effect.
People take cues from their leaders, and if the leader is truly committed to a certain direction, it's much easier for the organization to align itself with that. Like you said, in these cases, talk is not cheap at all. is an important tool to communicate priorities and demonstrate what matters.
Execution might align with the people below the leader, but the leader's voice serves as a signal of endorsement, setting the stage for everyone else to follow suit.
The power of a leader's voice goes beyond, I think, what we can imagine. I have had many situations in my career where individuals who worked for me or with whom I worked or we worked on projects together would mimic back to me things that I had said to them that had an impact on them, either an impact on them personally or their career or the work they were doing.
And those are things I don't even remember saying. And as leaders in an organization at whatever level, don't underestimate the power of your voice and your presence. And in my six years at Moet Hennessey, working on launching and working on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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Chapter 8: How can leaders effectively implement cultural change in organizations?
So it's important to understand what are the stories of people in the organization and how do those stories get told so that the people around those people can understand create inclusion or create inclusive environments, not because we're doing it because somebody gave us a KPI. We're doing it because it's part of the family.
And that, I think, is an important nuanced approach to the way we develop diversity and inclusion strategies in Asia versus the way it would be done in the U.S. or to some extent in Europe. So you have to start with the culture of the organization and the culture, which is the dominant culture in which the organization works.
So if it's Hong Kong culture, it's Japanese culture, or whether it's Taiwanese culture, and then build out from that versus saying we're going to have 50% target on gender. And then we cascade that to the whole organization, which is much more of a Western way of approaching something.
You are bringing back a lot of my own memories from the corporate world. Well, it may not have been related to DEI. I remember whenever there was a new policy set by the headquarters in the US, especially from the senior leadership, they would often say, let's do the same thing in Asia too. But we will push back and say, Asia doesn't work that way, is often seen as a monolith.
But in reality, Asia is as diverse as Europe, with many countries, cultures, and even differences within a single country. Even when they say, oh, it's just the Chinese market, they don't realize the vast differences between Chinese communities, whether from Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Mainland China.
And within Mainland China itself, people from the North, South, East, and West all have their own unique cultural dynamics. So a one-size-fits-all DEI policy transcribed from elsewhere just doesn't work in Asia. The diversity within Asia Pacific requires a more nuanced, localized approach.
No. And get back to why is it important. It's important that company cultures are inclusive because we know that the outcomes are better. It's important that company cultures are diverse in the context of the diversity of the workforce and the consumer base where they operate. because we know that there are better outcomes for the business.
How you get there has to be tailored by the individual location and the individual company. It's not what I would say is something we have to avoid is that diversity and inclusion doesn't work in Asia. That is just positively wrong.
It doesn't work in Asia from a Western perspective or in a Western application, but it's as or more important that in Asia or in Africa or in Europe, South America, North America, that inclusion is practiced and is part of the culture that creates better outcomes for an organization.
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