The Crave

First things first: who is Jessica Pettitt? Pettitt has 20 years of experience consulting and educating on diversity and inclusion. She's teaching, coaching, and motivating thousands of people and leaders worldwide. Being a professional comedian, she uses humor and storytelling in her work to command attention and get her message through. Pettitt started her career working in education, primarily doing diversity programs for many colleges and universities. She kept, however, being let go for pointing out how the institution she worked with was not doing a very good job or could do better.

She kept being let go for doing her job.

Pettitt sees this as a positive: it allowed her to do things that she aligned with or that matched her moral compass and her own identities. Having enough power and privilege to get another job and eventually, in 2005, start her own business, to this day, she’s stayed true to herself.

“I am my own boss now. I started my own business doing primarily keynotes and some programming and have grown into more of a consulting or coaching role with clients I've had over a long period of time. And I have three giant rescue mutts that are my staff,” Pettitt laughs.

When asked about the challenges organizations face when actively investing in DE&I initiatives, Pettitt summarizes this in one compelling sentence: “I think the hardest thing for organizations to hear about diversity, equity & inclusion is: “it is too late to do nothing.”

She takes the Covid19 pandemic as an example: When something is seen universally of high importance, impossible suddenly becomes not only possible but attempted with no plan or direction. For reference, people with disabilities or disability advocates have been fighting for the right to work from home and hybrid working for decades. It was all ruled impossible or too expensive. And then, all of a sudden, those accommodations became the norm.

“And what I think is important is that most organizations have not elevated diversity, equity & inclusion, and belonging work to that level of universal importance. It tends to still be in a side committee, a conversation — something that one person, maybe two people are in charge of, but they don't have the social or the financial capital to do anything.”

Can we call these excuses? Is not taking action to drive diversity, equity & inclusion initiatives a matter of not caring enough or being lazy? Pettitt advises that the best first steps are noticing your patterns and listening to the people around you.

In her work, Pettitt uses humor, the great equalizer. She advises, however, to tread lightly with using jokes when talking about DE&I topics.

“I'm a professional comedian. If you're nervous about using humor, then maybe don't lead with that.

I also think it's important to know that part of being a professional comedian is bombing and failing. You have to be able to take responsibility for really offending people because you tried something that you thought might be funny.

If you're not willing to take on that kind of responsibility, monitor your use of humor.”

Pettitt brings up consciously asking questions you don’t know the answers to as the most important tool for creating inclusive (work) environments. Instead of asking mundane questions like “How are you?” or “How’s the weather?”, actively invite to connect.

“It changes how you enter. It changes how you listen, how you engage, and your posture. And if you become an invitation, you're increasing belongingness,” Pettitt explains.

“We already have the skills to fix all of these problems. We just have to utilize them more regularly in the opportunities where we don't. We're responsible for figuring out where we don't use them,” she continues.

Pettitt encourages everyone to listen to the people around them and be honest in sharing: “You can share with me that you’ve had a hard day and what made it hard. You can share it without asking me to fix it. You're asking me to connect, listen, and hold a space.”