Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve Vindig at Sport Law. Leave me a message.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
[00:00:06] Speaker C: Hey, Steve, it's Dina. You aren't going to believe what just came across my desk. We need to chat. Give me a call.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Welcome to the latest episode of Sportopia. We're so excited to share our knowledge and have conversations about healthy human sport today.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: We're so pleased to have Andrea Carey join us. Andrea is a certified Inclusion Professional and founder and Chief Inclusion Officer at Inclusion Incorporated. Before we dig deep with Andrea, Steve, what is coming across your desk?
[00:01:02] Speaker A: As usual, I just look at my email or my calendar to see what's coming across this week and, and I think this is something I haven't talked about before. It's really about branding and names and trademarks and business registrations and, you know, people always, particularly in sport, they come into it very, I'll say, a bit naive. Well, I, I'll just start using this name and, and then they get a cease and desist letter or they get, you know, they create their website and they, and they take pictures that they find on the, on the web and put it on their website and then they get a letter from a law firm saying you've stolen someone's picture. But I had a very nice conversation a couple days ago with a client who had branded, had incorporated, registered their name. It wasn't working the way they thought it would. And then we had a very long conversation about the difference between a trademark, which can run you 2 to $3,000 in registration fees and takes 2 to 3 years, versus incorporation, or naming your business. But a big distinction between naming your corporation and just registering a business name, just registering a business name within your province or territory doesn't necessarily give you name protection.
So running through those different options, it's a fun conversation to see where clients want to spend their resources.
Are they committed to their brand and their name. You know, when we talk about trademark and the expense and the time it takes to get it registered, you really have to be sold into it. Right? You don't want to spend two, three thousand dollars, wait two years and they, oh, we're changing our name.
So I think that conversation's fun. It's proactive. It's moving organizations forward. It's protecting them from their brand.
So it's really a fun conversation. Dino, what's new with you?
[00:03:00] Speaker C: Well, it's so interesting, you know, and I'm nodding because, of course, you asked me those really important questions when I wanted to Trademark Grief Unleashed, which is this other little business that is my passion project.
And I remember Steve saying, okay, you've got your business, you've incorporated, you know, do you really want to trademark this? And what arose for me in that really important question was it was a sense of accomplishment and signaling to people that I'm not going anywhere. This work is, is so important to me. It's my soul work. And I really wanted to bring a level of credibility and, and signify that this, this is important.
And it's so important that I'm willing to spend the 2, $3,000 and to wait the 2 years to receive it and I can share with you. I mean, it's like what's in an R? Because that's what I received was the registered trademark. And when I received the, the letter from, I remember thinking, wow, like, I'm so glad I did this. And, you know, nobody might even notice a little R. But it, I noticed. And it really signaled that I was in a different, maybe stage of maturity.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Steve, I'm thinking, I'm thinking Dragons Den. Dina, when they say, do you have a patent? And they say, yes, we do.
And you're a solidified business.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: Exactly. So what's coming across my desk this week? I'm preparing for a podcast. So we, we launched this nine series podcast, not podcast, webinar series.
And I'm really excited because, you know, in the earlier part of my consulting career, I was doing a lot of strategic planning. And this is before people were, I would say, using contemporary processes to really think deliberately about their strategic plan. And so I became proficient in a lot of little tips and tricks and tools. And so I'm putting forward a reimagined way to engage in strategic planning and using it. And this will be beautiful conversation with Andrea using this as a method to engage your people.
Right? To move beyond just this really focused conversation around what do we want to do more of? Less of it really is, in what ways can we engage our people to ensure that what we're doing is relevant, that what we're doing is in alignment with our values?
That is going to help address some of the big honking risks that are standing in the way of us accomplishing really good work together? And then how are we going to measure. How are we going to measure the experience of people inside the ecosystem? So I'm excited because I'm bringing kind of a refreshed perspective on the important work of strategic planning alongside all these other management practices that we think are really important for sport to you know, to maintain its relevance.
So, so thanks, Steve. I'm really excited about this conversation with, with Andrea. So, Andrea, we always start with, you know, tell us a little bit more about you and you know, maybe what you're focusing on these days.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks Dina and Steve, thank you for having me.
So, yeah, my name is Andrea Carey. I use the pronoun she, her, hers and l. And I'm calling in today from the territories of the Songhees, Esquimalts and Wasanish nations here on Vancouver island in what we know as.
And I live here as an uninvited settler.
I have a 12 year old little human who has just sprung slightly above me in height, which feels really wild when she looks down at me now. And, and being 12, she also speaks down to me. So welcome to the club.
Yeah, and I've worked throughout most of my career in sport and physical activity, but through that have had a range of different experiences around operating organizations and building organizations, working across both charitable sector, not for profit and for profit.
And over the last five years I've been on this adventure with Inclusion Incorporated, which really came out of so much of the work I was doing was around diversity and inclusion. And at the time, just over five years ago, I felt like the change that needed to be made and the support that leaders and organizations really needed in this space needed to come from outside consultants that could come in and really support that and say and do some of the things that staff really couldn't do in a safe way.
And so that's been a big part of what I've been working on.
And aside, beside that, I run my little charity here in Victoria called Oneability, which is around disability inclusion, which stemmed out of the 10 years I spent on the Canadian Paralympic Committee Board of Directors.
So that's a little bit about me and some of the work I'm passionate about.
[00:07:58] Speaker C: I really appreciate that. And, and I would love, because I know your backstory and I found it so touching, maybe share a little bit more with our listeners. What, what drove you to do this work that feels like it's your soul work? Andrea?
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for the question, Dina. I think for me, I've felt like in our sport and physical activity systems in particular, but across our whole kind of lives and work and family, you know, we, we live in a world that is pushing us away from connection, feeling like we belong in spaces and places.
And so part of my backstory is I lived as a newcomer in two different countries and in one of those experiences I got really sick When I was living overseas and kind of went through this experience of like a high trauma situation and having to come home and having a life saving surgery. And I think for me the experience of living away was really hard and I didn't feel like I belonged at that time. And then I came home and I'd just gone through this traumatic event and nobody knew how to talk to me or navigate that. So then I didn't feel like I belonged there. And so that was, I look back at that and that was such a foundational piece of this work and why I feel it's so important. It's like how do we really show up for each other, learn about each other, support each other and create space for each other. And we're at such an interesting time in our history where we're talking about identities in ways we've never talked about them before. And so it's so pivot pivotal in terms of how do we respect that, appreciate that and create the spaces and places for that.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Andrea, if you've listened to the podcast, you'll, you'll see that Dena and I are very different in our comms and our communication. And we always joke internally that I'm 3ft and she's 30,000ft.
What are some of the key elements that our listeners can take with them to create an inclusive environment? You know, as you know our, our sector, clubs, leagues, districts, province, territories, national sport and a lot of times it is volunteer based organizations who are just so busy trying to get the puck on the ice and making sure the, the permits are, are maintained.
What are some key elements or little tools that our listeners can take to say, okay, this is important to us.
How do we, how do we make an inclusive environment?
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think when we think about that, Steve and I appreciate sort of the like, we know that there's so much going on for those volunteers and for those organizations at whatever level.
I think for us it's thinking about what is that experience of the individual and almost taking people through like a pathway of like what is the a participant experience? Or maybe it's volunteer leader experience from like learning about the sport to getting into the sport to kind of ongoing participation and recognizing what some of those barriers are to getting involved, to staying involved and building out and say some of the mechanisms around supporting that. And certainly policy is one of those.
But I'm going to say the practice every day of like building the relationship and understanding the needs of the various people in those different roles is to me actually kind of more crucial and Then you need the policy to back that up. But I think we tend to get caught up in the function of sport and we forget who the people are that we're trying to serve in sport.
And that's come a really large gap. And we've seen kind of the backlash of that over the last few years with safe sport, where people haven't felt supported, they haven't felt welcomed, they felt bullied, or they'd had various levels of maltreatment. And so how do we sort of circle back to look at how are we building that culture of support, that culture of welcoming, that culture of humanizing and putting the person at the center of the experience?
[00:12:13] Speaker A: You heard the word, Dina, take over culture, Go.
[00:12:17] Speaker C: Yeah, he knows me so well. It's so interesting, Andrea, because I would say, as someone who's been in the sector now since 1991, so people can do the math. It's been a moment, and right at the beginning of my career, we were advocating for healthy human sport. And the brand that we gave early on was spirit of sport. And then that moved into the true sport movement based on shared values of excellence, inclusion, fairness, and fun. Right. These are the kind of cornerstones of what we all reasonable people would say that those should be expected experiences on the field of play from, you know, from kindergarten all the way through to elite performance.
And yet we know unless we measure what matters most, we're not going to really move the needle. And that is, in part, some of the work that we're doing that the leadership coaches is we, we use an instrument to help measure culture. And I know you do as well. And it's really interesting because I'm referencing the Sport Culture Index with our friends from Interlogic, and we've done dozens of projects now since then where, let's say they're bringing us together to do a strategic planning or risk management work or leadership development.
My first question is, what is the level of trust that you would say is in existence right now in your environment?
And there's a. There's usually a long pause, right, where people are like, ooh, yeah.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: It's like, that's a big question.
I think we both are seeing gaps in trust, but I think also in fairness is the one that probably shows up for us the most.
And I appreciate that we, you know, we work in a not for profit system and there's fairness around compensation where we commonly see a gap. But I think just generally people are not feeling like what they're contributing is being appreciated in the ways they want. It to be which arguably can also contribute, contribute to an erosion of trust.
You know, we also look at and we deliver a product called the belonging metric which looks at aspects like trust, fairness, feelings of belonging and safety, psychological safety being a big part of that as well, which I would say is commonly another gap depending on what the organization's navigating. But our sport organizations have been in like a state of like high alert arousal kind of panic for the last number of years with the number of things that have been coming at them and that is trickling down, permeating the organization and impacting every single person in the organization. And now we're seeing the outcome of some of that is, you know, more people taking stress leaves or leaving their roles or organizations are sort of in these states of rapid change that they can't keep up with.
So it's, yeah, it's a super tricky, challenging time in sport and we don't have, we will never have enough resources for the number of organizations that exist. So yeah, there's sort of this collision course of all these pieces coming together that I think I would have expected actually would have come together more in Covid than they did. And so now, you know, four or five years later we're seeing some of the, that come to fruition in, in ways that are really, you know, sad and challenging and difficult for the organization to manage, but hopefully create some new opportunities in how we deliver sport in this country.
[00:15:58] Speaker C: Yeah, it's like the slow burn. Right Effect. We are in the not for profit and charitable sector of which there's like 181,000 across the country. Sport is one of the larger, you know, groups. And what's really interesting, Andrea, when you speak to that, you know, for me we are. Anybody who's thriving in sport right now is thriving in spite of the system, not because of it. The other thing that we, we often share is sport is this is not an isolated experience.
Justice, education, you know, the policing. If we look at like politics, the, you know, the economy, every, the, all of the, the institutions that were shaped in the 20th century are now starting to, to realize the limitation of how they were self organizing. And we tend to download a system problem onto the shoulders of the people. So I'm hearing you say it's so important and we would echo that, that we can work on these strategic plans, these risk management measures, leadership development. But if we're not attending to the system and we're not measuring what matters most, the psychological safety, well being and sense of belonging that we know is what's going to move the, the needle and help us achieve the, you know, the vision in a much more aligned way with our values. It's, it's not going to be sustainable. And that I think is what's really difficult for people because it's forcing them to start to reward things that typically they haven't been spending a lot of time rewarding.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I, I, you know, if we look at the root and the foundation of our sports and physical activity system, like I think we actually need to go back to some of that and recognize that we exist in a system that wasn't built for most people. And now we're trying to add other people and other groups into that. And that's doomed to fail from the outset because we're not actually co creating, we're trying to bolt on, build on to something that wasn't built for most people.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a little bit of, you know, not, not about us, without us that I'm hearing you speak to which, which I would really, you know, echo. I, I know that Steve's going to ask a question around some of the challenges, but before we get there, there's the commission. Right. For the future of sport in Canada. And I'm wondering, so we've all had a chance to speak with them. There's four of us, I think, at Sport Law that had the privilege of connecting with the.
And just curious, you know, I don't know, have you had a chance to speak with them and if so, what were some of the important messages that, that you, you know, that you would like to convey or that you've conveyed to them?
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I did meet with them when they were out here in Victoria earlier this year. And my key messages were there's too many organizations doing the same thing and the duplication is not helpful for folks.
I also spoke about how the funding structures are going to continue to perpetuate that and ultimately sync a number of those organizations and how they're structured.
I also spoke about what I just said in terms of that we're in systems that weren't built for most folks to be a part of and that we need to rebuild and co create with leaders in from different populations to create better sport pathways.
And then I also spoke about really that we exist in a number of parallel systems which, which ties to that previous point that we've, you know, we've created different sports systems because people weren't welcomed into the, the core sports system or the mainstream sports system as it's Sometimes called. So we have an indigenous sports system, we have a Paralympic sports system, we have a special Olympic sports system.
We are seeing, you know, more and more religious groups start their own sports programming which likely will lead to different sports systems. So it's like we continue to do that because there isn't a place and space for people to coexist together in sport, even though sport can be one of the most beautiful social connectors.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Andrea, I have a two part question for you. So companies been around five, six years. I'm sure you've had the ability to work with tens, if not hundreds, if not thousands of organizations over that time.
What are some of the common challenges that leaders are facing for a more equitable and inclusive environment? And then part two to that question is can you share a success story? Can you share.
You know, I worked with this club and they were here and I brought them to here and these are their new programs and their new way of being. That would be really cool to hear about.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I think some of the biggest challenges that folks are facing is one, they came to this realization along the way kind of early days in our work as a company. So I've been doing diversity inclusion work, as I said, most of my career. In my previous role, I spent a lot of time trying to explain the why of why we were doing inclusion work. And particularly, you know, with disability populations, indigenous populations, newcomers populations, trying to like go through the demographic data and the shifts that were happening in Canada.
And then really in 2020, we started company in 20, February 2020, and then in May 2020 with the murder of George Floyd, it just shifted the conversation so quickly.
And I mean, I don't think any of us could have predicted at a time when we were all sort of in this very strange phase of our lives of COVID and like trying to navigate what that looked like to shift the ways. We all did add in social justice movements kind of one after another. But what it did was it really shifted the conversation. So we stopped having the why conversation. People understood the why and they it was the what and the how.
And so we've. The challenge then was like they didn't have the knowledge or the expertise and they didn't know how to navigate a lot of the conversations and the change.
So I think overall some of the biggest challenges has been change management, which isn't just in our space of equity and inclusion, but like change management across like the speed of change has changed in the last few years.
And so that evolution to that and the I'm Going to say kind of resilience and staying power that's required to continue to navigate that as a leader in these spaces.
And then I would add on to that as well. Then that kind of expertise and understanding about, like, how do you actually change the equity and the inclusion to build greater diversity in your organization? So we spend a lot of time around review of, like, current state, understanding what's currently happening across the organization for athletes, coaches, officials, leaders, board, and then kind of working back about, like, okay, well, if this is an experience that's happening, and you know, Dina, earlier you asked about trust. Like, so if trust is an issue, what are some of the things we need to shift in the culture, in the policy, in your ongoing practices that will help to evolve that?
So that's where we spend a lot of time and then building out those plans to support organizations.
I think a story of success.
We have one client that I actually, we worked with a few years ago. I'm not going to name any names, but they, you know, they are a major sport in this country, and we are working, working at a few different levels with them. Club, number of clubs, PSOs and NSO. The NSO.
And so it's really interesting to get those different perspectives as we go through that. I'm sure you can resonate with that with so much of your work as well.
But just seeing, like, what are some of those places of readiness with the different levels of that sport?
And so where the NSO in this case maybe isn't ready to make some of the change we're suggesting, the PS one of the PSOs is like, we really want to do this. And this is a board that a couple years ago when I was presenting to them, they were, like, really, you know, kind of cautious, trying to figure out what they wanted to do. And then in a workshop I did a few weeks ago, they were like, we want to make this change. We know this is important. It's really relevant right now for us. And their NSO is, like, not quite ready to do this piece of work. So I'm like, okay, can we bring you two together and, like, get the PSO going so they can actually maybe lay some of the groundwork? So to me, that was, like, a really exciting opportunity just in terms of, like, where can we make the change? Who's that person that's ready to move on this and take the risk? Because a lot of it can be risky.
[00:25:17] Speaker C: I really love that, Andrea. The assessing of the pockets of readiness. And when we ask the question, right, often there are People that are more ready than others because of the nature of their structure, where they're domiciled. Right. Their lived experience, maybe they've. They have leaders there that really believe and in aligning values with, you know, outcomes. So that's really encouraging. I would say that that's a really smart way, too. As someone who does a lot of change management, go with what you have already available in your system and start to shine a spotlight on what's working. Which is why I appreciate Steve's question around what are some of the success stories?
I'm really curious right now. We're living in a very unstable world, right? We use the acronym VUCA for volatile, Uncertain, Complex and ambiguous. And people love that because it feels very VUCA right now. And I'm just wondering with your beautiful work and what you were seeding five, six years ago when you were reimagining a new relationship with belonging and trying to bring that gift to. In a more intentional way, almost as a companion. Right. To your clients.
I'm wondering, what are you seeing now with the state of the world as it is now, how. How difficult, easy is it for you to continue to do all of this work in the space of belonging?
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Good question.
I think we're seeing sort of. I don't. And this is like the divisive world we're in. We're kind of seeing two camps.
The people. So many of the people that have been committed to the work continue to be committed and kind of more committed because they're seeing what's happening and they know how, like, desperately we need this work.
And then the people that like, okay, we got to do this thing.
I don't really want to do this thing. I think this is going to harm me, but that we're going to do this thing.
They're pushing back in bigger and stronger ways than we've seen over the last few years.
And so we end up actually kind of with almost more divisiveness in the space.
And politics, for sure, are driving that in massive ways, I think. And, you know, I don't think we should just point to politics in the South. We have politics in Canada that are driving that very strongly as well.
And I also feel like politics that are picking topics they know will create division and probably distraction from some of the other things that they want to push forward.
And we're seeing that, you know, in trans populations in particular. The number of harmful policy and practice and legislation that are coming in around the trans population is just heartbreaking. And the trans folks that we work with are feeling actively harmed on a daily basis by what's going on.
And so we're, you know that picking on a population has a ripple effect in terms of the work that those populations can then do and influence in our spaces too. So we're kind of navigating all these pieces in parallel and at the end of the day, and I was asked this a similar question on a webinar a few weeks ago, at the end of the day, this work doesn't go away. We actually have more diverse populations than we've ever had living together.
We will continue to see that increase.
Maybe not, it might slow down a little bit in the us but in Canada we will continue to see our population increase in diversity at very rapid rate.
And so we have to continue to be prepared for that. And we need to continue to create the policy and practice that will support that. And it was. One of the stories I have been referencing is that I was at the Invictus Games in February and I was talking to a major company who had just announced cuts to their DEI practice. This. And I was like, okay, like, tell me about this.
And they just looked at me and they're like, we're not cutting dei. Like dei. We don't have a workforce if we don't have DEI publicly. We're saying we're not doing dei. And I was like, oh, okay. So there's also this whole like political game that's being played right now to navigate not essentially getting cancelled by the political power.
[00:29:54] Speaker C: That's so interesting. As a communication specialist, it, it really, like, I bristle when I hear that. So you're, you're smoke and mirroring people, right? You're going to put out and say, oh, no, we're not. We're canceling something that is actually in alignment with our values. But internally we're going to play the long game.
That feels disingenuous, doesn't it? And, and maybe they like, they have a choice.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: I don't think they feel like they have the choice, which was interesting as well. But I also was like, as I'm reflecting on that, I'm like, okay, you know, five years ago, in response to George Floyd's murder, we saw all of this very performative act like actions.
And so I'm like, it's kind of the same, it's just the reversal of it, right? So I'm like, this is really fascinating to me that, you know, we, it was, the thing to do was to put up a black square and say, you know, be be behind Black Lives Matter five years ago and now it's to say you don't deep dei. And it's, yeah, it's all disingenuous, Dina for sure, and yet and performative. And then it's like, you know, I think that makes us as leaders in these spaces have to go drill down and go, okay, like what's actually happening there?
And to your point, like this should be values based work. We have to find the shared values in how we're moving forward in community work, in supporting each other in the organizations we're working with. And so that values piece, I think we need to probably shift some of the language we're using around dei. I think that's probably going to have to be one of the strategies which also feels disingenuous in some ways, but it feels like a bit of a balance of how do we do the work in a way that's going to be palatable to the folks that maybe wouldn't subscribe otherwise. So yeah, it's just such an interesting time to try and figure out what now how and it has to keep going because we know so many people still feel like they belong to kind of wrap up.
[00:32:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you, Andrea. Steve, any. Any other questions for Andrea? We could probably do a part two and three, right?
[00:32:18] Speaker A: I just always want to know, you know, Andrea, if I'm a club, a pso, an nso, a pto, where do I start? What do I do?
Is there little tricks? One of the things that we shared in a previous podcast was about, you know, living your values or you know, just putting little notes in the board agenda meeting schedule on the left hand side saying here's our values, you know, as we make decisions, just look at those. I wonder if there's just a couple little tricks that you can recommend prior to us finishing up today.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that idea. That's a good one. In terms of anchoring values. And I, I mean we all know that values can sometimes just be in the background and aren't really lived. And Dina was one of the first to take me through a values training with the Paralympic Committee as well. So that always resonates for me.
I think some of the places to start is quite honestly to kind of look at like who's in your organization, who's not in your organization and to then really open up that question of why and you know, building relationships with organizations or communities that are not part of who your sport participants volunteers are currently is a big piece of and really looking at some of the Policies. I mean, when I was doing indigenous work around the indigenous long term participant development pathway, so many of the examples we heard around exclusion were in policy, like geographics that limited the indigenous communities or, you know, rules that made it impossible for them to be part of their cultural community and part of the, the sport.
Just things that are actually so easy to change, but we haven't kind of unpacked it to even look at it. And so when we do policy review, those, those are so much of the things we're looking for is like, what, what are those limiting policies and practices that are going to continue to exclude people?
So it's building the relationships, creating that welcome and that invitation and looking at what, what some of the limitations might be in how you're structured.
[00:34:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I just want to acknowledge how important it is for leaders who have positional power to be able to have, you know, these deliberate conversations, to be aware that adopting a social justice lens is the way through all of this. Even though for some it can be inconvenient at best or really brush up against their values. In my humble opinion, like, we are all, you know, children of this world and often when we share with people, you know, sport is meant to be this beautiful proposition where people come together as neighbors and when we get it right, they leave as friends.
We have to ensure that, that that fabric is one that is, you know, that's binding us together, is one that's based on values of equanimity and belonging. And so I really love your question of who's not here, and let's explore why they're not here, because the sad truth is, if they're not here, we're not going to be enriched as a result. And then we're going to create these parallel systems so that people can belong.
Thank you, Andrea, for your beautiful work, the way in which you're holding the conversation, your leadership in this space, and we look forward to a part two because it really feels like, like we are in evolution right now. And as you said earlier, the speed is just increasing and, and it's so important for us to maintain these conversations so that we can find our way through this mess together.
So, Steve, you know, thank you also for the way that you've, you've held this conversation. In the episode notes below you'll find some sport law blogs where you can find more information related to our conversation today. Thank you so much to our listeners. We're really grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you as we all look to elevate Sport as always, to.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Have your say in Sportopia. Email us at helloportlaw ca to let us know what you want to hear about next. Stay tuned for our next episode. Until then, be well. Thanks Andrea. Thanks Dina.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: It.
