Asking the Right Questions: Life, Hope and Moving Forward During the Pandemic
Summary
Details to come.
Key Insights
-
•
Starting meetings or classes with a simple warm-up increases attentiveness and presence.
-
•
Remote teaching often results in students keeping cameras off, impacting engagement, but this can be navigated with inclusive strategies.
-
•
Peloton taught the speaker practical leadership lessons including compassion, collaboration, and community support.
-
•
Consistency is critical in leadership and personal growth, exemplified by the speaker's 73-week exercise streak.
-
•
Inclusive leadership requires acknowledging where people are physically and emotionally, offering alternatives accordingly.
-
•
Organizations must consistently provide education and enforce policies addressing discrimination, considering intersectional identities.
-
•
Leadership must listen actively and avoid placing the burden of diversity work solely on marginalized groups.
-
•
Recognizing external stressors such as global events is essential to empathetic leadership and inclusive workplaces.
-
•
Language matters; everyday expressions can unintentionally exclude or offend marginalized communities.
-
•
Inclusion and accessibility should be embedded into every designer's responsibilities, not isolated to specialists.
Notable Quotes
"I had you all do a warm-up before we started to help everyone be present and calm."
"Sometimes working with a bunch of boxes and letters on Zoom was the reality of remote classes."
"Be compassionate with yourself and others. Not everyone likes high fives, and that's okay."
"Collaboration is key. I'm never alone in a Peloton class, even at 4:30 in the morning."
"Consistency is key. I'm on a 73-week streak right now, and that's pretty badass."
"Identity is not monolithic; policies should address layered experiences."
"It is not the responsibility of marginalized groups to do all the educating about their experiences."
"Listen is a skill that is not emphasized enough in leadership."
"Watch your language; terms like 'that's so lame' can be exclusionary or offensive."
"Inclusion and accessibility need to be part of every designer's role, even if today it is one person's job."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The studio is designed for whole teams to work together, not just the design team alone."
Adam CutlerPeople + Places + Practices = Outcomes
June 8, 2016
"When teams are connected to real strategic missions and own their key results, OKRs become positive."
Bria Alexander Benson Low Natalya Pemberton Stephanie GoldthorpeOKRs—Helpful or Harmful?
January 20, 2022
"A metric is usually the result of a relation between two measures, not interchangeable with a measure itself."
Alberto FerreiraMaking it Count: Developing a custom digital metric framework that works
October 15, 2021
"The social game at the end of the day is a great way to meet people and change your energy."
Louis RosenfeldFounder’s Welcome
December 6, 2022
"We needed a scalable system and GPS that everyone could follow with clear lanes for each team."
Tamara KartoziiaThink global, adapt local: how service design accelerated B2B market entry by 6 months
November 20, 2025
"Leaders need to handle their own stuff so they can create a space to receive compassionate feedback from their teams."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Uday Gajendar Dr. Dawn Emerick Dawn E. Shedrick, LCSWLeading through the long tail of trauma
July 13, 2022
"Participation rates are falling, engagement rates are falling — this is a data quality crisis."
Jemma Ahmed Robert Fabricant Sean McKay Llewyn Paine Kate Towsey Noah BondTheme Panel
March 11, 2025
"We create the constraints that bring out the best from design teams. We are the enablers of weird."
Lori Muszynski Peter MerholzKeeping Design Weird
October 2, 2023
"Diagrams provide transparency in the face of uncertainty by showing what there is to know, even if the news is not good."
Abby CovertStuck? Diagrams Help
October 27, 2022