Welcome to the Inspirational Leaders Series, a collection of short interviews with sharp, impactful leaders that I know and respect—because the business world needs more refreshing people like them. My name is Teresa Brazen, and I'm a Leadership and Executive Coach that helps design leaders and teams maximize their impact.
👋🏼 Meet Ingrid Dahl, Global Learning and Development Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Learning at Meta. I met her long ago when she was a Senior Director of Education at the Bay Area Video Coalition. At that time, Ingrid was developing programs for underserved populations in the California Bay Area that provided training and job opportunities in the tech industry. I invited Ingrid to have a conversation about leadership because she's an interesting person, as you will see, and she's had a wide range of experiences across the nonprofit world, big corporate, learning and development, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
What's something that symbolizes your leadership spirit?
I know exactly what symbolizes it, and I have it tattooed on my wrist: the horse. The horse is a powerful, independent, strong, deep, and sensory animal. I grew up with horses and started riding at the age of five. I learned a lot about communication styles through my training and riding of this wild, amazing spiritual beast.
How did that experience connect with the way that you lead?
It's about trust. A lot is not spoken, but there’s a feeling and a negotiation. When riding around a ring, you communicate with a horse through tiny muscle movements, breathwork, and centering. And as you're guiding them to the next jump, you’re controlling your breath and the little movements in your hands to let them know exactly when you're asking them to jump. So there's a lot of trust there because if you misstep, you could actually harm both yourself and the horse. The same goes for leadership.
One thing that's neat about horses is that there are some things that are counterintuitive. You might think when you're going around a corner you would want to slow down and then speed up. But, when you're in the tightest bend, you actually amplify the speed so that when you're in a straight shot towards a jump, you can be calm and collected and go right over very smoothly. It's fascinating, and it is a parallel to how you can lead.
What do you wish that more people knew about leadership?
It is a lifelong journey. It's not something that you suddenly “get” because of your title, or because you managed a few people before, or after managing several people for many years. It’s a lifelong practice, you stumble, you fall. I think people need to be gentle with themselves in this journey. There are going to be some curveballs in your leadership.
Leadership is also about nurturing other leaders. So how do you want to nurture others? And how do you model nurturing yourself? People pay a lot of attention. Words matter, and tone matters. So I think it's really good to be thinking, “As I become more and more senior, what's the way that I want to show up that mixes vulnerability with boundaries so that I don't leave things up for interpretation or misunderstanding?” And how do you also balance the human psychology of the environment? That is like the 401 version of your scholastic study of leadership. That level of leadership includes being curious and questioning and then figuring out how to navigate and even orchestrate those environments.
So in your leadership evolution, what’s been challenging to learn?
I would say one of my biggest is letting go of being liked. A leader once told me that you can be kind, but you don't always have to be nice. Growing up different, being a mixed-race outsider, a lot of this thinking is with me all the time. I’ve learned to just relax that fear and amygdala response so that I can be like, “You know what, even if this person doesn't like me, that's not even what matters right now. What matters right now is X.” So, shifting my own mixtape, and refocusing on what's really important at present, that’s been a challenge. And one I'm continuously working on.
You've been working in the space of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Do you have any tips for being a more inclusive leader?
I'd say several things. First, it's not that hard. It's really just about how you connect and relate with somebody across differences. When you don't feel understood, when you feel insecure, how can you lean into that with more curiosity? I think what happens is we get more and more closed off in our comfort zones. And we may feel like, “This person I jive with because we're similar.” It’s helpful to notice that similarity bias comes up for everyone and ask yourself questions like, “How am I engaging people equitably? Have all voices chimed in? When is my voice coming out?”
I think as a leader one of the important things, especially around inclusion, is to be the last person to share your ideas. Literally let everybody else share, first. And if somebody doesn't want to share in that meeting, you give them another way to share. You say, “If you have thoughts that you want to send in an email or send to the group or to me directly after, that works, too.” Be inclusive of the different styles, even within that room, and make sure everybody has a manner to provide their input.
I think it's good to remember, too, that we all share pain. We have so many similarities in our human experience, and can we can connect around that. When we bridge differences with curiosity and kindness, people are more willing to let go of some of the thoughts and systems that don't serve them. That's actually quite powerful.
Another tip to be more inclusive is to slow down. Listen, just slow down and listen, make sure you're listening. If every single day you come away with, “Hmm, I never heard that before.”, or “Gee, I want to follow up with that, because I don't really understand that and I want to know more.”, or “I read something in your body language, is this right?”, that's a really good signal that you're actually paying more attention and being potentially more inclusive.
How would you like to be remembered as a leader? What do you hope?
I would love to be remembered as somebody who gave a lot of heart and created experiences where people could thrive and feel like they were seen, valued, recognized, and could achieve self-actualization. And, at scale.
I've been thinking about writing a book about my growing up mixed race, and I would also love to be remembered as the hoppa grandma who helped a lot of mixed-race kids feel that they're not alone.
