Marina Guerra  
If you're going to avoid harassment if you're going to avoid discrimination and these hostile work environments that may exist, you got to start somewhere and it's how do we be kind to each other

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to love as a business strategy a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. As always, I'm your host, and I'm here to have those conversations and hear those stories from real people, real businesses, real life. And today, my guest is Marina Guerra, and she's an outreach and education coordinator with the  Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or EOC. As you may know it originally from Corpus Christi, Texas, she attended Texas a&m Corpus Christi, and graduated with honors receiving a Bachelors of Science in Criminal Justice. Maina's journey with the EEOC began in 1999 when she joined as an investigator and since then, her performance and dedication have led to various roles and promotions in 2012. Marina was entrusted with the responsibility of acting intake supervisor, followed by promotion to supervisory position in 2014, which she held until 2020, when she was promoted to her current position. So really passionate about her work, Marina takes immense pride in fulfilling the EEO C's mission on a daily basis. In addition to her role as outreach and education coordinator, she represents the Houston district office, in Special Emphasis programs and morale events, further showcasing that dedication is I'm really excited to have Marina with me on the show today. And I'd like to welcome you to the show Marina, how are you?

Marina Guerra  
Thank you. I'm Wow. And thank you so much, Jeff, for having me. I'm absolutely honored to be part of it. I've listened to your podcast. And I think it's absolutely fabulous the work that you're doing. So I'm truly honored to be here with you today. No one ever really invites EEOC anywhere. So always grateful when people do allow us in there.

Jeff Ma  
I find that surprising. I'm very excited to have a conversation with you and talk about EEOC. Because, I mean, there's a lot of talk about, oftentimes, the less talked about things are the most interesting and the most kind of uncomfortable nuggets of interesting wisdom and truth. So I'd like to kick things off with you though personally, you Marina, your journey, obviously, you've spent a large amount of time with the EOC, but outs, maybe outside or within that, whichever it is, what is your what is your passion around? And where does that story come from? Where do you think you can connect us back to that passion?

Marina Guerra  
That's a really good question. You know, I thought about it recently, a different conversation. And I thought, why am I why have I done it for this? And why am I still doing it? I think it comes from just kind of having a servant mentality. My father was a police officer, my mother was also a public servant, she worked for the Department of Public Safety, getting your driver's license, lots of fun there. And I think it just started with public service, right, just giving back doing things for the community. And so I think that's really where it started. And then just the love of helping people and making good in your community and whatever you could do to help other people. I've always found excitement behind that. And then now to know that I get paid to do that is even more exciting for me. So yeah, just, I think coming from seeing that in my family, even my, you know, my grandparents. So all of that just kind of building to I knew I wanted to do something to serve the community. And if we could do that, in the largest scale possible. That was what I was hoping for.

Jeff Ma  
You know, if I look at kind of the cross sections of love as a business strategy, if ever you just look at this podcast, and its guests and types of guests, the industries, you know, the government, jobs and roles kind of rank in those in those kinds of more foreign spaces when it comes to conversation, not because it doesn't belong, or it's not a relevant conversation. But for one reason or another, you know, the government may be slower to adopt or may be a little more old fashioned, but also just maybe just different types of cultures forming different types of context of the government. Government held jobs are unique in that sense, where you know, hierarchies, a little different expectations are different, all sorts of things. So I'm actually always very excited to have a conversation speaking around you know, you know, government public servant those types of jobs because it's a world that not everybody may be exposed to, but there's still so much like I think we often need the reminder also that you know, it's it's always humans working these jobs, it's always still people All right, can you kick us off for the for the completely? You know, from the completely beginner level? What is the EEOC as a function? What do they do? What do you do?

Marina Guerra  
Absolutely. And I love talking about EEOC. So Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as you mentioned, is a small federal government agency. Everybody thinks, oh, Department of Labor, we're actually your own independent agency. When individuals, applicants, employees, even former employees believe that they've been discriminated against in the workplace discrimination, harassment, retaliation, we invest to investigate those claims. So when I say applicants, so people don't realize that even as an applicant, you can be discriminated against you can be arrest it current employees, but I also say former employees, because an individual has 300 days from the date of harm in which to file. Unfortunately, people are very uncomfortable about filing while they're still working somewhere. So they go and find another job, and then they come back. So when the person believes that they've been discriminated against retaliated against, or harassed in the work environment based on race, religion, color, sex, national origin, age or disability, that's all races, all national origins, all religions, the EEOC investigates that we're neutral. We don't represent the employee, we don't represent the employer or the applicant. We're really here just to determine whether any of the laws that EEOC enforces were violated and if they were, how do we resolve that so that these things don't happen? Going forward? You know, a lot of times, what we find is, it's not always intentional, which is a good thing, right? It's still bad that did happen. But the intent wasn't behind that there is some intentional things that happen, but most of the time, and so now in this role of outreach and education coordinator, my task is to go out and let the public know, employers, employees, advocates, anybody who will hear us that so that we can advise them of the roles, responsibilities, the laws, what you should do, what you shouldn't be doing. And so now my task is to go out to the community and make sure people know and understand, again, because we're neutral, we do this for the employer side, we do this for the employee side, really, just to let them know we're here. We're friendly, right? We're very friendly. We're not we don't buy we're not a scary crew of people. But we're really here to help. And I get a lot of calls from employers, hey, you know, this happened? And should we do this? Or should we do that we don't offer you advice. But I can let you know, this is how he or she might look at it. So take this into consideration. And I love that, but we get calls from everywhere, employees, employers, as well. So our job is just to really go out there and let people know that there are protections. But also there are guidelines and things that you need to follow if you're employing individuals and you know, doing the wanting to do the right thing, of course.

Jeff Ma  
So, I want to know, from your perspective, what does love have to do with any of that? You're here on the show? You're here, there's a very important function and part of our our government function, but what where does where in your mind? Does what we talk about here, come into play?

Marina Guerra  
Oh, absolutely. So oddly enough, as as an outreach and education coordinator, I get called to do training for various organizations, or even the employee like employee advocates, which I love. Most of the time, people when they asked for training, oddly enough, a lot of times they're asking for civility training, which is still related to your see, because when I attended your the workshop that that you all hosted, I was excited because it was that same message. Where do you start from the very beginning? I think if you're in a role of leader, and I like calling it leadership, because people can manage and that's fine. But that leadership takes that extra job that role responsibility of really, you know, building people, coaching people, putting them in the right places. And I think that has to start with love. When we do the Civility training, it's about being respectful about slowing down taking people into consideration whether you're an employee, whether you're a member of management leadership, it has to come across the board, right? And so when you say love as a business strategy, absolutely. No people like you feelings. I don't want to do this, but you have to write there's feelings about all of it. being empathetic to your team's understanding, knowing being able to catch when there's an issue or when it's really started at a really, really low level. How can you address it so it doesn't turn into these bigger hostile work environments that you see in the newspaper? How did they not catch that early on? And I think it's just being able to appreciate people be civil and respectful to people and I think that all translates into Love write loving what you do. Because you don't want to come into a job as a leader totally at what you do, because that's not going to bode well. And then loving the people that you work with enough to slow down, hear them, make them feel comfortable, take them into consideration, you might I always tell people, you may not be able to avoid a complaint or charge of discrimination. But the things you do, the way you behave, and how you treat people is always going to set you up for not having a long drawn out process in most of in those situations. So catching those things, being enough, you know, aware and cognizant enough of your work environment, and just really appreciating your staff and your people and your teams, I think is going to be a super big key in this prevention that that EEOC promotes.

Jeff Ma  
So you mentioned prevention. So that's really interesting. I know that EEOC is kind of viewed as a kind of reporting, and kind of maybe too many perceptions kind of viewed more as a kind of come in and retro actively fix things or trying to make things right. So talk to me a little bit about prevention in your in your world. Absolutely.

Marina Guerra  
It's what we aim to do, right? It's to make the world workplace free of harassment, discrimination. How do you do that you try to prevent it as much as you can. And that's why I really love the job of outreach and education coordinator, because it really gives me the opportunity to do that. As an investigator, I got the case when the situation had already occurred. And so I'm just investigating, as you said, after in this role of outreach and education coordinator, I can go out and let organizations know, hey, there's things that you can put into place, look at your policies, maybe just starting with the fact that policies can be discriminating policies can be, you know, a contrary to the law and may have negative impacts on groups of individuals, even looking at that as a preventative action of are my policies effective? Are they in compliance with the law? So that's a good start training. And I know because this is my job, and we promote trainee, but the more that they the employees are trained, the more that leadership is trained, the better off they are. Because, yes, it you can't avoid things, but you can certainly prevent them from becoming bigger things. So recognize that one of the things that we really try to promote in training is recognizing harassment. It's one of the most vile charges with the EEOC. So how do you recognize harassment, you have to be aware, you have to be present, you have to know your staff, you have to know what's happening. Why is everybody quiet all of a sudden, and slowing down enough in our daily duties to go back and realize check with people check in have conversations, I always tell supervisors, if employees are not comfortable coming to you, if they don't feel safe, bringing things to your attention, we're looking at bigger red flags. So it's all of these preventative ProAction proactive approaches that organizations can take in order to make sure that maybe you can't avoid a charge, but you can probably lessen the likelihood of one if you're taking these preventative proactive approaches. We stress whether it's EEOC or anybody else, to do training with staff, leadership, all employees, what are your responsibility? What are your policies? What is it that we're committed to? And making sure that you, you share that, but then you're also living that right? In the actions, the things that you do as well. So we if you go on to our website, it talks a lot about prevention, and what can you do and a lot of that goes back to training, which is what me and all of the OECS, across the United States are trying to do tirelessly working day and night, to make sure that everybody knows roles and responsibilities, and hopefully that promoting because I tell you what, the investigators would be very happy to not have as many complaints to investigate. And so we're out there doing as much as we can to share, what should you be aware of new laws that come into play that employers have to be aware of? Right, we just pass it in our June 27 pregnancy Workers Fairness Act, so the employers have to know there's a new law, what do we need to do? How do we need to be aware of that? And these preventative? You know, do I have to change my policy? Do I have to change the practice of something. So we really, really impressive, you know, proactive, preventative approaches to these things. It's important.

Jeff Ma  
I love that. And I'm not sure that everybody knows that the resource exists. As an awareness issue. Hopefully this helps. My, my head is in this space where I feel like when I look at potential issues, harassment, you know, any of these these dire circumstances that may arise. I feel like there's one universe where the people involved, maybe have a relationship of some sort, and they're able to bring it up, talk about it, maybe resolve it on their own and talk you know, like figure things out and come to some kind of conclusion. And then there's the other universe where I guess you get involved or EEOC gets involved, and it's reported. I feel like that's where, you know, the relationship and trust and love as a business strategy kind of plays in the difference between those two worlds in the in the things that have been filed that you've seen or investigated? Are you seeing any patterns that can confirm that for me? Because it's in my head? But it's like, are you seeing any patterns with like, people who typically end up reporting? What kind of relationship do they have? What kind of kind of place are they coming from when it comes to what their leader was? Doing? Around psychological safety? Any patterns that you can see, I would love to hear almost like a confirmation of my assumptions, if you don't mind?

Marina Guerra  
No, and it's very accurate, Jeff, really, because when we you know, as an investigator, I really love to kind of dissect these Yes, to investigate the case. But also to figure out like, where did we, how did we get this far, some of them are very egregious. Some of them are very bad. Some of them are at the very beginning, what we find a lot is true or not, people have a perception that, well, I can't go to them, because I don't trust them, they're not going to do the right thing. Anyways, they've already done this. So why would I go back to them to address it? And a lot of times, what ends up happening in a lot of situations is lack of communication, right? Lack of trust sometimes, but I always tell employees, you know, like, oh, I don't want to go to HR, right? This is usually the process, right? You go to HR to complain, if it's your supervisor, or you go to your supervisor, if it's coercive, why don't trust them, they're not going to do anything. And I always tell people, give them the chance, though, right? Maybe they'll prove you wrong. And listen, if they prove you right, then you just come to EEOC, no problem. But you always want to give that good faith effort for the employer, the employee, to the employer to try to make it right. A lot of times, what I realized is that it wasn't intentional. They've said or done something without realizing, here's the reality, you go into a leadership role, and myself included, right, I was a supervisor for a little while. And I think I was a pretty good investigator, and I was willing to share my knowledge, share my experiences, and help other people to become the best that they could be phenomenal, had those souls. But no one told me, you'd have to be nice to people, you have to take into consideration that you have 13, you know, investigators, and that's 13, different personalities, you have to know. And so we don't give that extra, we don't ever train on that extra piece, right? Coaching and the proper way to coach and all those kinds of things. And so what I find, as an investigator, what I found is that sometimes leadership was just not aware that what they did, or you know, not that you have a favorite, but that person has done this or has been with me longer. And that's why I gave them a little bit more slack. But then these other individuals are like, Well, maybe it's because of my race or gender, because they are different of a race or gender, whatever it may be. And so they're not realizing that there is, you know, taking that back approach, like Oh, I did treat this person more favorably than this person. And they do happen to be a bit of a race religion. So a lot of times when I found what it was not intentional. Now, I don't know that anybody's going to come to EEOC and be like, Yeah, we did it. Because, you know, we don't like individuals of that particular race, or gender, or whatever it is. That's not going to happen. But I think a lot of times, you could tell that it was like, Okay, we just, we didn't document or we didn't do the right thing, or we didn't look at it in that lens. And I think that is what happens most of the time. But that lack of trust is huge. Because if the employee doesn't feel like they if we're working together, and I've said something that rubs you the wrong way made you feel uncomfortable that you could be comfortable. If same ring, I don't know if you realize this, but that we can have a conversation, I can correct my behaviors, not do it going forward. That's hopeful, right? That's what we would hope that would happen. A lot of times, employees just don't feel that comfortable. And that's a bad thing, right? We need them to feel comfortable to go to the organization to express what happened, give them the opportunity. And again, if they don't make it right, or if it gets worse than they have us as the as the option come to EEOC, then we can look into these situations. But I think I think what you said is very accurate. There's that lack of trust, and when that happens when there is a trust, they get it resolved. No one has to come to ear see no one really wants to come to EOC I assure you right. When we were in person, you go wait a long line, go to downtown and then also you know their nonsense. Nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to complain against their employer. A lot of people don't want to believe that's what happened to them. We've seen I've seen some very good relationships where they're like, I felt like this was my family, I worked there a long time, and I had such a high regard and trust. And then this thing happened. And they're shocked, right? So you have all of these different dynamics, the boil down thing is, it's humans working with humans, that will sometimes get it wrong. It's when we make those amends, and we move forward in a very positive direction, we learn from it, and we know how to move forward positively. Not every case is going to be a violation. Because sometimes it's miscommunication, or just a lack of understanding or not realizing that there was a legitimate reason for the difference in treatment. So I think it's very accurate to what you said, it just really depends. But that lack of trust, lack of empathy, if people don't feel comfortable going in internally, then they come to us, where some of these things could have been resolved at the very, very easiest level, if there was that trust, that psychological safety to come to somebody and bring those things to their attention, unfortunately,

Jeff Ma  
yeah, I think in my experience of talking and working with, you know, hundreds of 1000s of leaders, one thing is glaringly true and consistent is that we as humans are incredibly good at filling in our own blinks. Yes, I feel like when we have a part of a story, which we always only have a part of the story, we are incredibly good at taking the parts that aren't clear or aren't explicit. And, and painting, you know, a picture, it just happens time and time again, I'm guilty of it, where it's like, oh, they did this, and I saw this outcome. So all that in between stuff, they must be upset with me, they must be out to get me they must be doing all these things. And that just keeps popping in my head. Because, yes, excluding the true discriminant discrimination and other cases, I'm talking about a lot of the things that I see and talk about where people are feeling a certain way, especially when they're tying it to their identity or tying it to their religion, that gender or sexuality and these things. It's an absolutely true feeling they're having and I think there's this balance between you are experiencing this. But can you also fill in those blanks with more facts and truth? And sometimes, sometimes there's pieces that we're not aware of that that exist in that story. And I feel like there's, there's, there's, I hear you saying those things, and that's where my head goes, where it's like that it's so aligned with kind of what we talk about all the time, not that EEOC is not needed in many, many cases. But there's, there's got to be so many, because I've seen them myself, where, you know, relationships are borderlining involving EEOC. And when you really dig down to both sides of the story, you put them together, it actually makes perfect sense for everybody. They're just not speaking the same language. Yeah,

Marina Guerra  
exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly it. I think sometimes, if people just slow down enough to hear each other, and understand where they're coming from, I think it makes it so much easier to then decipher, how do we move away move forward from this, right? There's always learning opportunities. And so how do we not do this again, but how do we even get here? And then how do we move forward so that these things don't happen? Again, and I think it's just slowing down. And you know, the same thing that you guys when when you did your presentation, being vulnerable, being open, you know, listening, being inclusive, all of those things have to exist, right? And applying them so that the employee feels comfortable enough so that we can have these conversations, fill in those missing gaps, and then figure out okay, you know, what I didn't one side or the other is going to realize that that something happened that they didn't realize, and that's when hopefully we can move forward in that positive direction to avoid those things going forward. But also, like, how did we get here? And let's not to hear again, right is best process because you don't want to be in those situations over and over and over again, not good for the work environment when it when it continues to happen, then we might need to look a little deeper, right?

Jeff Ma  
You may not have the answer to this, but I'm just curious. Curious, I'm going to ask you anyways. Do you have like a rough percentage in your head of like, how many of the filed complaints are like super like egregious supervisor or, you know, company failures, versus maybe even like misunderstandings or mindset, like misguided mindsets of the plaintiff or or any of those that I know, I'm not drawing a hard line to the two sides. But I'm really curious, like how many of these ended up one way or the other knowing that it has to get to a certain point even become a filed complaint in the first place? I'm just so curious if there's a rough like 50-50 or, or, or ratio in your head on that.

Marina Guerra  
That's a good question. I don't know to be honest with you, because here's the reality when we look at these cases, we're really just looking at the facts of the case and A lot of times I didn't I didn't feel now I'm gonna say to didn't have it. But I didn't feel like the the behaviors, the actions were intentional on the part of the organization if there was a violation, right, and we're just gonna talk about the cases where there were violations where EEOC said, Hey, this looks like it could be a violation of one of the the laws that we enforce. And it's really hard to decipher. So when you have policies that are out of compliance, sometimes we realize that they just didn't go back and update the policies, there are policies written that are very specific that that are going to be an issue. And when you read it, you're like, I don't know what you were trying to get from that. But that is not a good idea. For example, I saw a policy where it said, oh, yeah, you can absolutely complain, if you have an issue with harassment, here's all these fabulous things that you can do, which was great. But the very last line said, however, if we investigate, and we can't prove the case, you could be disciplined. And I'm like, No, that's not the right approach. And that that had a very direct impact, not, if we found out that you were lying, it was like, if we can't prove it, well, a lot of times, you can't prove cases, right situations happen when I won, or whatever it may be, you know, so there's not we there's a lot of times we can prove cases, a person can be very, very, you know, securing what they believe happened. But there's not enough information documentation. It doesn't mean it didn't happen, we just can't prove it's true, there's a difference. And so when you see things that are written in a way to harm or to create that roadblock, or you can complain, but if you you know, but you could be disciplined, if it doesn't go in your way, you know, those kinds of we don't see that very often, which is a good thing. We remedy those things very quickly, right? If we see a policy that needs to be updated, it's not in compliance, we'll make sure we work with the organization to say this needs to be updated, you know, especially when laws change or what have you. But as far as like those really egregious situations, those cases, if we have a website, eeoc.gov. And if you click down, there's a newsroom, where it talks about all the cases that EEOC litigated, then there's some very egregious things that are going on in the work environment, it's very troubling, right, still seeing very egregious and violent forms of harassment, sexual harassment included, you know, you're still seeing a lot of these things that are happening, even in this day and time where people know that you should not be doing those things in the work. And it's very difficult to say which ones were purposeful, which ones were just, you know, bad processes in place, documentation wasn't supportive. So they weren't able to justify their actions, it's really, really hard to do that, in these cases. Because, again, very, I think I can count on my hands that on one hand, the number of times that an organization is like, I don't see what I did wrong, even though you're having a conversation with them about what they did wrong, and they're like, I don't agree with you. But also, like you can't, you know, tell people that the, you know, the individual has a disability on when they're applying for other jobs. And I'm just being honest, and like, no, that's not what you do, though. So it's really difficult. But most of the time, I would say, as an investigator, it was lack of documentation, lack of supportive, you know, information that leadership didn't do what they were supposed to, they didn't follow the policies, they didn't apply them fairly and equitably. Or they said, Yeah, we did all of these things, but they didn't have the documentation to support it. And a lot of times, that's what happens, if they can't justify the actions if they can't, yeah, Marina was the worst employee ever. And then Yossi is gonna say, Okay, give me all the evaluations and those kinds of things, the write ups, and they don't have it, then they put themselves in a very bad situation, right, of not being able to prove or establish these things. That might be fact. But also, there's no proof or document and that documentation, that proof goes both ways. Right, the employee to come in has to have some thing for EEOC to say, okay, I can see how this could quite potentially be an issue. But then we go back to the employer and say, Okay, this is what they're saying, Tell me your side of the story. And what proof or evidence do you have, when they don't have that proof or evidence, you can tell me all day long that Marina was the worst employee you've ever had in your entire organization's existence. But if you don't have that documentation, if you don't have that you didn't have those conversations. You didn't document those conversations. It's almost you know, the thing that's going to create an issue, EEOC is going to look at that as a red flag, because you can tell me she was horrible. But if you can't prove it, you don't have any thing to support that. Now we're back to the drawing board, right? Why did this happen? And that kind of thing. So it's really hard. That was a very long answer to your question. It's very hard because organizations you know, are not always going to be very honest about the things there are some, unfortunately, bad people in the work environments and some of them were in lead. Worship capacities, not often, which is a good thing. But there are some bad actors. And we're hoping, right that we can at least help them to understand how this is not the way to lead and manage people. Because really, when you're looking at leadership, you're the tone, you're the role model for the rest of your staff. So we hope that you're doing things the right way, so that you can then expect others to take their roles and responsibilities in that same in that same way.

Jeff Ma  
That's awesome. That's great. And I've learned a lot about the EEOC today. And I think that, to all the listeners who we know are, you're the good ones, right. So we're out there hearing you. And we don't want to, you know, whether you're an employer or an employee, we're hoping that we don't have to reach out and get EEOC involved. And so I think there's been a lot heard and learned here for the audience to kind of take with and, and remember that we can prevent these things, which is the best way for us to be addressing these issues is first try to have those conversations, build those relationships and trust around us so that when these things arise, which they inevitably will, as humans work together, we're able to resolve them in very human ways and not have to get to certain extremes. And so, Marina, thank you so much for your time today. It was very, it was very enlightening of education. I really appreciate you taking the time to spend with us today.

Marina Guerra  
Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here. You guys are doing phenomenal work, keep it up. Because I think you're really helping us in that background, building leaders to be the best leaders that they can. That's exactly what we're trying to do. But you know, it's that parent thing. You can tell your kids all day long, but somebody else comes and tells him as long as they're listening and they're getting the same good positive message. That's what we're hoping for. So I am super supportive of the work you do. Because I think what y'all are doing is absolutely important to what we're doing in prevention and hopefully not getting those charges into the system like you said,

Jeff Ma  
an unexpected synergy I love it. Thank you so much and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. As always, please check out the book love as a business strategy on Amazon others. Subscribe rate, tell a friend. We love you all. We hope to see you again next week. Have a good one.