The Scoop with Tanya Flanagan

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This is a k u NBC Studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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Good morning and thank you for joining me for the scoop with Tanya Flanagan. I'm so happy you decided to wake up and start your day with me. Here on the scoop, where we talk about life, joy, funny moments, trending topics and so much more. We promise to keep you in the know and find out what you know. So let's get started.

Unknown Speaker 0:46
Good morning, Las Vegas and welcome to another Sunday morning here with me. On the scoop on K u and v 91.5. Public Radio I want to thank you for getting up this morning and joining me for a conversation. Hope you find today's conversation entertaining, enlightening and just generally enjoyable. I am pleased to welcome to the studio with me today. Miss Sean Montgomery, Michelle Montgomery LLC, and many many, many more things. So we will get into what the many, many, many more things happens to be. But to a friend. I'd like to say good morning and thank you for getting up so early on a Sunday morning. Hello. Hello,

Unknown Speaker 1:24
hello. Absolutely pleasure an honor to be here with you my friend Dr. Flanagan. Absolutely. Um, when

Unknown Speaker 1:32
I first met you, I didn't know you were such a dynamic person. And I am pleased to learn how distinguished and exciting your life is in the things that you've done. You're a veteran, you are a trainer of diversity and equity inclusion. And that's what we're going to dig into today this final Sunday before election day. But diversity and equity inclusion 20 years in the military in the Air Force. So help me introduce you to Las Vegas. Tell us a little bit about yourself because you probably lived a bunch of places. So this is gonna be a fun this is gonna be a fun conversation.

Unknown Speaker 2:12
Yeah, it's so I love that. Thank you. Thank you. So hello, Las Vegas. Good morning. Happy Sunday. As I said my name is Michelle Montgomery and I am so excited to be here and have a conversation with a client about one of my passions which is diversity equity inclusion concept and and how they've kind of shaped my my current status in the world and current state in the world and the things I do so I served the United States Air Force for 20 years and nine days time. I say 20 years was the easy part. The nine days is when it got hard, because they did not tell me I had to make it to the end of the month. I'm originally from who knew to get that retirement. I'm originally from Pensacola, Florida. My dad was in the in the Navy. He served for 22 years in the Navy. I have a brother who also went into the Air Force and we are both now retired. And cool facts about our brother who's a flight attendant he flew with Air Force Two. So he flew was now President Biden at the time he was vice president by admin. So so a lot of a lot of cool things which both traveled the world all over. I've been stationed in Italy, I was stationed in Korea, I was stationed in London, England, Panama City, Florida, Virginia and I've deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And so the my travels took me everywhere it was when I got here to Las Vegas, I fell in love and decided to call this place home and got here met my wife and airy. We own a home and doing all the cool stuff and I have a business.

Unknown Speaker 3:51
So you have to work with companies. Yeah, you've done a lot of things. Um life is so funny how it takes us down a nonlinear path. And everybody's walk is different. I do want to I want to quiz you at some point on favorite places to have been seen. Think about this. The favorite your most favorite place you've ever been the most interesting food music unique. I'm gonna say venue or landmark or something that you ever visited. So think about those things. And I'm going to come back and I'm going to kind of rapid fire because I want to know what those things are. Okay, but you were in diversity and equity inclusion. So in the space of being in the military, military family, your dad was Navy, your brother was also Air Force and that's really cool flying with. Now President Biden I'm sure he gets to brag a lot because that's quite the experience to end up in the diversity, equity inclusion space within the military because that must have been In a space that has evolved to be more inclusive to be more emotionally intelligent, if you will, for lack of a better way to describe it, the military space has really evolved from where it was. Yeah, it is today.

Unknown Speaker 5:16
Yeah, what was I got? Yeah, I was I was honored to be a instructor out in Italy. So as a professional military education instructor and one of the air forces, Premier schools or leadership schools, we call the airman leadership school out in the on the airbase. And so I found my kind of purpose calling, you know what I mean, when I was there, and teaching and facilitating and things like that I was doing all kinds of public speaking. And we started to weave diversity concepts into the into the curriculum. And I was passionate about it, then. But then, unfortunately, you know that the murder of George Floyd and 2020 happened. And the Air Force particularly said, what are we what are we going to do? And at the time, we had our second lychee mess on the air force chief, mesaar, Cleito, right, who said Have the conversation, not telling me the reason that's important is because historically, we didn't talk three things in the military, race, religion, politics, and we didn't talk those things in order to maintain what they call good order and discipline. So here, all of a sudden, 2020 she'd write this, talk about race, have the conversation? And everybody said, What do I do with my hands, because nobody's had been trained on this, like, nobody had any idea how to step into this space. So I'll raise my hand up and say, hey, you know, I'll do it right, I'll step up. And I'll do this. And what I also did was, at the same time, simultaneously, I was running resilient. So here I am, taking these concepts of diversity, equity, inclusion and resilience training and coupling them together, to teach courses on bias, unconscious bias, all kinds of all kinds of topics, racism, discrimination, and how it affects us as a force. And

Unknown Speaker 7:06
or stay with us. Because unconscious bias, if you were defining that was a quick, easy definition that you give to people so that they put it in perspective, unconscious bias and know when they are doing that.

Unknown Speaker 7:22
Or trying to hold course, no, you know,

Unknown Speaker 7:27
oh, here and I give you the hard questions. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 7:30
like I'll say this, I asked, I asked one question. I say, do you have preferences? Let's start there. Do you have preferences? Do you? Do you prefer pineapples on pizza or not? And you know, the unequivocal answer is yes, right. We all have preferences, right? When you ask, do you have biases? People say, people say, Well, no, no, no, I don't have any biases. Well, the reality is you do work preference and bias are synonymous, right? So when you think about an unconscious bias, we're talking about something that happens in your brain, without you knowing that it's taking place. And when we put that in perspective, with things like diversity, or inclusion, we're talking about prejudices and stereotypes about certain groups of people, or individuals that form outside of your awareness, your conscious awareness. So these are things that are happening that you don't know about. And there's different forms of unconscious biases that take place in our day to day lives. An example would be affinity bias, right? If you have a tendency to prefer a certain individual, over someone else, because they appear similar to you, that would be an affinity bias, which happens unconsciously. And the reason I say it's a longer conversation is because in my curriculum, I talk about the why behind that tiny, I don't just say, this is what it is, and we all have it. I'm going to tell you the history of why our brain works the way that it does.

Unknown Speaker 8:55
Do you ever do I mean, I know that there was a business, you know, Michelle Montgomery LLC, and you are literally you know, you're invited in contracted, pay to talk about these things with people. But sometimes these are the type of things that also lend themselves to our social wellbeing, our mental health well being, and when we are able to have conversations like this, and sometimes we do community, you know, advocacy and activism where we give back Do you ever do just workshops, sometimes for groups? Pro bono, where a person could hear you speak get a taste of this tap into?

Unknown Speaker 9:32
Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, like if a company especially if it's a nonprofit, absolutely. I'm there. So if a nonprofit hits me up and says will you come in I spoke with Jasper success a US that did this for eMERGE, you know? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I've gone to companies all day long. If they'll invite me in, you know, in the calendars, right? We can make it happen because I feel like the information clients valuable for For I think this I think these concepts are the way that we start to heal. But because like I told you, I tie the science into it right. And I think you hit on something just now. Right tiny like the wellness part. I think that's the part that we don't talk about a lot. So we talked about, you know, racism, prejudice, stereotypes, all these things. But there's some things happening in our brain. And there's some way that ways that we have to approach this so that we can have conversations about healing, because some of this is rooted. You know, this is

Unknown Speaker 10:30
generational and oh, yes, right. Exactly. We're like, we're what is that? The Jinx thing? Something when you jinx me or something, Michelle?

Unknown Speaker 10:42
Yeah, oh, you a coke. Coca Cola. They say, get

Unknown Speaker 10:46
a cup of coffee. So I'm just trying to get off. But, but Right, exactly. It's rooted in things that you have just heard over the years generationally, that you know, the mothers and the forefathers of your family the paternal, right, it's the legacy and it's handed down. And because of that, it has shaped your thoughts and your opinions about things that you've never even experienced, not even a personal experience you've ever encountered or dealt with. But you're right. We inherit perspectives, and preferences, and by default biases, and resistance to different things we just inherited. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 11:28
And the thing about my course is right, or that, I, we challenge that. And the reason that you know, companies will bring me in is because one you got to create a safe space and challenge never to when we challenge it, what What now, and so I don't leave people hanging on the cliff, right? The next step is remember how I told you in the military, I said I was doing diversity and inclusion and resilience. So I've coupled these concepts together to understand how to how to navigate training your brain through these processes of understanding why you have these biases. We're upgrading something right in any any therapists. I call this until you know, when you uproot some stuff, there's a process to go through of healing. And so some of it is it's easy, but a lot of it is based on as you just told us, right? Things that are rooted in what your daddy taught you what your granddaddy taught you what's mama taught you what you've seen on TV, and that's why I tell people experiences and exposure are huge. You got to go out there and do something different that you've never done before. You got to say yes to the things that you historically have said no to you got to

Unknown Speaker 12:36
try to at least face the fear. Oh, at least face the fear don't you? What is the fear? What you because you have an acronym? I call you queen? I call you the queen? acronym. Some know you. Many are meeting you for the first time in this conversation. But I can tell you, this is my queen Michelle is my acronyms. I am not as much as I have a background in journalism and writing. I'm not the queen of acronyms, but you are

Unknown Speaker 13:04
a fear, Tanya, forget everything and run or face everything and rise. That's what fear means.

Unknown Speaker 13:10
And I love that because it's so simple. And it simplifies things that hold us paralyze. So simplistically, fear everything and run face, face everything in rise, right? Is that what it is? Like? Get it right or

Unknown Speaker 13:22
get everything then run and face everything and rise? Okay, well, you get it. And look at them. I don't

Unknown Speaker 13:30
do because obviously, their tongue twisters to me. What order does that come in? My brain just says I must have oh, there it is. I must have a subconscious of bias that says no.

Unknown Speaker 13:44
I saw you know me the next opportunity.

Unknown Speaker 13:47
All right, because that Jinx didn't give me a cup of coffee and my brain is like, yes, but no next opportunity. Absolutely. I like that one too. Yeah, I really do like that. Because people tell you now and there is a there is an art to managing novel. I always say even from relationship stuff, right? Because no is my least favorite word in English language. I've always said that. And I say it sometimes jokingly but it's my least favorite word in English language. And it's all how you say no to me, especially if there's some type of personal relationship. I don't care if you're my father or brother. I don't care who it is. There's a way to tell me no, that will leave you in my good graces and a way to tell me no, that just may shake the earth everything that we know. That's my least favorite.

Unknown Speaker 14:44
Where did that come from? Where's that come from? Fine. Michelle, oh

Unknown Speaker 14:47
my God ask the hard questions. Probably from being like the youngest. Really, truthfully, probably from being the youngest of three children. And no, no girl. Um, I don't know. I just I think it is a man I have good communication skills. And there's a way to exercise emotional intelligence really in all seriousness of how you communicate with someone. And no one should be something that we don't want to hear. But it doesn't have to be. It just has to be sometimes delivered with some level of sensitivity, because you're never going to always get everything you want in life. And things aren't always gonna go the way you want them to go. So when you get the No, no matter how the note was delivered, I think it's a matter of how it's either given or how it's received and how it's processed. So, yeah, and so and I don't like Sorry, either, because I don't like Sorry, unless there is some understanding of why you're apologizing but don't just overuse.

Unknown Speaker 15:40
Yeah, I tell you what, I tell you what, it's interesting, you should use two words that are really big and important for me, you keep saying emotional intelligence. And I think, you know, I have rooted a great deal of my work in understanding emotional intelligence, what it is, why it exists, how we, how we create it, cultivate it, leverage it, and I tie that into diversity, equity inclusion concepts, right. So when I come into a company, I start foundationally, using the with, usually with understanding what is diversity, what is equity, what is inclusion? What does that even mean? And then we move into these these concepts of understanding who you are, because a lot of this routes itself and self awareness, and a lot of people don't know themselves. They don't know why they're mad. They don't know why they're angry.

Unknown Speaker 16:28
That's that's a show. That's a that's a therapy session. And you don't know why you're angry. You

Unknown Speaker 16:35
don't they don't they don't know why they're mad. They don't know why they don't know why they don't like something. And so when you really start asking that three little word of why people get you know, you keep going, why you'll get down far enough where they just thought, I don't even know, I know you don't? Because we're not we don't come into the world with this. Do you think about the concept of hatred and things like that we're not born with that. We didn't we're not it's taught the same concept with fear, right? We're born in the world we have, you know, and this is this is studies that have said, You were born with two fears. Were born with the fear of loud sound, in the fear of heights, everything else right, we are we are taught, in a sense, right. And so, you know, that conversation between a moat with emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence is that conversation between the limbic system of your brain and the frontal lobe of your brain, it's a, it's a conversation, because the way that information comes in time, it comes to your spinal cord and into your brain, your limbic system is first, and that's the emotional part, your frontal lobe is in the front. And so information has to make its way concepts, neural, neural neural pathways have to make their way that trip has to take place to get to the logical part of your brain. And in many cases, that's what I say you respond emotionally. Yeah. Because you haven't regulated that conversation between those two parts of the brain. And that's what emotional intelligence is. And that's what I teach in order to understand diversity, equity inclusion concept, and why we feel the way you feel about certain things like this. I'm breaking it down. It's the course it

Unknown Speaker 18:04
is, of course, it makes me It brings me to the question. So then, if a person gains a sense of awareness, and control with regard to emotional intelligence, then I was going to bring that up. So I'm glad that you did. Because there are some things about you that created some buzzwords for me, to focus in on a motional intelligence is one of them how that ties the communication is another. And then because you work with companies, corporations, people, groups, whatever, how that helps to shape and mold their mission and their vision. Because as you move through these two other spaces, that helps you to outline or lay out what you want a mission or a vision to be. Right. So backing up to emotional intelligence, if we can, if you can get a handle on and a sense of that. Is that what helps people to be able because in the workspace, you'll hear this and I'm almost sitting here going, is it being misused? Is it being misunderstood? But is it supposedly the sense of awareness that allows you to better interact with your co workers with your subordinates with people that you manage? To have a sense of empathy, sympathy self, like their self awareness was less up up self absorption, because sometimes you can have like, a leader who, just once but you have an employee who's going through something, and maybe they don't deliver? At the time you expect, does emotional intelligence come into play in how you respond to this employee who didn't maybe didn't deliver?

Unknown Speaker 19:49
Absolutely, absolutely. So, so we got to, we have to look at it as you know, and without going too far, you know, ultimately, there's those four quadrants. and you have self awareness, and self management, right? And that's falls under recognition and regulation. And then you so you have the personal competencies, competencies, which is self awareness, self management, then you have those social competencies. And those are social awareness and relationship management. So here's how we look at this, right? If we're talking about recognition of self, in the personal competencies, how am I aware I do have my self confidence? How I show up in the most emotional situation? How do I how do I know what triggers me? Let me ask you a question. What how do you know that you're triggered, that you're upset that you're angry? What are those things that happen in your body, physiologically, that take place for you to be aware that if I don't remove myself, something's about to happen, what happens to you?

Unknown Speaker 20:51
These days, my temperature seems to change instantly, but I'm okay based on my life, I think. And then I will say, because I went through a master's program, which brought emotional intelligence very front and center for me, and it made me it's the, it is a tool that I truly appreciate, especially in the workplace. And also, it is a tool that can you can use to propel yourself to another level, and how you deal with negotiations.

Unknown Speaker 21:25
When you say when you say a tool, understanding it is if you time you know yourself enough to know that if someone says something and your palms get sweaty, you know that your palms get sweaty, that's an indicator that time is upset. For me, my palms get sweaty, and my voice starts to turn when I'm mad. Now, because I know that about myself, I can manage myself. So we moved from set right so I can manage me shot I can say hey me shot, you know that you've been triggered because you know, you and this palm sweaty voice tremble, you should probably remove yourself in this moment before you do or say something. So when you talk about the workplace, if that situation, your person is showing up in that, that you know, late or not turned in assignment, or whatever it is, you know that that's a thing for you. And you recognize this and your self awareness, you manage yourself by walking away. Okay, now, what have you just done? You've managed a relationship, because had you responded, while you were triggered? Guess you're responding from an emotional space, as you respond it from that limbic system, you might have ruined that relationship with that person.

Unknown Speaker 22:36
True. I'm gonna make one small confession that I usually wouldn't. But the one small confession for me in this spaces? It depends on how the interaction occurs. If it's in person, I may be quiet. If it's in writing, I feel sorry for you. Okay, because I am, I am. People are calling about well, okay, and that says what I usually do if it's the keyboard, that's where you I'm gonna tell you truth. I'll tell anyone, right it, get it out, do his sin, just write it and get it out. And then walk away and come back later and write a more appropriate response to deal with this situation?

Unknown Speaker 23:22
Absolutely. On the email, folks, write it on a pad or don't

Unknown Speaker 23:27
don't put it somewhere that you might at least address it to yourself, but maybe not at work, no matter what if you don't want that in the system. But yeah, that's, that's like, it's like, I feel like I'm playing poker. And I really just don't wanna lay my whole hand out. I'm just gonna be honest with you. But if I have not learned anything from this conversation, what I will say to someone, Michelle Montgomery is truly qualified to give you this course. Folks who might be out there wondering, oh, I think it'd be really great to have a workshop on equity, inclusion and self awareness and tools and strategies. This has been so fun and so enlightening. I knew it would be fun. I didn't know what would be this much fun. And I never thought that I would I never thought for a second I will be in the hot seat on my own show having a conversation with my guests on a Sunday morning. Well,

Unknown Speaker 24:20
you know what, my my, my mission? My Well, thank you. I'm, I'm excited to be here have this company I get excited about.

Unknown Speaker 24:28
I have fun last week. I'm really having fun this week. Oh my goodness. It's my

Unknown Speaker 24:32
passion. But I'll tell you what time you know what my company's mission is to read the world aboard presentations. I really mean that. And so people ask me, you know, how come how come you always you know, smiling. How can you always enthusiastic? Because listen, I marvel in the deliciousness of life. I really do. I love that about the journey. Yeah, come on. And here's

Unknown Speaker 24:53
what I'm gonna say over the years and I've had the privilege and we're done with our last five minutes and so I want to make sure people can find you So give me a few minutes we're gonna get to that. But what I will say is whenever I have had to go to a presentation that anything that has to do with self analysis, self awareness, personality assessments, all of those types of exercises, you know, SWOT strengths, weaknesses, these groups over here in the corner, those things are interactive and they really do give you a chance to take a look at yourself and get to know yourself better and the people around you so they're always fun. So I can see how and then you are so you know, like bubbly and just unpredictable at different times. So I see where you keep this pocket and font how can people find you get in touch get more information higher you Whatever, let's do that and then I'm then we're gonna do my rapid fire. And it's gonna be Sunday morning, the Sunday before election Tuesday here in in state of Nevada, and we're gonna sign off so how do people find you?

Unknown Speaker 25:54
Right? Me Shawn, you can www.me Sean montgomery.com or you can email me at me sean.montgomery@gmail.com Cool

Unknown Speaker 26:06
now rapid fire GREATEST place you've ever been Italy Italy Okay, the most delicious food

Unknown Speaker 26:20
this spaghetti this pasta in this in this chain? This little cafe that sits on the side of the back alley in Venice Italy.

Unknown Speaker 26:31
Favorite kind of music since you've been all over the place?

Unknown Speaker 26:33
I still did. It'll never change. I listen to southern soul music all day long,

Unknown Speaker 26:38
nicest people country with the nicest, just coolest easiest to you know get get into culture.

Unknown Speaker 26:48
Korea and Croatia.

Unknown Speaker 26:51
Hmm. Okay. And coolest thing you saw while you were out there traveling, just to cool

Unknown Speaker 26:57
man. I had, I had I had lunch with Buddhist monks in Korea in a Buddhist temple. And with a guy named Coco. And to see him eat like four kernels of rice and three green beans and make it last the whole entire 30 minutes as I gobble down my soup rice. It was very, very incredible, you know, the waters of like marches in Italy. I mean, my brain just is like running through this. Through this through this Rolodex of visions that you know pitchers will never be able to really speak true to and so I must add for my wife walking into San Marcos square with her in Italy in Venice. And her being her first time her ever seen San Marco square. And the beauty of it in the Morshead and one of the one of the castles in Italy was pretty phenomenal. See it really tied things together for me. I in a different way. and Europe. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 28:03
that's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing a little bit of who you are, what you do and the world with us folks. We are down and we're out of time I want to say thank you for tuning in this morning to the scope here with me on K u and v public radio 91.5 jazz or more until next week, stay safe. Don't remember and remember your vote is your voice. Have a great week everyone. I want to thank you for tuning into the scoop with me Antonio Flanagan and I want to invite you to get social with me I'm on Facebook and Twitter. My name is my handle ta NYFL a na GA N You can also find me on Instagram at Tanya almond eyes Flanagan and if you have a thought and opinion or a suggestion, don't hesitate to shoot me an email to tanya.flanagan@unlv.edu Thanks again for joining in. Stay safe and have a great week.

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