Episode 17: Inclusive Leadership and Hispanic Heritage Month: Peter Muñiz of Home Depot

Peter Muñiz, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at The Home Depot, Inc., offers lessons and insights on leadership and empathy — and, in recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month — ways to honor Latin colleagues and create an inclusive workplace.

Transcript    

Dr. Alexandria White: Hello, Peter. How are you doing today?

Peter Muñiz: I'm well. How are you?

Dr. Alexandria White: I am great, great. Thank you for joining Chris and I as we talk about ... Stop. Keep going. Keep going. Peter, thank you for joining us today. How are you doing?

Peter Muñiz: I'm doing well. How are you?

Dr. Alexandria White: We are excited about this podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for a living.

Peter Muñiz: Well, first of all, thank you for having me today. My name is Peter Muñiz. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, to a working class family in a working class neighborhood. Went to parochial school for elementary school, went to a public high school, about a 45-minute train ride away from home. Went to a private college, public law school, and graduated from law school and to the profession, all in private practice in the beginning and then went in-house. That's, in a snapshot, a little vignette into my background.

Dr. Alexandria White: Impressive. For the listeners, just for a little bit of context, I had the pleasure of interviewing Peter for another event for another company and we were talking about the lived experience of Latino professionals. Peter was excellent. Peter was excellent for that event, and we felt that he would be a good addition to this podcast.

Dr. Alexandria White: As he is Senior Level General Counsel, we wanted to get his feedback, his resources about how it is to be a professional, be Hispanic, and be a leader. Peter, I'm going to ask you, what are some best practices that you would offer to managers and leaders who want to create an inclusive community for Latino professionals?

Peter Muñiz: Yeah. Sure. I'm Vice President, Deputy General Counsel for the Home Depot. You gave me a promotion and I want to make sure my boss doesn't get angry at me.

Dr. Alexandria White: Correct me. Correct me.

Peter Muñiz: I appreciate it, though. I've been with Home Depot for seven years, but I've been in a corporate setting for over 25 years now, in-house. Part of that time was as an individual contributor and now, over a majority of that time has been in leadership roles. Look, I think diversity is paramount for businesses to succeed. And diversity in many ways. It's diversity of gender, diversity of race, of ethnicity, generational diversity. I also think about it as cognitive diversity.

I think when you bring in different perspectives in a business setting, I think you enhance your ability for optimal decision-making. To me, when I think about DE&I, to me, it's always about a business imperative. It's something that if you do it well, you could accelerate your business objectives. And if you don't do it well, you're going to lag your competitors that do it well. And then with respect to people of color and Latinos certainly, it's allowing your team members to show up authentically.

As a leader, I try to value differences and that's important. I do that by allowing my team members to show up how they want to show up, to show up authentically, create a psychologically safe environment for them, intentionally engage them, value their opinions, respect them, respect their differences as well. But bring it all together into a wonderful mix to try to help achieve whatever we're working on.

Chris Riback: Peter, you work now at the Home Depot, as you mentioned. You've been a leader at other very large corporations, companies. Surely, as a leader and in companies like this, the role of company culture is obviously something that you have thought about and that you think about every day. How does personal culture, individual culture, connect with company culture?

Peter Muñiz: Yeah. It's a great question, Chris. I think there needs to be alignment. As you mentioned, I worked with GE, GE Capital to be specific, for 20 years before I joined Home Depot, and GE had a wonderful culture. The Home Depot culture is different and superb in its own right. And it's based on our values wheel, which essentially is a decision-making framework for us, and then our inverted pyramid, which is our servant leadership philosophy. It's how we show up. It's the expectation of how leaders are supposed to show up every day.

In a traditional organization, the pyramid is right-side up. You got the CEO at the top, and then it widens as you go to the foundation. But Home Depot, it's just the opposite. It's about our customers, associates, and then the CEO, the leadership team is at that peak, but it's at the bottom. And it just keeps us focused. A tangible example is, we don't call it headquarters. We call it the sales support center. We're here to serve our field associates and there are 500,000 associates in the enterprise.

Chris Riback: How do you connect a culture like that to the phrase that you used earlier, showing up authentically? How does my showing up authentically mean?

Peter Muñiz: As a leader, you need to create a micro culture that's representative of the larger culture. To me, leadership, the basis for effective leadership is establishing a trust relationship with your team members. How does the leaders attempt to or establish a trusting relationship? There are some steps. There are many steps, but there are some steps that I've used consistently over 20 plus years now leading teams is, being transparent, being candid, and being vulnerable. You don't have all the answers as a leader. I know how to lead. I lead well. I lead effectively.

But I'm only as successful as the collective wisdom and talents that I'm able to surround myself with, and how effectively I engage them and empower them to lead themselves. It's creating a microculture that empowers people, where you could trust people, where you could collaborate, as I mentioned earlier, that is psychologically safe. When people show up, I always tell my team members, "You need to meet your team members where they're at. And then when you meet them where they're at, then you've established a place from which you can move forward together."

Dr. Alexandria White: You say psychological safety. Language matters. You say microculture. But there are some things that hinder that. Microculture? I want to introduce microaggressions, and why I want to talk about microaggressions is because the words matter. We say, we talk, we email. All of these things matter. If a leader doesn't know what they say and how it impacts others, then they can't create that microculture. I want to talk about common microaggressions that you've had in your journey to where you are now, and what can leaders do to be aware of those, and give us some examples.

Peter Muñiz: Yeah. I think first, that's where that vulnerability is really critical as a leader.

Dr. Alexandria White: Correct.

Peter Muñiz: When you say something, and we as humans, we have a pretty good antenna when we say something and the other person doesn't react well to it, or they pull back a little. As leaders, that uncomfortable space, we need to embrace, if we really want to be inclusive, because that's the beginning of building that trusting relationship. But look, as a Latino, there are certain things that during the course of whether in school, in an academic environment or in a professional environment, that are yellow flags to me. And that I've taught myself, increase my level of self-awareness not to repeat this, not to repeat this type of behavior. For instance, you are a hard worker. Well, in a corporate setting, we're all working hard. And if you're not, it's fairly apparent and you're not going to be there very long. Right?

Dr. Alexandria White: You're right.

Peter Muñiz: But it's something that's often said with Latinos, "You are a hard worker." And it's almost like you should feel good about that. Well, to me, that's an expectation of everyone. There are things like that. There are things with my name. It's Peter. And people have said, "Well, is it Peter or is it Pedro?" I go, "No. No, it's Peter." If it was Pedro, you'd be calling me Pedro, not Peter. Anglicizing names, I think you need to be careful with. My last name is, admittedly, it has a tilde over the N. It's a different letter. The ñiz is a different letter in the Spanish. It's an alphabet, so it's pronounced Muñiz, not Muñiz, not Muñiz.

I'll correct someone just so they know how to pronounce it, but I'm not anal about it, especially at this point in my career. The one thing I've also learned is, you have to show grace to people. Some of it is just a lack of experience, a lack of understanding, unintentional, and so you can't take every perceived slight, at least I try not to, personally. But I do use it as an opportunity to elevate the other individual's self-awareness on a particular issue.

Chris Riback: Well, you may not be aware, Peter, but by that statement, "you've got to show grace," you have unconsciously channeled Dr. Alexandria White, who that's one of her favorite phrases that I've certainly gathered from her and others. I don't know. That was skillfully played because you-

Peter Muñiz: Well, we didn't rehearse it, so that's good.

Chris Riback: Exactly. I was wondering if you're just buttering up to her, but it's definitely well played. By the way, I can absolutely empathize as a fellow who's gone through all of my life with the last name that gets mispronounced, people frequently will say Riback instead of Riback, which I don't understand because your last name, it's spelled the way it's pronounced. What's the problem?

Peter Muñiz: It's so obvious, right?

Chris Riback: It's so obvious. It's like there's just letters. I don't understand. I can empathize. The authenticity and the meeting people where they're at, what is that? Give me an example. We all know what that means, but give me an example, if one can come to mind, I don't want to put you too much on the spot, where you faced a situation, you had to meet somebody where they were at. Maybe you didn't do it right away. Maybe you didn't do it initially.

Where that might be something where a leader might not immediately recognize. Maybe it wasn't obvious. Maybe you weren't meeting the person where they were at because it wasn't obvious, and it might have taken some time. Because that's a phrase that we all hear quite often. We understand what it means, but I'm wondering if the doing is harder than the understanding. What could leaders take away from that?

Peter Muñiz: Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you an example that comes to mind and hopefully, it crystallizes it for you and the audience. Obviously, I'm not going to mention names, but in a setting where you're investing in the development of team members, having a team member that is struggling and it's become a apparent to you that the team member is struggling. And it's not for lack of effort. It's not because they're not showing up the way they should show up day in and day out. It's not because they're not providing their discretionary effort. It's perhaps because you've taken them outside of their comfort zone and quite frankly, they're struggling.

I had that situation with one of my leaders and I went to that leader and I says, "Look, what's going on?" We had a very honest, open, candid discussion. I said, "Here's what I'm observing. Here's where you're not meeting expectations. Did we push you too far too fast? I sense you're struggling, but we're here to support you. I'm here to support you. We'll lean into this intentionally. Let's set up a plan, an action plan to address it, and then let's revisit it if it's still not working."

We did that. It wasn't working. It's a valuable team member. As a leader, you got to step back and say, "Hey, this didn't work." All right. Well, this is a valuable team member with diverse skillsets that we could redeploy elsewhere in the organization, and that's what we did. That person still reports to me directly. That person is excelling today because one, as a leader, I realized someone was struggling. I met them where they were at. We had that type of discussion, which is very difficult for the person, especially for the person.

We were able to lean into it, as I said, try some new things. It still wasn't where we needed it to be and we both acknowledged we needed a change. We were able to transition that individual into a role where they're excelling and growing and leading exceptionally well today. Hopefully, that resonates. That's an example of meeting them where they're at. It's easy as a leader to step back and say, "Well, it's the weak link in the chain. I don't have time to lean into that person."

Chris Riback: Yes.

Peter Muñiz: "It takes too much time." We're dealing with human beings, right?

Chris Riback: That's right.

Peter Muñiz: And we're all fallible. We're not perfect. I think sometimes as leaders, if you achieve some level of success in corporate America, you lose sight of the hands that reached down in your career and pulled you up. I'm always conscious of that, that I always got to be reaching down or reaching back and pulling forward. Because I had many mentors that reached out and helped me along the way, so it's a way of paying it forward as well.

Dr. Alexandria White: I just want to say, Peter, you are phenomenal. At Reboot Excel, we have a workshop called Having Difficult Conversations. You just did, play-by-play, by what we teach leaders when having those difficult conversations. You went in there with a spirit of caring and curiosity. You said, "This is what I'm seeing." You didn't say, "Why are you doing that?" That is where we want to get to. It's that spirit of caring when you are having those different conversations, when you see someone is struggling. I just got goosebumps just listening to you. You haven't taken our class? But I appreciate that.

Peter Muñiz: I haven't. I haven't, but I may have to talk to my IP lawyers. You may be stealing my material. I don't know. No, but you're absolutely right. You have to be empathetic.

Dr. Alexandria White: Yeah. You have to.

Peter Muñiz: I think it's an underutilized and under nurtured leadership attribute.

Dr. Alexandria White: Definitely. You mentioned mentors.

Peter Muñiz: Yes.

Dr. Alexandria White: Great minds think alike. When you think of mentorship, who comes to mind for you?

Peter Muñiz: Oh, there are many.

Dr. Alexandria White: We don't mind name drops. We don't mind making a name drop.

Peter Muñiz: And I will name drop. It's a good opportunity to honor those that have had an impact in my professional life. First, an African American partner at the law firm I first joined, Thompson Hine, Abdul Kareem Raheem, he was exceptional. Saw something in me in a 20-minute interview in law school. Invited me to spend the summer at Thompson Hine and I spent five-and-a-half years there. Interesting story there. Spent the summer, they extended the offer. I go into my third year of law school with job in hand. I'm relaxing my third year of law school. I've got it made. I get a call for him saying, "Hey, I've decided to leave the firm." I said, "Well, then I'm not coming." That was my mentor. That was going to be my sponsor. He says, "No, you'd be making a big mistake." I go, "But you're not going to be there. Who else is going to be there?"

At this time, there weren't many people that looked like him at the partnership level in the firm. I might have been the only Latino out of, I don't know, several 100 lawyers in the Cleveland office. It meant a lot to me to have someone that looked like me, had a similar life experience as me. But he said, "No, I have a wonderful person that's going to take care of you." That person did not look anything like him, did not look like me. His name is Don Messinger. But he had a tremendous impact on my career. Literally kicked my butt for five-and-a-half years, and I'm the lawyer I am today because of his nurturing over those formative five-and-a-half years early on in my career. And then at GE I had multiple, multiple mentors. All my leaders, Barbara Danielle, Alex Dimitriv. All my leaders. John Sprawl. You see, if I leave out a name or two, I'm going to be in trouble, but these are people who invested in me, challenged me, empowered me.

Dr. Alexandria White: That's right.

Peter Muñiz: And then here at Home Depot, my current boss has been an exceptional mentor, Teresa Wynn Roseborough. And the business leaders here. From an outgoing chair, Craig Menear, to our current CEO and President, Ted Decker, it's a wonderful leadership team where we challenge each other, we invest in each other, we're focused on development. But we're focused because of our values on making sure we get the most out of our people.

Dr. Alexandria White: Wonderful examples.

Peter Muñiz: Yeah. Let me say something, though, if I may, on mentorship.

Dr. Alexandria White: Of course.

Peter Muñiz: One of the things for leaders to consider is, especially when it comes to people of color, a diverse population, it's making sure there's a balance with mentoring and sponsorship. That you're just not mentoring, you also have to sponsor. I think at least in my experience, and it's only one vantage point informed by 30 plus years, but just one perspective is that people of color, Latinos in particular, are over mentored and under sponsored. I think we need to change that equation. You need representation when you're not in the room. Guiding me and helping me navigate an organization is what a leader should be doing. To me, that's table stakes. Helping me understand the unwritten rules in a particular organization, to me, that's table sticks.

What I expect a leader, if a leader's going to lead well, if a leader's going to lead me well, is they're advocating for me when I'm not in the room. That's what Abdul did for me that summer many, many, almost 30 plus, not almost, 30 plus years ago. I wasn't in the room when he was in the room and when someone raised an issue. He said, "That's not an issue, and let me tell you why that's not an issue." That's what we need. We need sponsorship. We need people amplifying our accomplishments. Because some of us are very good at doing that and some of us are not.

Dr. Alexandria White: Correct.

Peter Muñiz: If you are quiet, you could be a very effective quiet leader. But sometimes it's the more gregarious leaders, the leaders that are out there the most that have a larger than life personality. They garner a lot of the attention. But we got to make sure as leaders that we are advocating for those that are not in the room.

Dr. Alexandria White: Peter, this is a recent article, LinkedIn found that 34% of Latino professionals cited a lack of mentorship, sponsorship, or allyship in the workplace. Basically, everything that you said. 31% cited lack of support from direct managers or senior leadership as big obstacles at work occur. This is data, just recent data. Everything that you said is in line with what's going on in the workplace. Thank you for that.

Peter Muñiz: Yeah. Well, and with Latinos, it's hard to generalize. When we speak about Latinos, I'm always hesitant because my experience is very different than someone else's experience. My parents migrated to the US because they were born in Puerto Rico. They were born US citizens. They didn't immigrate to the US. My experience, I'm first generation, but it's not an immigration experience. There are similarities in terms of some of the obstacles and challenges with language and things of that nature, education, et cetera that still persist to this day.

But I'm sensitive, I'm self-aware enough to understand that my experience may look very different, may feel very different than another Latino. But there are some things. Latinos, again, it's really dangerous to speak in generalizations, so I'll stop doing that. Because I shouldn't do that. But I could give you my own experience and my own progression.

Dr. Alexandria White: Your lived experience is valid. Your lived experience is valid.

Peter Muñiz: I grew up in a household where I was taught to be differential. Respect your elders. Don't stare at someone in their eyes, things like that. It was a matter of respect. If you go to someone's home, you sit down politely. You didn't ask for food, you didn't ask for a drink, even if you were thirsty. Dying of thirst, you didn't ask for it. You waited for them to offer it to you. That impacts you as you grow up. It becomes your personality, your makeup. As you enter a different environment, my native language is Spanish. I learned Spanish at home. I learned English in school. As I entered the academic environment and then a professional environment, I had to flex and adapt and change my mindset and say, you can't be quiet. You got to find a way to be more present and you have to find a way to advocate for yourself.

You have to find a way for others to see what you're doing and to appreciate what you're doing. But some of us are on that journey today, and I think as leaders, we have a responsibility. Again, meet your people where they're at. Just because they're quiet doesn't mean they're not engaged. It doesn't mean they're not assertive. People contribute in many different ways and just with mentorship, coaching, you could help shape some of those leadership attributes, put perhaps more of an edge on them if that's what's necessary. Or soften some edges if that's what's necessary. But it's being aware that we all show up differently, and it could be because of family background, ethnic background, life experiences in general.

Chris Riback: Peter, there are so many big ideas in what you've just been discussing. As we are having this conversation during Hispanic Heritage Month, and when we are thinking about as, you've defined at the start, what is diversity, how do we define it, what is the value, what are the different ways that we need to be thinking about it, one of my takeaways from listening to you and a big idea from this conversation is, so much effort in discussion and, I think, energy is put on, yes, mentoring, but also recruiting. I think so many times when there is discussion around diversity, the discussion goes to either a defensive posture, but look at our numbers. Look at our numbers. Or in an offensive direction, we need to fix this problem. We need to think about recruiting.

What I think is missing, one doesn't hear enough from this in this conversation when one thinks about DEI, and you raised it, I know that Alex and others talk about it a lot, is sponsorship. I think that's a big idea. And I think for business leaders, that's something to think about, yes, during Hispanic Heritage Month, but as I am sure you would be among the first to say, maybe even after Hispanic Heritage Month as well.

Peter Muñiz: Every time I wake up and I look in the mirror, I know who I am, so it's Hispanic Heritage Day for me every day of my life. That's the way I show up. But I think a month of celebration to recognize and honor the diversity of the Latino community is necessary, is important, and I think it certainly, in corporate America, shines a light right on our heritage, the wonderful tapestry of our people. I think that's important. But I couldn't agree with you more, Chris. Recruiting is essential, but developing and retaining is paramount. Otherwise, you're going to get unnecessary churn in your organization.

With respect to recruiting, I would just challenge our listeners to widen their aperture when they think about recruiting. You need to be really intentional, especially in an environment where labor is constrained, you need to be really intentional about recruiting all team members. But in particular, if you have an opportunity to increase the number of diverse individuals in your organization. And then it should not be left to chance. There are many places to go that a lot of companies traditionally would not look to recruit African Americans, Asians, Latinos.

There are colleges that are overrepresented in those groups. Well, spend time there. Develop relationships, nurture them, and use that as a pipeline. And then look for what I would characterize as non-traditional in dishes of success. I'll give you one example, and this person, she was a woman. She wasn't a person of color. But this is an individual, this was when I was back in my GE days, it was an individual who was out of the workforce for several years.

She was a legal professional, a paralegal, and was out of the workforce for a number of years, and to support her family. She was cleaning homes. Prior to that, she was with a fairly large law firm. For whatever reasons, they had a workforce reduction and she got caught up in it. She came to me and just honestly said, "Hey, here's my background, but this is what I've been doing for the last two years." The amount of courage for that person to be that vulnerable with me just impacted me. I saw the resume, I saw the experience.

Well, she could do the job. She hasn't done it in two years, but it's like riding a bike. She'll get back on it and she'll do it well. But more importantly, she's been tested. She's persevered. She's shown tenacity. She's shown courage. I want that person on my team. I want that person on my team. That person is going to be successful on my team. We hired her and she was very successful and an exceptional team member, and one that taught others on the team.

A lot of people will look at that, some people, I don't know if a lot, but some people will look at that and go, "Well, there's something wrong there. They got laid off. They must have not been a good performer." Et cetera. Instead of looking, what have they overcome and what does that say about that person as an individual, as a potential leader? And do I value that? It's valuing differences, but also leveraging those differences.

Dr. Alexandria White: Once again, Peter, you hit it out the park. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your transparency, your wonderful examples for all of our listeners who are business leaders. Thank you for your vulnerability. We appreciate you sharing this space with us. Thank you very much.

Peter Muñiz: Oh, I appreciate you. Thank you, you and Chris. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Chris Riback: Thanks, Peter. Thank you.