Tag: behavior

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Why Treating Others With ‘Respect and Dignity’ Doesn’t Work

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12My last post, “Why Cultural Sensitivity Training Is Ineffective and Insensitive,” got more attention on social media than my typical Diversity Executive posts. One of the feedback themes was “How about treating everyone with respect and dignity?” It troubles me that such comments all came from D&I or intercultural professionals. We practitioners have a responsibility to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the concepts of our field than the public and our clients. Therefore, I will explain why the admonishment to “treat everyone with respect and dignity” is well-intended but limited, old thinking that’s even disrespectful and dangerous.

Everyone knows we’re supposed to treat everyone with respect and dignity.If this were all we needed, we wouldn’t have so many problems with people not feeling, or being, respected in our workplaces and societies at large. If you believe treating everyone with respect and dignity is a solution to our D&I (and human) problems, what evidence do you have that lack of respect is a cause of those problems? How many people have you met who do not have this value or intention? Are you 100 percent sure that was the cause of their unpleasant behavior? Does Donald Sterling not have this value? Do the white police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, not have this value? How about straight people? Men? Immigrants? Are you sure?

Personally, I’ve been in some pretty rough situations and I can’t be certain the entirety of our D&I problems can all be traced to the maybe five fearful, damaged people I’ve met in my life who might fall into that category.

Besides, values and intentions aren’t the problem — behavior is. Thus, treating everyone with respect and dignity doesn’t get at the root of the problem. I’ve come to three conclusions about the problem.

1. We don’t always know how to behave to comes across as respectful to others.Because what does respect look like? Dignity? This isn’t as simple as it sounds, and good intentions aren’t enough. This is where the Platinum Rule (do unto others as they would have done unto them) is far more effective than the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule works to teach basic empathy in a community where people are generally similar. That is no longer our reality, and the good intentions of the Golden Rule can have devastating negative impacts.

One of my main examples is from a tension-wrought neighborhood of the 1990s of my native Los Angeles, where an older female Korean shopkeeper gave her young male African-American customer his change by not touching him and pushing the coins across the counter. This was the most respectful way to interact with a customer in her cultural context, but this came across as deeply insulting to him, sparking community outrage and violence.

Workplace training programs that focus on respect, dignity and sensitivity weaken the more powerful, inspirational, evidence-based truth that should be the goal of all diversity and inclusiveness efforts: D&I gets us better results in what matters. Such programs are a lost opportunity and contribute to the “eye-roll” factor among our clients because this approach implies that people are childish or bad and don’t know or believe in the basic human value of treating others with respect. They don’t need a sermon or finger-wagging. They need concrete information about effective behaviors, help understanding why those behaviors are effective, opportunities to practice new behaviors and tools to develop ongoing self-awareness and the ability to be nimble and flexible with whatever shows up in their interactions.

2. We don’t listen or respond effectively to feedback (direct or indirect) saying that we are not coming across as respectful.When we get this feedback, we usually react defensively, trying to justify our good intentions and why the other person shouldn’t feel that way. We respond that they should feel grateful. We might imply they’re imagining things or exaggerating. We don’t believe that their experience is real, and patronize them by categorizing their reality as perception and ours as fact. Ferguson is just one more example of the myriad ways the African-American community has been giving the white, European-American community feedback about how disrespectful our behavior is, and most of us have yet to truly hear, believe their experience is real and change our behavior.

3. When a human’s reptilian “downstairs brain” is triggered by a perceived threat, our brain’s higher functions literally go offline, and we often behave in a way that is neither respectful of others, nor an expression of our best selves.Knowing such behavior isn’t OK doesn’t keep us from doing it. Reminding us we’re supposed to be more respectful doesn’t help. What helps is developing emotional intelligence and self management skills. What can also help is holding each other fiercely accountable and co-creating cultures — in the workplace and beyond — where clearly defined disrespectful behaviors are not tolerated.

Let’s evolve the conversation about respect to a more effective, inclusive — respectful! — level and assume that people already know they are supposed to treat each other with respect and dignity. Instead, let’s get curious about why it’s not happening. Let’s focus on improving our behavior in ways that make a real difference by developing our communication skills, improving our ability to hear and respond to feedback, honing our emotional self management and holding each other accountable.

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3 Surprising Reasons Diversity Training Fails

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12One of the most common requests that companies like mine receive from organizations is to do training. When done right and well, training increases knowledge, builds awareness and teaches effective behaviors. When done wrong or poorly, training is a waste of money at best, and harmful at worst.

To be effective and provide a high return on investment, diversity training should:

  • Be directly and clearly tied to measurable, meaningful business goals.
  • Yield a measurable improvement in participants’ awareness, knowledge and skills.
  • Be conducted by a company or individual who:
  • Conducts a thorough needs assessment around your training request, listens well and makes specific, well-supported recommendations that will meet your goals (which may look different from what you initially requested).
  • Is a good fit for your organization’s culture, values, goals, geography and stage of the D&I journey you’re in.
  • Is a strategic partner in meeting your needs — which means he or she will advise you and even push back in service of your goals and excellent results!
  • Demonstrates a concrete, meaningful return on your investment of dollars and the time participants spend in training. (If your training partner doesn’t know what a level 3 or 4 evaluation is, find someone who does!)
  • Build skills that are supported and sustained by your organization’s culture, systems and processes.
  • Be only one element of your organization’s broader commitment to excellence and high performance.

 

Having these elements in place will probably get you a B or B+ training. But to obtain a high ROI and an “A grade” diversity training, ensure the training includes at least two of these three additional surprising — yet critical — pieces:

  • Knowledge of how our brains work and why “bad stuff” persists despite all “the good stuff” we do. Exciting advances in brain science and evolutionary biology give us new and inspiring insight into our mammalian and primate heritage, and how most of our behavior is driven by unconscious biases outside our awareness, control and intention. Educating participants about how unconscious bias works and why our brains function the way they do opens up dialogue, awareness and receptivity in a way that the old “respect each other and be sensitive to differences” script hasn’t. It also tends to inspire buy-in, individual responsibility and meaningful change as long as unconscious bias training includes teaching effective behaviors that mitigate the negative effects of bias.
  • Sufficient work on the necessary internal self-awareness and emotional skills which build long-term competence that can apply to a variety of situations. A training that provides lists of tips or “do’s and don’ts” is narrow and even dangerous. Not only do such lists tend to (unintentionally) narrow our thinking or provide a false sense of security, they can reinforce stereotypes. They can also be incomplete or simply inaccurate since any identity group is extremely diverse and cultures are constantly changing. Effective training should build emotional intelligence, critical thinking, resilience, creativity, problem-solving abilities and a well-stocked toolbox of communication skills.
  • Attention to power differences and how these affect relationships, communication and outcomes. True, the workplace isn’t a democracy. But ignoring the existence of power imbalances — in your organization, on your team and in the world at large — is a tremendous blind spot. Poorly navigated power structures and ineffectively wielded power are demoralizing, inefficient and expensive. Looking at power differences and how these are working (or not) may be messy, but offers tremendous potential in clearing a path to the brilliance and excellence that are the rewards of a meaningful commitment to D&I.