It starts out with good intentions to celebrate diversity, ensure equity and practice inclusive leadership. You implement employee resource groups for historically underrepresented groups like LGBTs, start a mentoring program for women of color, and equip leaders to coach millennials on workplace norms and professionalism. But after a while you revisit your D&I metrics and find you havenât met your goals. In fact, your results are slightly worse than when you started.
Whatâs going on?
The problem may be an incomplete or misguided sense of what inclusion is. Like the rest of your leadership team, youâre smart and well intended and have a commitment to D&I grounded in supporting employee brilliance and excellence, which generate tangible results for your organization. You believe one way to accomplish this is to help certain identity groups feel more a part of things, supported in their professional development and generally brought into the fold.
The problem with this approach is that itâs an assimilation model based on the notion that âtheyâ must be more like âyouâ to succeed and add value. It subtly communicates that âyouâ are superior and âtheyâ are inferior and need fixing.
This presents a power imbalance that doesnât leverage the real reason diversity plus inclusiveness gets better results: multiple brains contributing their unique brilliance to form a bigger combined brain that generates more ideas and makes better decisions. True inclusion or inclusiveness isnât just about hearing all voices and taking them seriously; itâs about ensuring shared power and equitable involvement in decision making. True inclusiveness means that âyouâ too are open to exploring what âtheyâ bring and changing how âyouâ do things.
Consider the way millennials are commonly viewed and treated in the workplace. I often hear negative, even emotional opinions expressed about millennialsâ supposed lack of work ethic and poor workplace habits in stereotypical terms, which if used to discuss a group of color would likely result in serious outcry and lawsuits.
The dominant belief is that these young people must be taught how to behave correctly. However, there isnât anything inherently correct or superior about leaving earbuds at home, staying off phones in meetings, following orders without giving feedback or insisting on personal benefit.
Behaviors are assigned meaning within a particular set of beliefs and norms, also known as culture. Common behaviors exhibited by millennials and other identity groups can actually add value if explored with curiosity and commitment to win-win solutions. New, even odd behaviors can provide tremendous positive results, especially within the context of their cultural frame, which â like it or not when it comes to millennials and people of color â is the future. If you have doubts, read this article about how millennials are doing exactly that in organizations, including Starbucks, that listen and adapt.
At the same time, there are new or different behaviors that donât add value, and the old way is demonstrably better in terms of business impact, productivity, results, engagement or just plain workplace awesomeness. Perhaps a certain dress code, work station layout, schedule or set of meeting norms really are the best fit to support your organizationâs vision, mission, goals and objectives.
The key to success is taking the time to explore, engage and devise creative solutions that maximize benefit to all parties, not just you. This includes gathering data to determine what is true and not based on assumptions. For example, is it really true that your customers fear employees with tattoos or donât take them seriously if they donât wear ties?
Creating an inclusive culture isnât âeither-orâ: either requiring âthemâ to adapt and assimilate to you or you offering everything up for debate and input by âthem.â The answer is âboth-and,â which requires time, effort and intentionality at first, but pays huge dividends over time and allows âyouâ to ensure your sustainability and relevance into a future dominated more by âthem.â
Susana Rinderle is president of Susana Rinderle Consulting LLC. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.