Diversity & Inclusion

Where We Get it Wrong

Imagine a photograph of people in a coffee shop. They are smiling and laughing, drinking coffee — but one of them is drinking water. There are men and women of differing ethnic backgrounds. They are different heights. They have different professions — one is wearing a lab coat, one is wearing a power suit, another has a hardhat in front of him. This is how we market diversity.

Diversity

What the marketing image clearly communicates is that a company values diversity on a physical level. But it misses the real meaning behind diversity — that is, diversity of thought. Thought, however, is intangible, we do not have have the technology to look into someone’s mind and determine if their thoughts are different from our own. We want to encourage diversity of thought, because, after all, two heads are better than one; but if our company hires only people who think alike, we’re not getting two heads — we’re getting say, 1.25 heads.

I have no problem with the marketing version of diversity. People with different backgrounds and different life experiences will have different thought processes. It’s an effective way to measure a company’s diversity. We need those measurements in order to determine whether or not our diversity efforts are “successful.” So we go down the checklist — women? minorities? veterans? Check, check, check. We can measure the change in “diversity categories” and create pie charts and bar charts to display our metrics over time. Are we more diverse than last year? Check. We thrive on measurements, and while not entirely accurate, these observable categories can help us get a ballpark estimate of improvement.

We often think of diversity as a hiring movement. Get more diverse people to come in the door, in order to diversify our workforce. Let’s hire more minorities, more college-educated people, more disabled people. Let’s create an influx of diverse people. This is fine, but this is all external change. Let’s create a current from outside, flowing diversity in. Let’s change what the company looks like.

Inclusion

What’s missing from this externally-focused effort is the internal change that must take place. This is where diversity efforts fail.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that we are hiring on diversity of thought. We are getting good people in the door, the diversity movement is going strong, from an HR perspective. If the individuals in the company are unwilling or unable to make the internal change necessary to support diversity, that new blood is going to turn around and walk away again.

We call the internal change, that is necessary to support diversity, inclusion. I think of inclusion as a challenge; a challenge to myself.

Judgement

Let me digress for a moment to talk about judgement. We are all judgemental creatures. We grew up in a microcosm that shaped our perceptions of what is good and bad, right and wrong, effective and ineffective, safe and dangerous— before we could even talk. As we have grown up, we have acquired more and more messages, observations, and judgements. We gather them around ourselves, like a decorator crab, and that armor of judgement protects us.

Judgement is not an inherently negative thing. We often refer to judgement as something to avoid, but the reality is we judge everything all the time. Our judgement enables us to exist amidst the chaos we call the world. I see the ceiling and I make a judgement call — that it will not fall down on me. This is based on some assumptions and messages I have received — that this building is structurally sound, that physics causes certain behavior of objects, that the government would condemn any unsafe building. If I did not make this instantaneous judgement when looking at the ceiling, I would be afraid.

My judgement protects me. It keeps me from living in fear. It allows me to have the mental capacity to focus on the most important things happening around me. We need our life experiences, and the experiences of others, in order to apply a filter to the world, to screen out unimportant things.

Back to Inclusion

Our decorator-crab armor allows us to form instantaneous judgement calls back on the stimuli in our environment. However, in the workplace, this judgement can cause problems. It can cause us to think and act in ways that negatively impact those around us, often without our being cognizant of it.

All that said, let’s jump back into inclusion. Remember how I said that I think of inclusion as a personal challenge? That challenge has two parts.

First: I must challenge myself to be aware of my judgements and how they impact my interaction with others. I must examine my own patterns of thought and behavior to determine what drives my negative perceptions of people and events.

For instance, let’s say I met someone who is wearing a bright orange shirt. I may take an instant dislike to them because the shirt reminds me of a bad interaction with a hunter. If I don’t take the time to think about why I felt that spark of dislike, I will associate my unhappiness with the whole person and situation, and it will color my interactions with that person going forward.

Let’s say there’s a person whom I like often, but every now and then I feel uncomfortable around them. This discomfort is a strong message that can start to color the positive and neutral experiences I have, bringing our interaction toward a negative place. If I challenge myself when I start to notice discomfort and ask what has changed, a pattern will hopefully emerge. I notice that I feel threatened around them only when they are being loud and making emphasizing motions against hard surfaces with their fists. After some reflection, I may understand why this response is triggered in me, but as soon as I have identified the catalyst for my own judgement threat, I have succeeded in the first part of this challenge.

(I realize neither of these examples are rooted in “diversity” issues — that’s because I don’t need or want to give examples in that sphere to make the point.)

Second: I must challenge myself to confront those judgements, to craft a new message for myself and integrate it into my armor. I must challenge myself to be more than I was yesterday. More diverse; more accepting; more thoughtful; more self-aware; more compassionate; more kind; more inclusive.