For Leaders Who Mess Up on DEI: A Case Study

Her tear-filled voice cut through the light icebreaker chatter in the room. “Melanie, I was glad when I saw that we were doing a land acknowledgment before our training. This practice is so important and I believe should be done at events like this. But what you just did wasn’t a land acknowledgement. It was check-the-box and shallow, and rendered as an attempt to assuage settler guilt, not to honor the nations this land belonged to or the injustices they suffered in order for us to meet here today. And I’m here trying to recover from [the hurt of] that right now.”

It was less than 10 minutes into leading a two-day training, my woeful attempt at a land acknowledgement preceding that training had flubbed, and an indigenous woman was harmed in the process. And now I had to decide what, if anything, I could do to minimize harm and move this group forward.

There were so many mini-mistakes that led up to that moment: not being more hands-on in researching the final design of the land acknowledgement we agreed on, checking in with more than one person about the practices in their nation around land acknowledgements to ensure I didn’t miss anything, and most importantly, not making assumptions that I would get special grace in “trying out a practice” in a room of fellow practitioners because I was a woman of color committed to equity work.

She stopped speaking and my mind buzzed with questions: How could I minimize harm, potentially recover the room, and get through the content I knew would add value to these participants? How could I own the impact I just had without making it the only thing participants took from our two days together? And how do I close the loop with the individual(s) harmed, without making them feel “on the spot” for forgiving my ignorance in a room full of their peers?

When in doubt, shut your mouth. I knew that the first few words out of my mouth in response to what had been said were super important to not causing more harm and potentially salvaging the room. I also knew that as a human, my instinct would likely be to self-preserve, blame, minimize my impact, or tell a convenient story about what had happened. None of these things would help the person I harmed or help me benefit the others in my training room, so I took 10 seconds to think and not say anything. It didn’t save the day, but it did prevent me from making a costly mistake or causing more damage.

Don’t fix it. My next move was to ask the room to take a minute and consider the important feedback that had just been shared and to give it the space it deserved. I literally had us sit in silence for a minute and take it in. This meant resisting the urge to rush to “fix it” and convince the room I was in control, and instead ensuring I centered the participant’s voice and temporarily de-centered mine. As a side benefit, this also gave me some think time to mentally script my next move: apologizing for and owning the mistake.

Own it. Once I’d taken a minute to breathe in the feedback, I knew it was time to own my mistake and its impact without putting emotional burden on the room to pacify me. I knew there was no “perfect” way to do this, but the needle I was trying to thread was owning the mistake and acknowledging the harm caused and what steps I would take not to repeat the mistake without putting the emotional burden on those harmed for forgiving me and making me feel ok about what happened. This meant not publicly spinning down a shame spiral for the room to see or oversharing how badly I felt. As a result, we were able to move forward with the training and take the learning, without a room full of people needing to spend emotional energy to assuage my guilt.

Create space, on their terms. One careful move I made for the rest of the morning and throughout training was to ensure not to bombard the person who spoke with requests for a quick chat to talk through what happened again to meet my own need to restore the relationship. I was friendly, affirming of their contributions, etc. throughout the morning, but also careful not to use break times, etc. to box them into a forced conversation before they may have been ready. From my perspective, it is super important, especially as people with power and privilege, that we do not force those harmed by our actions to be “on the hook” for teaching us what to do differently or restoring the relationship with us. Instead, we should communicate openness to further conversation and feedback if they’d like to provide it but no expectation that they do so. We should also prove with our actions that we meant our apology and are committed to behaving differently moving forward.

In this case, my instinct to make space for the conversation on her terms (and her graciousness in the process) allowed us to have a healing conversation and to open the door for her to lead a land acknowledgement the more appropriate way the next day. She did and the whole room was the better for it, but it was her decision to approach me and open the door for that conversation.

Fail forward. Lastly, after the training was over and I was out of the hot seat, I knew my work had just begun. Next, I had to do more study and reflection to understand what happened, why it happened, and what growth edges it revealed about my journey toward being a more equitable and inclusive leader. In this example, I’ve done more study on land acknowledgements for different nations, and ultimately decided that I need to do much more research in order to feel ready to re-attempt this practice in the future.

Here’s the headline: as a leader committed to building diverse and equitable workplaces, I will make painful mistakes as I seek to be more equitable and inclusive — especially if I’m committed to continually acting in ways that challenge the status quo and elevate the perspectives and identities of people of color and other marginalized groups. When I do, it’s important that I avoid the urge to shirk blame or go into fix it mode and instead hear the feedback, own my impact, open the door for further conversations and commit to different actions moving forward. These practices cannot erase my harm, but they can prevent me from making matters worse and, in some cases, may even open the door to recover the situation, my credibility, and the relationship.