Q&A with UNHCR Innovation’s Diversity and Inclusion Project Lead
In the summer of 2018, Cian McAlone led UNHCR’s Diversity and Inclusion project with the support of the Innovation Service’s Communication and Design team. During his internship, he had the opportunity to interview and engage colleagues from across the organisation and build conversations around how we can have a more systematic approach to diversity and inclusion at UNHCR. These are his reflections on the process, lessons learned, and future opportunities for the project on his final day with the team.
What were your expectations for the project when you began? Did they change?
My expectations were rather vague in the beginning. The first elements we focused on were defining the project, scope, and overall thematics. Our first question was not about communication products but how do we move from the Innovation Service’s Women’s Series to a more comprehensive approach to diversity and inclusion. Initially, the idea of a podcast was thrown around a lot, and really thinking about bringing audio content and the voices of UNHCR colleagues into the fold. I had expectations around that, even though that’s not exactly what we have now, it did inform the style, how we engaged people, and the process before interviews took place. I also didn’t expect the discussion to be so far-reaching. I imagined that it would be difficult to bring all of these stories and ideas into a product, and indeed it was quite a challenge.
Who do you believe is the target audience for the content you’ve created?
Colleagues in general, anyone working in UNHCR who wants to think about where we’re at when it comes to diversity and inclusion. There is also a lot in the products about how we go about change that I think is useful to people outside the organization. What are the attitudes we need to change? What are the behaviours? It is a good initial exploration of the topics. I also hope it will resonate more specifically with managers in the humanitarian sector. Managers have a key role in setting team cultures, the diversity vibe tends to vary between teams and subsets. The people who can make the most impact are those who lead the teams and shape that culture. As the series progresses, I imagine that future products can state that more explicitly.
What has been the most surprising aspect of the process of leading this project?
The most surprising thing is when you stumble across sensitivities. Anyone can have this conversation about being more inclusive, and say “diversity is a good thing”. But then people begin expressing this through their own experiences, and you hear some negative personal stories, and they feel quite compelled to change the culture as a result. It was raw, core, personal experiences that were leading that change. Exclusion is not just bad for an organization, it’s bad for someone’s self-worth, and their sense of identity.
Has your understanding of diversity and inclusion changed since you began the project?
It has changed in that it has become a lot more thorough. I see it in a more nuanced way. But what was that change? To be honest, I came to the project with an understanding of diversity and inclusion as almost meaning the same thing. I came into the project thinking that the main motivation for having an organisation that is diverse and inclusive is that it’s about the people we are serving, and how we reflect the diversity of cultures we serve. In reality, that’s only one piece. When I go back to the “Why is diversity and inclusion important?” question, my understanding of that has radically changed.
What are your hopes for the project after you leave? What changes do you believe this project could catalyze?
My hopes are, in terms of communication products, I hope that there is a package of engaging stories and content that people will not only engage with but take action and learning from. I hope then that whoever listens to it, takes the action of understanding their biases, but it doesn’t end there. I hope they also go to their teams to reflect on the dynamics, that we sometimes assume are just part of a team’s makeup, and get miscategorized as the team’s inherent, unchangeable character. I think there is a lot of space to bring in conscious awareness of how these biases impact others and lead to behaviour change. Will the products that we made do that? Maybe not. But I think it will strike chords with some people. This is just the beginning — we can test our assumptions that these stories and insights lead to a culture change, and continue to experiment.
Through the stories you’ve captured, what opportunities are there to change the behaviours and mindsets of people in UNHCR?
There are a few areas when it comes to policy, where UNHCR can improve. That means that our target audience also includes colleagues in human resources who are conducting interview processes, and applications. What are their insights and how can we leverage their expertise and experience better? But it’s not just looking at the pool of candidates, but thinking about the questions we are asking. Are we really looking at competencies? Is it really important to have inclusive attitudes before they come on board? Then recognizing specific groups — like people with disabilities, for example. Is UNHCR ambitious enough in terms of its workforce to put in the resources to making organisational workplaces more accessible? Do LGBTI colleagues have access to support services and appropriate mechanisms when they are serving in operations in countries that have widespread anti-LGBTI sentiment? The organization has to throw resources behind being more inclusive and this means also looking at policy, human resources, and staff welfare. I think it’s healthy for an organisation to adopt a positively and honestly self-critical approach to the challenges facing its workforce.
What behaviours, techniques, or decisions could allow UNHCR to better function with a diverse staff?
Functioning as a diverse staff requires inspiring confidence in colleagues that diversity and inclusion are core values. This can be achieved through improving the representation of minority groups at various levels of the organisation, by prioritising training to teach the skills necessary to overcome biases and to create equitable work environments, and by addressing the concerns of those who feel held back as a result of some aspect of their identity. Transformative change comes from a broad awareness in a group of people who can instantly identify certain views and behaviours as damaging and others as advantageous. Creating this level of awareness comes from a range of techniques, across policy, resource allocation and organisational discourse.
What do you see as the fundamental characteristics, principles or values of UNHCR that create an inclusive environment?
If you look at our function in international law, we’re helping people who have had to flee their system of protection, and bringing them back in with regards to having access to basic human rights. If you look at where UNHCR is being progressive, where it puts pressure on groups to fulfil its mandate, like advocating for LGBTI refugees, I’m sure it steps on lots of toes through that advocacy. t’s in the fabric of UNHCR to do this, but sometimes we’re lagging behind in terms of this emphasis internally. We can equip our Refugee Status Determination (RSD) Officers to interview LGBTI refugees, but are we comprehensively equipping managers to be inclusive for LGBTI colleagues? We’re equipped to make the change, but often we don’t. For some colleagues, it can seem hypocritical. There is also a link with the effectiveness of work. Who are we applying pressure to in both of these situations? Is that somehow easier than taking on the internal mechanisms of the UN? Why are these changes so difficult? If we care passionately about supporting refugees from this background, why can we be so slow to care and implement changes at an organisational level? And more importantly, who is benefiting from this exclusion? I think we have to continually question our values and principles as an organisation. I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I hope that we can begin reflecting so that we can create a more inclusive environment. We still have a lot of work to get done.
You mentioned exclusion. So, who is benefiting from exclusion?
Obviously, this is context-dependent, but often signifiers of advantage or privilege are being educated, traditional, Western, straight, male. You have to look at international civil servant culture, what are the entry points?. Who is sought for these roles and how? That reveals who stands to benefit from it. There are usually people who benefit financially from exclusion. People who are occupying positions that have the power to make changes, what is holding them back from turning the switch on the approach? It could be the same type of defensiveness that comes out of other conversations, when we talk about identity and privilege. In the end, it is their personal narrative that is being challenged, and we interpret our lives, our story in a way that frames ourselves as the hero. It’s an internal narrative, so when you confront someone that challenges this narrative and their accomplishments and suggests they’re here because of systematic biases, discrimination, privilege. This messes with someone’s understanding of themselves. And it’s hard to be that honest with yourself or reconcile the two narratives.
Where would you like to see this project go next or how would you like it to evolve?
First, I’d like to see it finished, or at least the first iteration of it. I think there are areas of the debate that may have been left out. I think we should continue to experiment. We’ve looked at it thematically, but I think we should aim to explore with case studies. In-depth examples of challenging environments when it comes to diversity and inclusion, so, for example, we could go to a specific field office where there is a known tension between different ethnic groups. Inclusion in respect to international and national staff is a potential area of exploration. Also in terms of products, I wonder…it’s hard to answer without experimenting with what we have now. A feedback process to capture how people respond to this, where are the gaps? There’s an element that isn’t purely communication-based, there are tangible projects that we can do to follow-up on this series. There are many challenges, that don’t have to do with attitudes but actual problems. So putting these challenges through the innovation process, beyond trying to just educate, raise awareness and looking at behaviours. The systems thinking approach could be brought into this a lot more, it’s an incredibly complex issue, from individual/behavioural problems all the way to the widest global power dynamics. This problem slices through the centre of all of that. Narratives that can walk people through these complexities are important.
What have you learned through conducting this project?
I’ve learned a lot about interviewing people. When you’re speaking to someone about something that has an emotional component, especially when it reflects the difficult experiences they have had, how can you create the ease and the trust when the information they’re sharing is critical of the organization they’re working for, possibly critical of colleagues (colleagues that fit the profile of benefiting when others are not). I’ve also learned about the metrics of the conversations, the labels we’re using. The categories are useful in certain contexts, and verging on useless in others. We sometimes see categories as “universally true”. Identifying women who did not have the right to vote as a group, for female emancipation, that was effective to rally people around a situation, that’s why there’s a label. In the political, policy sphere, these labels are useful — LGBT, ethnic minorities, cultural labels, they are good tools. But it’s a different story on the interpersonal level. I’m honestly not sure how useful it is when building relationships, to use labels as indicators of experiences. What does it mean to employ this label in interpersonal relationships? It’s just something you use to suggest an element of your experience and how that relates to experience, in a way it’s a password. We need to be careful to not use this as an exercise of simplification and siloing, that you are this label. Another huge element of being a humanitarian is making use of the flexibility of identity as a tool for peacebuilding, how we understand ourselves. It’s a really important tool to create bridges, bring communities together…the labels could have a negative effect on how we see ourselves. If there’s flexibility in understanding yourself, it’s really useful for social innovation.
Given what you’ve learned, how should we nurture talent that we do not understand/relate to?
It’s very difficult to nurture something you don’t understand. How do we nurture talent we struggle to relate to? We inform ourselves about how we can relate to them. From understanding their experiences, culture, instincts, you can find a path that allows you to communicate effectively. I don’t even think we’re really at a point that this is the most pressing question, you need to make an effort first to bring that talent in. The prevailing issue is that we often bring people into the organisation with the same profiles. Again, I think part of it is about investing in these spaces. Put more money into welfare, training on diversity, give people the tools to communicate in multicultural environments. Maybe we should be looking at how UNHCR functions as a subculture in all our different local contexts. And if we could start embracing the idea of nurturing organizational culture, and thinking of it as this precious thing we shape, and change and hold dear. But how can you begin to envision that culture if we’re looking at UNHCR as a self-contained unit, and not as an organisation with many parts functioning in multiple contexts, in multiple ecosystems?
Who would you recommend as ‘bright spots’ — and why?
Bright spots, generally speaking could be the people who already get it, care about it, and are talking about it. There was a spectrum of people who responded to the project with different levels of enthusiasm. The ones who care, these are the foot soldiers of the movement that are holding others to account. The people I interviewed are the bright spots, they are eloquently talking about the issue, they have that competency, they’re leading the charge
What were the most challenging aspects of the work, including the coordination, etc?
In terms of the initial podcast idea we had, the expertise and technical needs were very challenging. It’s the difference between a video clip and a television program. The capacity challenges led us to switch our focus to content production. I think that we’ve explored the issue more now, that’s the clay that could lay the foundation for something bigger. In terms of reaching out to people in a diverse way, it’s difficult to target specific areas geographically, it’s difficult to maintain interest across a process that requires a degree of preparation, and even my position as an intern impacted on how people saw my request and whether it was worth their time. The project had inputs from Lauren and Hans (the Innovation Service’s Communication and Design team) throughout the process, but it wasn’t benefitting from collaboration from the entire Innovation Service team. In reality, I didn’t solicit enough feedback throughout the process, being nervous about the project, so maybe it was my fault. There wasn’t huge curiosity from the team. Although, the team does care about diversity and inclusion as values to carry forward in our work. Most of them, I think. But for some people in the team, as this topic does for many, the content can have the same alienating effect of undermining comfortable narratives of who we are, and our own privileges, if we truly bought into these ideas and listened. I hope some people in the team who wouldn’t normally engage in this space listen to the interviews and read the articles. We can all up our games!
If you could start over, what two things would you do differently?
I would bring the innovation process into it from the beginning. I should have experimented with forms and processes — I should have seen it as a series of experiments and not just one large experiment. The project would be populated with more examples from outside of UNHCR’s Headquarters. I ask myself, “What would these products look like if they were designed and informed in a specific context and how would that help us to paint the picture? How could it make it a more engaging project? What greater access would you have to different voices? Who has space to speak? Marginalized voices are not the first to be picked up. But this is the network of voices we have to create, even if it’s in its infancy right now. These are the voices that need to be heard the most.
