Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

Does your organization or community have an inclusive culture?

Really?

How do you know?

A lot of organizations say nice, happy, shiny things about inclusion and about diversity.  For most organizations that is about as far as it goes…they have “inclusion of the mouth” but they do not have any real clarity on what inclusion is, why it matters, how inclusive they are or what they are doing to move in the right direction.

I think that lack of understanding is a key contributor to this disconnect.  I believe firmly that diversity and inclusion are among the most poorly understood issues in the world of business, human resources and leadership.  Clarity must become one of our most favorite and bestest friends if we are going to continue to drive positive change regarding issues of diversity and inclusion.

What looks like resistance is often lack of clarity.

–Switch, Chip and Dan Heath

Starting with the basics…

Diversity means difference and difference shows up in a lot of different ways.  We are different in who we are, where we come from, what we are good at how we work and communicate, etc.  We are different from each other in many ways.  A couple of key characteristics of difference:

ONE: Difference is a relational thing.  It exists within the context of relationships…and that is the only place that it exists.  Difference (diversity) is not something that exists in people, it exists between people.  You have to be different from something…there is a relationship inherent.  That is why this work is primarily about the nature of relationships and interactions.  This is also one of the numerous reasons that the “diversity vs. talent” debate is fundamentally misinformed.  Diversity is a relational or a shared attribute, talent is an individual attribute.  Apples.  Oranges.

TWO: Difference is a generative thing.  It is a catalyst.  Any time that you introduce difference, increase the difference or pay more attention to the difference in a social group you will change that social group.  Whether the change is a positive one or a negative one is not actually about the difference, but rather it is about your orientation towards that difference…it is about how you respond to that difference.  This is where inclusion comes in.

If you are not intentional about including and benefitting from difference, that difference can easily become divisive (not because you necessarily have bad people in your organization, but simply as a result of human nature and common social dynamics).  If you do not have a positive orientation towards difference in your organization, it will likely trigger:

• an increase in we vs. they mentality
• an increase in stereotyping
• an increase in in-group favoritism
• an increase in inter-group conflict

And it is not difficult to understand how these tendencies lead to measurable decrease in employee satisfaction, employee engagement, employee productivity and measurable increase in employee turnover.  We are probably all familiar with organizations that have decided that they need to “get more diverse” without truly understand diversity and without doing anything to change the culture of their organization…and as the diversity increased the turnover went up and satisfaction dropped.

Organizations often think that this is about diversity.  It is not…it is about the organizational orientation towards diversity.  Difference has value and if you want to benefit from difference, you have to do certain things.

Here are some places to look as business leaders and as human resource leaders for indication of our capacity to benefit from difference.

Valuing Difference

Do we value difference?  It is one thing to value difference in theory; it is another to value it in real life.  We have often convinced ourselves that the new employee does not know anything of any value, but that new employee might have one of the most valuable perspectives in the entire organization because they are coming from outside…their perspective might be valuable, simply because it is different.  But the more we have bought into the idea that this new employees don’t know anything the more difficult it is for us to actually hear their good idea or powerful question. 

Do you value difference…different people, different ideas, different ways of doing things?  When everyone on your team has a bachelors degree in business do you understand that their might be some value in hiring someone that does not have a degree or has a very different kind of degree?

Most business leaders and human resource leaders that I talk to say that they do value difference…but where is the evidence?  Do you have numerous personal and professional relationships with people that are different from you?  Do you have real relationships with people that are of a different race, gender, orientation, profession, religious tradition or political philosophy?  

Here is another great place to look for evidence…look for dissent.  Do you have people that disagree with each other and with you on a regular basis?  That is one of the places that diversity and inclusion show up.  If you do not have dissent from time to time you do not have diversity or you do not have inclusion…dissent is a natural product of diversity and inclusion. 

Inclusion in decision making

Do you have a variety of ways for people to participate and to be truly included in decision making in your department, your organization or your community?  Do you use methodologies that are geared towards inclusive decision making? Things like open space technology, opensourcing or crowdsourcing, appreciative inquiry, dialogue, and listening circles are all ways of making planning and decision making more inclusive and more participatory.  One of the wonderful things about many social media tools is that they are good at doing the same, but unfortunately social media is just as poorly understood as diversity and inclusion is.

It is not enough to just say that anyone can participate, just like it is not enough to say that you have an open door policy.  There needs to be evidence.  If there is not evidence you likely have a culture that is sending some different messages.

Fairness of employment practices

Here again, evidence is the key.  Just about every organization I have ever worked with has said “of course, we have fair employment practices.”  But when the employees say something different (as they often do) there is a problem.  Regardless of how fair you feel your employment practices are, if the employees have a different perspective, you have work to do.  This is an example of where organizations often have big “doing-saying” gaps, and this can easily become the giant, hungry elephant in the room that nobody will talk about.  If, for example, you have instances of senior leaders who advocate the hiring of friends, family members, neighbors, etc. you are sabotaging the perceived fairness of your employment practices…and it only takes a couple instances of this.

Does your department, organization, community have an inclusive culture?  If you think it does, look for some specific evidence.  Look for specific examples of where and how you are:

• valuing difference
• driving inclusion in decision making
• delivering fairness of employment practices

Be good to each other.