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

“Words do matter.  Language is messy by nature, which is why we must be careful in how we use it.  As leaders, after all, we have little else to work with.  We typically don’t use hammers and saws, heavy equipment, or even computers to do our real work.  The essence of leadership — what we do with 98 percent of our time — is communication.  To master any management practice, we must start by bringing discipline to the domain in which we spend most of our time, the domain of words.”

-Peter Senge

 One of the biggest and most consistent focuses in my work is on language. I believe that cultures are woven out of individual and group patterns of behavior. I believe that those behaviors come from mindsets and that mindsets come from language.

I think that language is incredibly important.

I think that in Diversity and Inclusion work, language is probably the most powerful and far reaching intervention, and it is also the most overlooked intervention.

The problem inside most organizations today is not hate, intentional discrimination or deliberate exclusion. The problem is that there are offices full of people convinced that D & I has absolutely nothing to do with them. The problem is that there are smart, intelligent people with influence that believe D & I is about political correctness or sensitivity or lowering our standards.

There are more of these people than there are of us.

And it is our fault.

We have not taken good care of our language and today when a group of people come together in a conference room and diversity or inclusion are on the agenda, those people are using the same words, but they are all talking about something different.

Here is something that I hear from business leaders, HR leaders and D & I leaders on a regular basis:

We have really been trying to stay away from the “D word” …it just generates too much resistance and negativity.

There is nothing wrong with the word diversity, it is a good word. It is a big and powerful and beautiful word. There would be no life without diversity, how many aspects of work can you say that about? Diversity is one of the most fundamental components of human existence, one of the most powerful social dynamics…yet we have office buildings full of people rolling their eyes at the mention of the word as some made up thing, part of a political agenda.

Not because it is true, but because we have failed.

The word generates resistance and negativity because we have done some really counter-productive D & I work and because we have been sloppy with our language.

Take it back.

This does not mean that you need wordy, poetic, three paragraph definitions of diversity and inclusion for your corporate website. Those are worthless. They sound nice, but they have no value. What you need are simple, concise, logical definitions…simple and concise enough that they can become tools.

Take it back.

Be good to each other.