Like many of you, I am concerned by the dramatic comments and decisions from large global organisations like Meta, McDonald’s, Boeing and Ford to end their DEI initiatives. But they didn’t completely surprise me.
As a corporate leadership expert, I have had a front row seat over the last 5 years as a gender war brewed mostly unacknowledged. I grew increasingly aware of its potential consequences when valid opposition often went ignored, risking pushback. Unfortunately, this is playing out in front of our eyes now. If we don’t listen and address this dissent constructively, we will delay a future in which a culture of true diversity and inclusion are the norm in corporate life.
My life’s work is understanding and nurturing corporate culture. I have deep empathy for “both sides” but I also wish that we were long past seeing people on “sides.” I feel the pain of women who miss out time and again for the top job. And I also feel the pain of the exemplar men who have supported women throughout their careers but now fear their job prospects are limited because of their gender. We can argue whether that fear is founded or not, but their sentiment of personal discrimination needs to be addressed if we expect them to be change agents.
Cultural shifts are only truly successful when all parties believe in the aspirational goal. If a human being feels unfairly treated, they find others to commiserate with. That’s what’s happening now: a re-enforcement of gender clubs. The exact opposite of the outcome we want to achieve. This is the paradox we have reached and the challenge we face in achieving real cultural change. Everyone agrees that diversity of thought is beneficial but the debate of ideas on why and how has been shut down. It does not have to be that way. We can change the language to accelerate the pace of change.
Diversity has so far, largely been pitched through the lens of fairness. Organisations have spent a lot of efforts and money teaching their leaders about unconscious biases, discrimination, privilege, and social equity. With this approach, we aim to create awareness. Unfortunately, in too many of these interactions, participants feel accused of something they don’t feel responsible or in control of. The natural response is defence…not behavioural change.
Fairness is a subjective concept. Everyone feels they are making fair decisions, based on their own perception of the world. The human brain has an inherent strong bias to ignore our own privilege, particularly when it comes to explaining our success. If we do not change the language with which we approach this cultural change, we are likely to see more covert and overt push back and a regression on the diversity and inclusion agenda.
At this point in our journey, we have an opportunity to clarify how diversity actually delivers enhanced performance for teams and businesses, and reframe two fundamental
misconceptions:
1. Identity diversity does not systematically deliver cognitive diversity
We have been led to believe that we will get diversity of thought in our team if we have demographic diversity. This is misleading. Our gender, age, cultural, ethnic descent, or sexual orientation cannot possibly define who we are as an individual and how we contribute to a team or a role.
Our thinking preferences, our values, our emotional background, our approach to problem solving, our passions… are all much more critical elements to what makes each of us unique. This is influenced in much greater ways by our unique life path, the level of adversity we have faced and the people we have been surrounded by. Our identity cannot pre-determine what Prof. Scott Page (University of Michigan) describes as “mental models”.
When selecting, appointing, or promoting individuals, we need to consider and communicate how their background, their experience or expertise bring elements of diversity to the team. By focusing solely on identity diversity, we often run the risk of selecting individuals with the same background as the rest of the team, just with a different gender. This fuels the experience of unfairness and discrimination that unsuccessful candidates experience in a context solely focused on identity diversity.
Of course, organisations should continue to measure their progress by reporting on identity representation at different levels of their hierarchy. But our levers of change and our efforts should focus on attracting cognitive diversity. If we truly seek to hire people who bring different backgrounds and thinking processes, we will naturally attract a broader spectrum of demographics. I acknowledge that this feels much harder, but the long road is a more constructive and sustainable way to achieve our objectives.
2. Inclusion does not occur because we have diversity
The second issue is that we have failed to define clearly what inclusion requires. Enhanced team performance will be delivered when a debate of ideas can truly take place. Robust challenge, constructive dissent and healthy conflicts are the birthplace of innovation and the only way to leverage diversity of thought.
Inclusion has been misconstrued with a sense of comfort or kindness. In a corporate context, inclusion should represent a commitment to actively seeking, inviting, and leveraging opinions that are different to one’s own. This requires psychological safety and adaptive leadership.
Too many leaders confuse consensus with inclusion. Consensus is actually the enemy of inclusion. If you indicate to your colleagues that you are seeking consensus to move forward with a plan, you will get groupthink. You may feel stronger because you have broad support, but it does not make your strategy robust.
To change these deep-seated cultural norms, leaders can choose to use a different language to describe decision making processes. They can reiterate (again and again) their
expectations for debates of ideas and devil’s advocate thinking rather than describing a good decision as ‘unanimous’.
Where to next?
Of course, creating an environment of inclusion requires much more than words. Culture is shaped by leaders’ decisions and behaviours over time. These are influenced by consistent congruent language that sets an objective that is aspirational for all, including the skeptics.
A sense of inclusion is driven by employees’ instincts and their perception of what is valued in the organisation. The actions of senior leaders can radically make or break their sentiment.
The time has come to equip our leaders to unlearn deep-seated thinking patterns created by the way the corporate world has worked over the last few decades. We need to overhaul the current mindset that, ‘if we all agree, we must be right’; the imperative to be a ‘team player’ and the search for the candidate with the right ‘cultural fit’. These beliefs are still very prevalent and yet completely at odds with our diversity goal. This incongruence is what prevents progress.
We are at a critical inflection point. Let’s focus on cognitive diversity and shaping adaptive corporate cultures to deliver our diversity & inclusion ambitions.
– Maud Lindley, Founding Director Serendis Leadership and MentorKey
