Leading with Diversity
Diversity-Inclusivity-Equity
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 100,000 cases closed each year. Racial discrimination was the most filed with only 15% coming to a resolution.
Although the reasons why these cases were not resolved could vary, ask yourself do you truly embrace diversity within your teams, organizations or businesses?
There are THREE tiers to ensuring you have a diverse workspace:
(1) Diversity: Are those protected areas such as race, age, gender, sexual orientation; a space that mimics how society looks. What your workspace “looks” like does not mean it has fully embraced what diversity should be. Does your workspace look diverse? If it does, you have accomplished one of the tiers to diversity.
(2) Inclusion: Are the behaviors in the workspace show that all are treated fairly & are accepted? This is the second tier where the externals show diversity however, are those differences treated with the same respect and acceptance? Not just from leadership and management, are you ensuring your team members abide by it. Is it within your code of conduct? How are these reports and cases handled?
(3) Equity: This last tier called equity, provides equal access to opportunities & resources. This is the most important tier in what diversity should bring, not only respect and equal treatment but does everyone have access to get the piece of the pie. Are opportunities available for everyone?
Get with your HR department to assess team feedback or implement a feedback process to get a pulse from your team. This might allow you to see what tier has a breakdown that requires some remedy.
Although you might not think this affects you, IT DOES and let me show you how. This might affect:
A Leader: As a leader, you might have to address it because it might happen on your team or outside issues could trickle into the workspace. Maybe your team member had an experience outside that now is affecting how they show up at work. What if a leader has an experience of discrimination that requires attention?
A Team Member might be the Offender: Unfortunately, you might have a team member that is the person that behaves with bias that requires attention. Here is an example of an incident that might happen outside the walls of your office. How would you respond? Her company fired her as they don’t stand for discriminatory behavior and requires the best representation even for those off the clock. What standards have you set for those representing your company?
A Team Member might be the Offended: As we highlighted in the example, Christian Cooper might be your team member or leader. This could also happen within your company when one team member reports another. What is your current process to address internal issues?
Your team might be connected as a family member or a community member: Christian Cooper’s sister posted the video and it had an emotional affect on her. This could be the spouse of that person that works with you. This could be an event that affects their community members.
There are many ways leaders can be connected to these experiences. A lack of diversity, inclusion or equity in the office and out the office can affect team members and other leaders. You can only control what happens within your scope of responsibility but at least ensure that workplace inclusion, diversity and equity is practiced within your companies, businesses and organizations.
“Workplace culture needs to be filtered from the top”
