I love books. My beloved loves them more. So it was with tremendous excitement that we took ourselves down to the Hay Literary Festival last week. We both work hard, so decided we would not go to any talk that had even a wisp of a feel that it related to our jobs.
As is often the case with DEI work, that proved impossible. Two talks: one which we attended, one which we read a report of in the papers, drove home two traps that hamper organisations’ progress in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
The talk we attended was about nutrition, mental health and wellbeing and had a panel of three authors. One of them was an elite athlete who has overcome a life limiting condition to achieve incredible things. It was impossible not to admire him, however, towards the end of the session he said things that made my heart sink. He vehemently argued against inclusion, with words to the effect: “I hate all this inclusion stuff, to my mind we should just treat everyone the same. We’re all human, aren’t we?”
I don’t know what experiences as a disabled man had led him to his belief, and I don’t want to speculate. However, it was a clear example of why relying predominantly on the lived experience of a small number of people with minoritized characteristics as the basis for change can be so flawed.
I am emphatically NOT saying: don’t listen to people with lived experience. You absolutely must understand the experiences of those around you, in your organisation, in the communities you serve, the customers and partners you engage with. You can’t develop a properly strategic approach to change without it.
However, no two individuals who, on the surface have the same characteristics, are likely to have had the same experiences. To create a proper change plan, you need to include but also look beyond “lived experience”. You need to unpick the systemic barriers people face, and this could as much be about the behaviours and attitudes of non-minoritized people. What are you doing to uncover what they think?
If you want to know why that’s important, keep reading…
The second author is an internationally bestselling novelist, whose talk at the Hay Literary Festival was reported in at least one broadsheet newspaper. The article reported him denouncing DEI and quoted him as saying: “I am very pro equal opportunities, I am very pro multiethnic (sic), I am very pro books being about as much of the world as you can fit into a single book. What I’m not pro is anybody telling me that that is what I have to do.”
The attitude represented in this quote is one of the biggest barriers to organisational change that we at Full Colour encounter when working with clients, though it is rarely expressed so bluntly. How it shows up is people who are blind to their own exclusionary attitudes, believe they are fair, insist they have “good” values and opinions, and therefore feel justified in not being prepared to change how they work.
In these people’s minds the change is located “over there”. It is for someone else to do, or worse, it doesn’t need doing at all, because, after all, we are all human. They are reluctant to engage in understanding the complexities of how the real world works.
If we are to make genuine progress in DEI, it is these people’s experiences and views we need to understand better, because it is them we need to influence to change.
The difficulty for those leading organisational change is that people often mask these views because they know they will be unpopular or that they risk opprobrium.
Until colleagues, particularly leaders, given their greater sphere of impact, begin to look inwards and start the journey of change from within themselves, organisations will continue to roll out superficial initiatives that feel safe to majoritized people but create little change.
It’s scary to face into ourselves and uncover the attitudes and behaviours we hold that might be exclusionary…until that is, you actually do the work.
With the leadership development programmes we do, I have been astounded by how, once we begin the work, discomfort can turn to curiosity, and even excitement, as people recognise the power they have to create change.
At heart most people are good people. And when they realise that changing how they approach inclusion is not only possible, it also makes their own lives – professional and otherwise – deeper, more fulfilling, more vibrant, it’s remarkable how well people lean in.
Ultimately that is the most direct route for creating greater inclusion and addressing the issues minoritized people face.
Can we help?
Want help with any aspect of your leadership and inclusion journey? Reach out and to set up an informal, no obligation chat. Contact [email protected]