I’ve been having this fascinating conversation with Selena about what she has seen work or not work in corporations when it comes to their diversity or inclusion trainings.
One observation she has made is that unless you grab people by their emotions and pull them through an experience that creates a level of uncomfort, that she considers almost “unprofessional”, because she feels like the conversation can’t be just polite, there is no real impact and no real change.
We spoke about other hurdles in organizations that will not actually lead to culture change, and that included training an entire staff, but not including the top leadership into that training. It makes employees think that their leaders do not have to do something they are asked to do. And it will lead to a continuous culture of biased behaviors because the top of the organization – who shapes culture a lot – will not actually start acting in accordance with the necessary behavior changes that will ultimately lead to culture change.
Yet when the opposite approach was chosen, and you only train leadership without involving the rest of the teams, then people don’t own a value such as inclusivity, have no shared language around it and will certainly not be able to hold each other accountable towards behaviors that would make the workplace more inclusive.
So it’s not an either/or, it must be an AND. And this is where the conversation turned towards how might one create that necessary experience, that emotional journey of understanding what belonging means, and also what it is like to experience being an “other than” and a singeling out.
Inclusive Leaders 