How Most DEI Efforts Fail (and What to Do About It): PART TWO

Diversity recruiting without full scale organizational transformation is just a bandaid on an open wound. I won’t extend that metaphor too much further – but visualize it for a minute… It’s really gross! That bandaid is NOT up to the task, the injury quickly overwhelms it, and that wound just keeps getting worse. 

So before you go all in on recruiting tactics, you MUST back up and improve DEI from within your organization. It’s the only way to create healthy and lasting outcomes. 

If you caught last week’s blog, then you have an idea of what this transformation entails. But we’re not finished yet. So here are my top 8 things you can do right now to improve DEI within your organization: PART TWO. 

This week we’re starting off with Number Four: Pour Into Your Talent

First of all let me clarify: Yes, Pouring Into Your Talent is in fact different from Protecting Your People. Remember, protection is the floor not the ceiling. Marginalized employees deserve BOTH protection AND opportunities for development and growth. And it’s up to YOU to change the narrative and advocate for them, instead of using their “strength” and “resilience” as an excuse NOT to make the appropriate investments in their success.

Importantly, when it comes to development, one size does not fit all. You must tailor development opportunities to fit the talent you actually have in-house, without reducing individuals to one cultural monolith. Here are some suggestions to help you avoid that mistake: 

1. Grow your understanding of the structural barriers impacting marginalized talent.  

2. Hone in on the specific impact these barriers have on YOUR employees.

3. Design development opportunities with direct input from your marginalized talent.

4. Build in regular opportunities to collect critical feedback to ensure your opportunities are relevant and effective.

5. Ensure the feedback process is safe and easy. (Don’t go creating more burdens here. That will quickly defeat the purpose.) 

You might be asking why this level of customization is so important, so let’s spell that out. If you’re organization – especially your leadership – is full of cisgender white men, then your opportunities for development will by default cater to cisgender white men. Take in-house mentorship programs for instance. Within your leadership’s homogenous culture, sameness and cultural conformity will be interpreted as likeability and worthiness – making cisgender white men more likely to invest in, advocate for, and sponsor other cisgender white men. So your marginalized talent gets left out in the cold yet again, because the available mentors will not offer the same level of interest and personal investment in their success. This is simply how biases work, and you must take deliberate steps to correct for this. 

THREE: Celebrate Everyone 

Remember, you can’t simply SAY that all cultures are important, you have to SHOW it. We want (and need) organizational cultures that make ALL contributors feel seen and valued in their wholeness. Celebrating the cultures represented at your organization – in a truly inclusive manner – is a natural way to achieve this goal. But before you go grabbing decorations for every celebration on the calendar, make sure you do this one thing: Invest the time and energy to be intentional in your celebrations. Here’s what that means: 

1. Understand what you are celebrating and why. Don’t put up random decorations without knowing what significance they have for the actual people in that cultural community. 

2. Do NOT prioritize one group’s traditions over another (and yes, you’re going to have to rethink your PTO policy to reflect this too). 

3. And most importantly, DO NOT ask the group you’re celebrating to plan the party. 

Remember, this is NOT about creating an event to educate, enrich, or entertain your non-marginalized talent. So be especially intentional in your approach so that you prioritize the right people on the right occasion, in a way that actually helps them feel valued. 

TWO: Focus on Your Middle Managers

I cannot stress this enough: Your middle managers will make or break every single one of your DEI efforts. Because middle managers are the people who create, cultivate and maintain your organization’s culture. Without their enthusiastic buy-in, any effort at transformation is dead on arrival. 

So while you're pouring into your marginalized talent, make sure you’re also pouring into your middle managers. Make sure they’re equipped with the tools and trainings they need to: 

1) Do their jobs as managers instead of trying to function as individual high performers, and

2) Facilitate real cultural shift by developing and maintaining a truly inclusive environment.

One last thing before we move on: When you hit a bump in the transformation process (and you will), resist the temptation to scapegoat your middle managers. Instead, assess yourself and ask whether you really made the appropriate investment in the middle. If the answer is no, you’ve got to back up and make that investment. 

ONE: Commit to Real Transformation 

Imagine for a minute: You’ve done the audit. You’ve done the assessments. You understand your data. And you’ve got meaningful and actionable recommendations for improvement. But guess what? This is the point where many organizations stop – no follow up, and no follow through. And it’s TRAGIC. 

But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Because to avoid that failure you only need one more thing: commitment. It’s commitment that turns recommendations into reality. And let me be 100% clear: Commitment of the heart is not enough. You must reflect that commitment in your budget. 

How much is the DEI line item in your budget? Does it adequately fund your organization’s transformation efforts? Or is it a token, feel-good number that won’t actually get anything done? If you’re not sure, go back and do that math. 

Because if you do not adequately fund your DEI efforts, here’s what you’re really doing: 

1. You’re creating an additional burden for your marginalized talent.

2. You’re misleading your marginalized employees, and  

3. You’re leaving the door wide open for white supremacy culture to subvert your DEI efforts and land you right back at the beginning 

It simply doesn’t make sense. So stick the landing. Do this step right and fund the transformation. It’s the right thing to do, period. And, in case anyone needs convincing, it’s the right thing to do for your bottom line. 

If you need help taking the first step (or any step for that matter), let’s connect to discuss your specific situation. I’m committed to helping you create more spaces for marginalized talent to thrive. Let’s get to work.