Chapter 10
Elephant: Your Workplace Isn’t Safe for All Employees
“Diversity” has become a buzzword in recent years. CEOs and hiring managers have launched countless diversity trainings and hiring initiatives. This interest in diversity stems from a positive place: We know that if we look around our workplace and see only one type of person, our company is at a disadvantage. Diverse people bring diverse thinking and diverse solutions to complex problems.
Yet a stated commitment to “diversity” isn’t enough to ensure that workplaces are equitable and welcoming to people from all different walks of life. It’s not enough to simply say, “We have X number of this type of person and X number of this type of person, so we’re a diverse organization.” But this is, unfortunately, often what diversity comes down to: people counting. There’s an obsession with numbers, making sure the company has a certain number of a certain type of people.
Rather than focusing on shallow, numbers-based diversity initiatives, people leaders should work to ensure their companies are places where all employees feel (and actually are) safe and included. Diversity without inclusion is harmful. Employees who come from minority backgrounds must feel supported and safe before they can be free to express themselves personally and professionally. In this chapter, we’ll examine how people leaders can make their organizations a place where all employees can flourish.
What All Leaders Should Ask Themselves
Do all people in your organization feel safe and included? Are employees from diverse backgrounds free to do their work without being marginalized? Is the CEO committed to continually learning about employees with a different life experience from his own? Do you constantly work to broaden your hiring pool?
People leaders who are committed to creating diverse, inclusive work spaces must ask themselves these questions. Yet before you can answer them in any meaningful way, the company’s leadership must have an open mind and an eagerness to learn. The CEO and the rest of the C-suite must be humble and willing to be educated on areas in which they have blind spots.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine that if you’re a CEO or in your company’s leadership, you are a white man. Statistically, this is most likely to be the case. In 2018, there were only 24 female CEOs in the Fortune 500 (down from 32 the previous year), and there were only three black CEOs, all of whom were male. The remaining 95 percent of CEOs in the Fortune 500 were white men. Thus, it’s a relatively safe assumption that your company leadership is white and male. These numbers have to change if workplaces are going to be a true representation of the world we live in. But for the time being, let’s go with the most likely scenario. If you’re a white man and your C-suite is largely white and male, what are you doing to educate yourselves about the experiences of those who don’t share your position of privilege?
What We Can Learn from Starbucks
When I think of a company that takes seriously its commitment to educating itself on others’ experiences, I think of Starbucks. In 2017, Starbucks was recognized as one of the top places to work for LGBTQ individuals, scoring a perfect 100 on the Corporate Equality Index (CEI). For more than 20 years, Starbucks has offered health insurance coverage to employees in lesbian and gay relationships. Starbucks also has workplace gender transition guidelines to support employees who are transgender or who are considering transitioning.
But in 2018, an incident in a Philadelphia Starbucks made news worldwide when a store manager called the police on two black men who were simply waiting to meet a friend. Video footage of the men—clearly posing no threat, complying with police officers—went viral and sparked outrage. Heated calls for customers to boycott Starbucks went all around the internet.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz issued an apology for the actions of the store manager (who is no longer with the company). Most leaders would stop here: apologize, hope the story is pushed from the news cycle quickly, and move on. But Schultz showed a deeper commitment to learning about the experience. He also wanted to educate his employees so they would not continue to perpetuate racism and that social media would scrutinize Starbucks morals even further if not rectified through training store-wide.
On May 29, 2018, all 8,000 Starbucks stores in the U.S. were closed for several hours while Schultz and the Starbucks leadership held a companywide training session on racial bias issues. To develop the training, they enlisted black leaders who are experts on race in America: civil rights lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, the rapper Common, and president of Ariel Investments and Starbucks board member Mellody Hobson. The training was interactive. It used video, conversation, and role-playing. Schultz said on CBS This Morning, “This is not an expense. This is an investment in our people, in our way of life, in our culture and our values.”
His actions communicated far more than an apology ever could. Moreover, they showed a true commitment to inclusion and creating a safe space for all.
It’s important to note that Starbucks had already made the commitment to safety and inclusion for its employees. From this space, Starbucks committed to employee education so that this same level of inclusion could be extended to its customers. As a people leader, how are you educating yourself and your teams about the needs of historically marginalized people groups? Are you actively seeking unicorns from diverse backgrounds—and not just to fill a quota?
Recruit Diverse Unicorns, Then Aim for True Inclusion
Recruiting is a great place to start. “Hiring Across All Spectrums,” a 2018 report from Pride at Work Canada, a nonprofit organization that represents LGBTQ union members and their allies, stated the importance of recruiters undergoing training specifically about LGBTQ people and their experiences to understand the challenges LGBTQ people encounter in the work force. Training of this nature would help recruiters use correct, inoffensive language, which can go a long way toward establishing trust and building relationships. Respondents surveyed in the Pride at Work report revealed other things companies can do to ensure that a workplace is LGBTQ-friendly. These included:
▶ publicizing all LGBTQ-related policies (such as anti-discrimination policies and gender-transition guidelines);
▶ stating explicitly that a company is LGBTQ-friendly;
▶ having staff undergo LGBTQ-specific training;
▶ and advertising job postings in LGBTQ media.
Recruiters provide potential unicorns with the first taste of your employer brand. If a recruiter uses noninclusive language, the candidate will assume that this reflects the organization’s views, and diverse candidates will take their talents elsewhere. (Recall, for example, the sexist tech recruiters from Chapter 4.)
Diverse candidates also won’t stay if they’re not truly safe within the organization. Even the most immovable, traditionally noninclusive industries are finally waking up to this. This was brought home to me in February 2018 when I attended the DICE (Design, Innovate, Create, Entertain) gaming summit. It was evident that the games industry is taking giant strides toward becoming more equitable for all employees. My heart leapt for joy when Phil Spencer, vice president of gaming at Microsoft, delivered the keynote—which was all about how Microsoft is working to become a more diverse, inclusive, and safe working environment. The five steps he outlined were:
1. Building empathy and trust with employees by listening to and honoring their concerns
2. Taking accountability as a leader and owning previous mistakes
3. Having a growth mindset in which leadership recognizes that failure—public or private—paves the way for growth
4. Listening to all voices in the room and amplifying those that may not be heard
5. Keeping at the forefront the three leadership principles of creating clarity, generating energy for the team, and delivering success
Spencer’s keynote was a clear turning point. I’m a veteran of the gaming industry. I have firsthand experience with its rampant sexism; over the years, I’ve amassed a collection of my own #MeToo stories, and so has every woman I know. In 2017, a study from UK games industry trade body, The Independent Game Developers Association (TIGA), found only 14 percent of the people working in the gaming industry in that country are women. According to the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), more than 75 percent of game developers are white. For women or minorities who have worked in a field dominated by white men, these are more than just statistics. When an organization has extremely high levels of gender and racial disparity, discriminatory language and marginalization of minorities is almost a given.
This is why I was overjoyed to hear Phil Spencer speak so passionately about what Microsoft is doing. What’s more, he was using my executive coaching language! I was so excited I went around practically grabbing other conference attendees by the collar and asking them what their organizations were doing to create safe workplaces.
How Organizations Become More Inclusive
Neela Dass, director of game developer relations at Intel, told me her team hosts workshops that help participants identify their unexamined, beneath-the-surface biases and how these biases impact others. Google has a similar training program. Google VP Phil Harrison shared that during its onboarding process, Google trains new employees to better identify their unconscious biases. And I talked to a CEO about how his company lives out its mission to entertain the world: Every January the CEO asks his HR Director for an employee overview by race, gender, and gaming ability. These statistics inform future hiring practices and ensures the employees are actually representative of gamers.
I am sometimes struck by how very far we’ve come. When I began my career in the early 1990s, the workplace was, in a lot of ways, the wild west. There wasn’t a structural understanding of why diversity was important, to say nothing of inclusion and the need for safe work spaces. “Political correctness” was largely scoffed at as cumbersome and tedious. Now we know better. The words we use to describe people and things inform how we think and feel about them. By taking care to use language that is free of bias, we are forced to examine our own biases, which are often unconscious. This awareness is the first step toward eliminating our prejudices and developing a truly inclusive worldview.
But we’ve probably all embarrassed ourselves by using the wrong term for a people group besides our own. How can we get it right when it feels like we can’t keep up with the pace of social change?
The bad news is that you almost certainly will say something that makes you feel stupid. The good news is that if you have good-faith relationships with your direct reports and colleagues, they’ll believe you when you say, “I’m so sorry. Please, can you teach me the correct way to talk about this?” Generally, people are happy to educate others if a) they have receptive, thankful listeners and b) they don’t have to educate people all the time. As a people leader, you set the tone for others in your organization. If you make a mistake and are corrected, now you know what to do going forward. The person who took the time to teach you must see you implementing your new knowledge when talking with employees at every level of the company. If you make work a safe space with your attitude and language—and lay out the clear expectation that everyone else will do the same—you show employees from marginalized backgrounds that you have their backs.
CASE STUDY
What We Can Learn from Google
A 2018 lawsuit brought national attention to corporate communications within Google. Engineer James Damore was fired after he wrote a screed against Google’s affirmative action and diversity policies. Although he had communicated these thoughts via Google’s internal network, the post went viral after it was posted online. Damore then brought a lawsuit against Google in which he cited many of these internal Google conversations. Employees who had been communicating privately among themselves found that their words had a national audience.
A noted part of Google’s corporate culture is the tendency for employees to have freewheeling discussions, some related to the job and some not. Damore included screenshots of these discussions in his lawsuit that found their way online. As a result, many of the participants were subjected to online harassment and doxing (when private information, such as a physical address, is revealed without consent). In response, Google CEO Sundar Pichai introduced a new companywide policy specifically prohibiting doxing. In his statement, Pichai noted that although communication between employees takes place on internal channels, Googlers should be wary of how these conversations would appear if made available to the wider public. He added that employees should, “avoid blanket statements about groups or categories of people,” and avoid, “trolling, name calling, and ad hominem attacks,” stating that the goal of conversations should be to “understand more, not to be right.”
What happened at Google is an extreme example, of course. Regardless of your opinion of James Damore, I believe Pichai’s response was wise. The goal of the new policy was not to stifle conversations. Rather, it had two aims: to protect employees from harassment and to create the conditions for healthier, more inclusive dialogue.
The Emotional Intelligence Factor
From an emotional intelligence lens, creating an inclusive work environment enhances the stress-management component of EQ because it helps employees develop flexibility. Flexibility is defined as adapting thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. When we are confronted with the experiences of someone from a different background than our own, we are forced to face any unexamined beliefs we may have held about people from that group. If we are flexible, we can rewire our brains and adapt the way we think, feel, and act. The CEO must model this flexibility. When everyone else sees flexibility at work, it is easier for them to adapt and create a safer work space for employees who are at risk of being marginalized. Employees who feel safe are then free to apply their ingenuity to solving pressing problems.
This rewiring of our brains also improves the decision-making component of EQ. Employees who have reckoned with their biases, both conscious and unconscious, are better-equipped to be objective and see things as they really are (the reality-testing branch of decision making). When we hold prejudices against certain people groups, we can’t accurately see the individuals who make up that group. Let’s say you have two team members who have difficulty working together. Each mistrusts the other because of conditioning that has taught them to discount the other’s value. They are not seeing each other as they really are. Instead, they’re seeing only their projected biases. Through examining their prejudices, they can move past their preconceived opinions and focus on the work at hand.
If your organization is going to survive and thrive, you need all hands on deck. By maintaining biased hiring practices, you are only harming yourself: People from diverse backgrounds bring different perspectives and experiences that can help you see in a new way.
But it’s not enough to merely have a diverse staff. Your workplace must also be inclusive and safe for everyone. Your unicorns will not be at their best in a toxic culture that turns a blind eye to discriminatory language or that is more concerned with maintaining 1950s-style gender norms and dress codes than innovation. If your unicorns are at perpetual risk of marginalization, they must constantly keep their guard up. No high salary, awesome perks package, or generous vacation time will compensate for that.
Your employees deserve better. As a people leader, you set the tone. Know that you’re never going to be perfect—that isn’t the point. But you can adopt a humble, grateful attitude and commit yourself to always learn about the experiences of others. That attitude is infectious. It can transform your workplace and free up your unicorns to do their best work.
Your workplace needs to be inclusive, and your employees need to feel safe. I keep repeating this point because it is so important. Even if you do nothing else I suggest in this book, I advise you to invest the necessary resources (time, money, difficult conversations) to create an inclusive work space. Check in with yourself and your employees to answer the following questions:
▶ Do we have a system that helps employees identify unconscious biases and then work to find solutions?
▶ When’s the last time we invested in inclusivity training?
▶ Do employees of all backgrounds feel safe? (You’ll have to design a metric to ask them and gauge this.)
▶ When’s the last time someone spoke up and said they were uncomfortable with language someone used toward them, with how they were treated, or how other people were treated? What was the response to that person?
▶ What is the retention rate for employees from different backgrounds?
The process of becoming inclusive will involve some difficult conversations. That is OK. Adopt a posture of humble listening and learning. Be grateful for what your employees teach you, even if it feels uncomfortable. On the other side of discomfort is growth. You owe it to your employees to grow into a leader who makes sure their personhood comes first at work.