Facilitating Diversity? Focus on Inclusion - REAL inclusion.

 A reporter asked me: Companies around the world are rapidly changing their work environment and organizational culture to facilitate diversity. How do you see organizational culture changing in the next 3 years and how do you see yourself creating that change?

For me, the question is less about how we create diversity and more about how do we create inclusion. Even in homogenous organizations, there are people who are bullied and excluded.  

If we want more diverse yet cohesive work groups, we need to eliminate bullying and other behaviors that sabotage inclusion efforts. There is a reason why most of these efforts fail, and that is because – people sabotage them! We need to be more proactive about addressing and eliminating the sabotaging behavior so that people recruited in – are actively included in the group, so that they CAN create the working relationships and trust required for everyone to be productive. 

If all we ever do is try to recruit in diversity, regardless of the metrics we use, we will continue to fail. We must learn how and actively use the techniques we know work to eliminate bullying.  Why? Because bullying is all about creating exclusion.

Ending Exclusion

Humans are a tribal species. Our brains tend to see the world as our group and "others."  Bullies bully because it allows them to control who is in and who is out and that gives them a tremendous amount of power over any group. If you want diverse yet cohesive groups, you CANNOT allow bullies to exclude people and other them. 

The Future

What I hope for the future, is that we start applying the science of how to get unwanted behaviors to stop and we use that to stop bullying behavior so we can final wrestle control away from the office bullies and finally create inclusive support work groups where fear of being ostracized no longer dictates what happens or how problems are solved – or not solved.

Learn More

If you want to learn more - take one of my courses at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Fostering Diversity: Why is diversity so hard?

I teach humanist management and how to use behavioral science to stop things like harassment. Both are at play when we are dealing with diversity issues.

First question: Ways for a leader to foster diversity, inclusion, and acceptance within their unit/department/organization.

Leaders and teams need a variety of inter-related skills to help ensure diversity is achieved.

1. Understanding the value that diversity brings to the team (which is better problem solving)  REALLY  - BETTER PROBLEM SOLVING!!!!!
2. Philosophic understand of how to cope and change their thinking about other people so that they don’t respond negatively – or if they do – they can work through it.
3. Mission focused and intentional integration of viewpoints.  As long as the team is focused on collaborative problem solving, issues with disagreements can be resolved rationally and not devolve into tribal conflicts which then use harassment and bullying to socially exclude a rival idea.
4. Behavior based approaches to bullying and harassment that actually fix the problem. It isn’t enough to say – it’s illegal – don’t do it. It’s not enough to give people culture sensitivity trainings. Aggressive behavior happens and it’s used to socially exclude people to gain power over a group and to control a group. That a) kills diversity as the diverse viewpoints are targeted. And b) it leads to incredibly bad decisions being made.  To fix this – requires a behavioral understanding of how to get unwanted behaviors to stop and how to reward the pro-social behaviors you do want and most importantly – how to handle the  people who resist!!!!!!

Which is why the 2nd question is so important:

 2. How to add diversity to a homogeneous team that is also resistant to change.

First – everyone is resistant to change. Even people who want to change resist change. We can’t help it. Resistance is instinctual.  It’s not a sign of people not wanting to change. It’s just – the process people go through to change.  The point is – to help people with change – you have to understand the behavioral dynamic playing out – that is causing the resistance and how to help the team move through the change process quickly and how to identity those most resistant and isolate their – freak out – so it doesn’t impact the rest of the team.   I said this last bit in lay language. In science language – it means – understanding that when you stop rewarding an old behavior – the behavior escalates as the organism tries to get their reward back. As they continue to not get their reward – their resistance escalates until their behavior – explodes – which is called an extinction burst – or blow out. This is predicted to occur. How bad it gets is the variable. Most people – it’s not too bad. Some people – it’s really really really bad.  A cultural change process – to be effective – is going to take all this science based knowledge into account and help the not bad people adjust quickly and identify the really truly resistant so that the really truly resistant aren’t allowed to prevent the rest of the team from making progress.   And again, this is not about value judgements – it’s just – the process that plays out – every. Time. You. Change. Something.

The major way that people resist diversity is through harassment and bullying. So – that’s where pro-active effort has to be taken – to protect those who are going to be targeted are protected and nurtured so they a) stay and so that b) the resistance to their presence is unsuccessful.   Yes – this takes effort. Pro-active effort. Conscientious effort. Time and effort.. Which is why – most leaders – even well-meaning leaders – fail.

For those truly dedicated to the project – it can be done – but to give yourself the best chance at succeeding – you need to get training on behavioral modification techniques as they apply to organizational dynamics – paying special attention to how behavioral unlearning manifests in bullying and harassment situations.

And yes – I have training on all of this. https://humanistlearning.com/jennifer-hancock/

Valuing Diversity

One of the first things companies need to do is understand that diversity is value. Yes – it comes with some difficulty, but the benefits outweigh those costs.

In order to have a diverse workforce, you have to value a diverse workforce. So – what value do you get with a diverse workforce? Better decision making.

All businesses are in the business of solving problems. Better problem solving leads to better solutions and better businesses.

How do we get better at problem solving? Improve our decision making/problem solving processes.

Diversity helps with this because instead of getting like minds together– to think about how to solve a problem, you bring in other viewpoints. Those other viewpoints may yield insights a homogeneous group didn’t think of and can’t think of.

Additionally, diversity helps ensure that stupid mistakes aren’t made because – more diverse experiences means more experience on how things can go oh so horribly wrong. We want that and should want that as it helps us solve problems more effectively.

Once we decide diversity is good and we value diversity specifically because of the input diverse people bring to a problem solving situation, we need to protect those diverse viewpoints so that they can be heard.

People who are used to dominating, are now being asked to collaborate and listen and take into account a diverse viewpoint in the problem solving process. This is bound to cause a reaction. Which is actually predicted to occur if we consider this a behavioral issue.

What we want is people to learn how to work together. This takes time, part of the process is extinguishing the old habits of how decisions are made in a homogeneous group and replacing those behaviors with a more collaborative model.

This is a change management problem coupled with a bullying/harassment problem. Behavioral science should be applied to help our teams adjust so that all voices are valued in the decision making process.

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To learn more about how to use behavioral science to create change - consider taking the online course: Why is Change so Hard: https://humanistlearning.com/change1/

To learn more about how to stop bullying and harassment which is used by people to dominate decision making processes - take my online course: How to End Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace: https://humanistlearning.com/retaliation1/