Harmony in Diversity and Diversity in Harmony

 I had the great pleasure to talk ethics with my friend Masroor Lodi, he founder of ‘The Entrepreneurship School’ in India. The context was a program on how to teach teachers to teach values in the classroom. I met Masroor Lodi on a trip I took to India where I spoke at a Happy Workplace Conclave put on by my friend Mukund Trivedy.

Here is a link to the program so you can see what we talked about:  http://humanisticmanagement.international/teaching-teachers-to-teach-values-masroor-lodi/  That page includes links to the resources we discussed and a downloadable copy of his presentation. 

One of the things Masroor talked about that really resonated with me was about creating harmony in diversity and - diversity in Harmony.

Moral Imagination

He said that one of the ways to move forward with diverse groups and help them build cohesion is by accepting different actions as different ways to express shared values.

Values like – respect – are expressed as different behaviors in different cultures.  For instance, looking at someone and making eye contact vs. looking down and avoiding eye contact. It’s the same value, just expressed as different behavior.

 Part of the way to help create harmony in diversity  is to talk and discuss and learn from each other. And the best way to do that is to start from a point that everyone is moral. 

I love this as it is consistent with my way of being as a Humanist. Being a humanist to me means, treating everyone with dignity and understanding that they are moral beings, even when I don't understand their behavior. 

Imagine how much easier it is to deal with conflicts when you start by assuming the other person is behaving in a way they think is moral. And then, instead of treating them as if they are immoral, asking them questions to understand the morality that is driving their behavior.  I know that's how I want to be treated.

To do this well he encouraged us to increase our moral imaginations and to look at people's behavior, as moral and to try and understand their morality. 

Primary Values:

Another way people have trouble with diversity, is that they value different things. This is especially difficult in work groups. Everyone has the same values, but what is the primary value?  This can vary from person to person or from workgroup to workgroup.

I related to this because of a personal experience I had when working at a tower company. At one point we purchase the towers from Motorola.  With that purchase came employees. And this is where we had a primary value clash. 

What was valuable in a tower to Motorola, was not what we at our company valued.  To fix this, we had to be explicit about what made a tower valuable and to discuss the competing ideas of what made a tower valuable until we came to a shared understanding. 

Don't ever assume that everyone is on the same page. Explicitly discussing values and what is valuable in a work setting, helps create harmony in diversity. No one has to feel like their values aren't valued. That's the beauty of these conversations. Everyone's values matter. But if we listen respectfully, we can create consensus on what values we value the most in a given work situation. 

This can be done explicitly and should be done explicitly. Get in the habit of discussing what values are being invoked in decision making. You will find staff more engaged and more openly moral. 

Moral Code Switching:

The final thing he talked about that I want to share here has to do with moral code switching.  Behaviors of values may differ in different context. This is code switching. 

Examples might be things that are acceptable in personal life, not be acceptable in the workplace and vice versa. 

Again, the solution Masroor Lodi suggests, is to be explicit about the problem and re-affirm shared values and expectations in the given situation you find yourself in.  In a work environment, having a conversation about the moral values helps employees bring their personal values into the work environment and that in turn, should help people, behave more ethically with each other and see the morality of colleagues more clearly.

I want to thank Masroor for taking the time to discuss explicit ethics with me and the idea of using ethics to create harmony in diversity. 

Diversity v. Inclusion - what's the difference?

Just because you have diversity - doesn't mean you have inclusion.  

Diversity means you have variety.  In the workplace - you could have a variety of people of different genders. You could have a variety of people from different ages. You could have a variety of people from different income groups. You could have a variety of people with different skin tones. A variety of people from different religions.  Think of diversity - as variety.

There is a reasons companies like to recruit in diverse people. And it's not just that they don't want to get sued for discrimination. It's also because that diversity is great for critical thinking and decision making.  

You  don't know what you don't know. Diversity gives you a better chance at uncovering the things you don't know so that you can plan for them and adjust your strategies so they are more likely to be successful.

In order for diversity to benefit your organization though - it's not enough to have diversity - you must also have inclusion.

What good is having a math wiz - if you never ask them to do math for you?  What good is it to have a epidemiologist during a pandemic - if you don't take their advice?  What good is it to plan for education during a pandemic if you don't include teachers in the planning discussions? Not good at all.

In order to benefit from diversity - you have to make sure people with diverse knowledge and experience - are included in decision making process. Otherwise, you are making decisions in the dark and that's exactly what were trying to avoid by recruiting in diverse people.

So - how to ensure people that are diverse create positive collaborative work groups where everyone is included and everyone can contribute equally?  That is literally - the billion dollar question that seems to defy solution.

It turns out we humans are really tribal. We don't trust others and if we don't trust - we don't collaborate.  Also - some people have learned that - they can get their way if they just - exclude those pesky others who have different ideas.  

In order to create a culture of inclusion- you have to simultaneous build up trust and get rid of the people who dominate through bullying and other obnoxious behavior.  This is why my book - The Bully Vaccine - is subtitled: How to inoculate yourself against bullies and other petty people.  https://humanistlearning.com/the-bully-vaccine-book/ 

Recruiting in diversity is actually fairly easy once you decide to do it. The harder part is how to make sure those diverse people are nurtured and included so that they can be their best and contribute to the organization - instead of being marginalized by your other employees.

To help you with that - I offer a variety of training programs that teach you and your staff - how to stop bullying using behavioral science and how to manage humanistically - so that you can finally - have that inclusive supportive organization you always dreamed of.  Details at: https://humanistlearning.com/programsoffered/

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/