DTUI.com Diversity Blog

Firing ESPN’s Max Bretos for the Chink in the Armor Comment Was Insensitive

On February 19, 2012, In Uncategorized, By admin

By Billy Vaughn, PhD CDP

Jeremy Lin has arguably single-handedly made basketball even more exciting to watch. It reminds us of another Asian American sensation, Tiger Woods, who catapulted golf into mainstream television sports casting. Lin and Woods have something else in common—a lot of class when it comes to questions about racial insensitivity. Lin and Woods consistently acknowledge that insensitive racial comments do not feel good, but not all of them are intentional

As a psychologist who has spent most of my 25 professional years researching, teaching, and consulting about cultural competence, I am appalled at the lack of media sophistication in dealing with culturally insensitive comments. It wasn’t too long ago that sport commentators were allowed to say insensitive things intentionally or through ignorance and prejudice, but those days are all but over. There are a few stragglers like Don Imus, but for the most part people have learned that insensitivity is costly.

That is why suspending ESPN’s Max Bretos for his Chink in the Armor comment is absurd. He has apologized and understands how his comment could be construed as insensitive. Chink in the Armor means a weak spot in something that is otherwise tough. It was a poor choice of words, but it was clearly unintentional. Why would it be intentional? Why would any ESPN writer or commentator put themselves intentionally in a position to get fired?

Woods and Lin are among a growing population of Americans who get it. Baby boomers continue to struggle with how to do the intercultural thing. They are the ones who get embarrassed or upset when the “N” word is used before trying to sweep it under the carpet. Yes, the word is offensive, but that is the beginning of a larger conversation about things like civility, collegiality, promoting equality, what is comedic and what is not, etc. Avoiding the conversation all together to avoid controversy just feeds it. As I detailed in my article, Don Imus Needs “Heart” Surgery—Not a Vacation, coaching sports casters to help them get the impact of insensitive comments and how to avoid making the mistake in the future will pay off much more than firing and chastising them to protect the company stockholders against possible financial harm.

In addition, it is unwise to try to change anyone’s attitude. Instead, make certain that they learn to avoid making the foible in the future and that alone can lead to greater social change at a faster rate.

Learning how to navigate cultural collisions is an art form, but my experience indicates that it can be learned. It takes much more than Baby Boomer “sweep it under the rug and hope it goes away” mentality to promote sensitivity. Fessing up to one’s shortcoming and making amends are a good start, but firing and chastising people reinforce insensitivity and puts a band aid on the problem.

Consider that when a sports caster and a good part of the audience think that it is unfair to get fired for using terminology that others misconstrue, a sense of unfairness and double standards lead to controversy and people taking sides. This does little to promote better understanding because folks become more entrenched in their positions. That’s why we keep revisiting the racial insensitivity issue.

In the meantime, Tiger, Jeremy, and the sons and daughters of Imus and Bretos are sitting in a bar having a couple beers while joking about how mentally stuck their parents are in the early part of the last century.

The comments in this blog are not necessarily those of DTUI.com.

Billy Vaughn is author many articles and several books, as well as the creator of Diversity Officer Magazine and We Can Do This.

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Teachable Moments: Tea Party Outrage, Campus Racial Tension, & Creating Learning Communities

On March 26, 2010, In Consulting & Training, cultural diversity, Managing Diversity, Politics, Race Relations, By admin

The Problem with American Racial Politics

Imagine teaching a cultural diversity course and a young European American woman feels safe enough to share her beliefs about the unfairness of affirmative action. Everyone listens attentively. When she’s finished, an African American male angrily calls her a racist. A European American male chimes in by saying that it is unfair that “black” people call “whites” racist whenever they speak honestly about racial matters. Everyone starts talking at the same time to offer her or his opinion at this point. Emotions are clearly escalating. How would you handle this as the facilitator?

I wrote a published article nearly two decades ago about how to manage emotional responses to discussions about race in university classrooms (Vaughn, 1993). Many colleges and universities were implementing cultural diversity course requirements in the general education curricular and I was teaching these courses at a large state university. Conservative scholars, such as Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele, unsuccessfully argued against changing the academic canon to include cultural diversity. Their argument was that the recommended changes would undermine teaching all students the philosophical foundations of American society. Reading between the lines of their arguments, I concluded that they felt the changes in the core curricular were tantamount to threatening the American constitution. During this period rioting in response to the videotape recording of police officers beating and taser gunning Rodney King, an African American, took place in Los Angeles. It was also a period of historic numbers of civil rights lawsuits against companies, which led to staggering financial settlements. Bari-Ellen Roberts’ book, Roberts vs. Texaco, is filled with her account of the daily dignities she endured as an African American executive, which fueled the rage behind her successful lawsuit (Roberts, 1999).

Things have not changed that much in terms of visceral reactions to cultural diversity, even after the election of the first American president of “African” descent. The slow progress is not surprising from this diversity expert’s perspective. The increased outrage and backlash in reaction to societal inclusion of cultural differences due to demographic shifts were predictable. Why? There is a huge gap between the cultural competence that exists in our society and what Americans need to navigate the reality of the demographic changes. We know a lot about what it takes to create inclusive organizations, but we lack the leadership cultural competence, political will, and big picture mentality to make progress.

One of the hottest classroom topics in my university classroom was affirmative action. While discussions about same-gender marriage and undocumented workers share the stage in generating emotionally-charged discussions, affirmative action remains as potent today. The impact on higher education in California with the passage of Proposition 209 has created outrage on one side and a sense of game-changing social politics on the other side. After the recent passage of its own anti-affirmative action legislation, Michigan will likely witness staggering decreases in African American students we have seen in the state of California’s higher education system. Those who applaud the changes feel emboldened to express their feelings openly. Like, I said, things have not changed that much in twenty plus years. The same factors underlying the heated discussions about affirmative action and race that I was trying to manage in the university classroom two decades ago are the sources of current cultural diversity tension.

Barack Obama is arguably the most culturally competent president we have ever had. No other president, for example, has been exposed to as many cross-cultural experiences at an early age. More importantly, he is bi-racial. The fact that most of us collude in labeling him as black or African American and only parenthetically acknowledge his European heritage is a symptom of the country’s cultural competence deficit that I am describing. I doubt, however, that even he will find facilitating a heated debate about affirmative action within his scope of expertise.

How Lack of Cultural Competence Costs Us
Why do we need cultural competence? African American House of Representatives Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) was called a “nigger” last weekend after the passage of the healthcare bill. The news reports suggest that the culprit was a Tea Party reveler. [Yes, I used the "n" word. That's another thing we have to get over if we are to increase our competence in a free speech society.] Openly gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a “faggot” on the same day. A few weeks earlier, on the other side of the country, an off campus “white fraternity” party with a “racial” theme created weeks of conflict resolution efforts that spanned from the San Diego, California African American community to the university governing board in the San Francisco bay area. It became apparent to me that managing the emotional discharge was over the heads of everyone in charge.

Cleavages within society due to intercultural conflict create long-term tension that can easily—at any critical point in time—lead to social unrest, physical attacks, and a deep sense of unfairness about and resentment towards cultural diversity. The problem with continued lack of cultural competence among leaders is that it colludes in maintaining intercultural conflict over time, rather than support long-term solutions.

While litigation is obviously expensive, intercultural conflict often leads to additional costs, such as loss of talent, innovation and even a competitive edge.
One of the things you want to avoid to the extent possible as a leader is the appearance of taking sides in a conflict. Yet, far too many leaders do so in an effort to cope with their own and others’ emotional reactions to intercultural conflict. Any conflict resolution expert will tell you that long-term solutions to disagreements require negotiations that result in both sides feeling that it has gained something precious and lost something precious. The mediator cannot accomplish this by taking sides or poorly managing the emotional discharge on all sides. It is not the leaders’ fault that their outcomes are too often unsatisfactory. After all, how could we expect them to do what their predecessors have failed to do and where would they have learned to manage these kinds of conflicts anyways?

Teachable Moments to the Rescue
I propose that leaders view intercultural conflict through different lenses. What many leaders fail to realize due to their lack of cultural competence is that the very conflict that they so desperately try to squelch as quickly as possible to calm people down is ripe with diversity education material. There are several assumptions behind this view:

Each American inherently wants to have meaningful connections with other people—even with those they vehemently disagree with.
Americans rarely have a safe place to talk about differences with expert guidance.
Most Americans are open to and tolerant of cultural differences, they simply do not know how to do the “intercultural thing”.
Helping Americans learn from their encounters with cultural conflict as close to the moment it occurs as possible is the key to achieving societal and organizational inclusion.

Let us take the incident involving the off campus party described above as an example. What I have learned after nearly twenty-five years of teaching cultural diversity is that there is not a wrong or right point of view in intercultural conflict—just different ones. The conservative and general newspapers on campus made matters worse by taking the sides with the European Americans holding the “racial theme” party. Then the student government got into the fray by freezing funds to the newspapers. A “teach in” put together by the administration went astray when a large number of students participated in the Black Student Union orchestrated walk out shortly after the meeting started. When conservative students say that it is unfair that an off campus party with a theme that makes fun of an ethnic group in a satirical fashion is not racist, do everything possible to empathize with their worldview—whether or not you agree with them. When the African American students and their local community say that the behavior at the party was insulting, empathize with them as well. The problem is not their different perspectives, but their lack of opportunity to fully connect with each other in discussing the incident. The leader has to put personal opinions aside to understand each party’s point of view in order to determine how best to bring all sides together in making the conflict a teachable moment.

I doubt if you would find one student on any side who believes she or he is prejudice and intolerant. In fact, research supports the view that they probably are correct, but this does not protect them from acting prejudice unless they have developed cultural competence (Devine et al., 1991). Since few of us have had the opportunity to develop such competence, most of us step on multicultural toes without realizing it.

Even for those who may measure relatively high on a prejudice scale, it does absolutely no good to call them racist or confront their prejudice. I pointed out systematically in several published papers the futility of confrontational approaches in trying to get people to change and argue in favor of the more effective self confrontational methods designed to help participants reduce resistance and increase learning (see for example, Vaughn, 2003).
Leaders must avoid taking sides while embracing differences and finding common ground to create safety when facilitating discussions about differences. Nothing sets the stage for feeling safe more effectively than an set of ground rules. Civil debate is such an integral part of campus life and expectations that it amazes me each time these conduct codes fall by the wayside when cultural collisions occur.

Specifically, leaders need (a) awareness and acceptance of personal cultural diversity shortcomings (which we all have), (b) insights into how beliefs and values about diversity tend to make trouble for them in trying to connect across cultures, (c) an understanding of culture differences, and (d) cross-cultural skills. Let me take managing emotional reactions to the conflict as an example (Martin & Vaughn, 2007). The leader who understands her cultural diversity shortcomings has insights into personal values and beliefs that make it difficult to avoid emotional responses to diversity related comments. If she believes that any behavior that signals intolerance of racial differences is inappropriate, she will have a difficult time accepting comments expressing such views even if she knows that it is important to listen to all sides in an argument. Or, he may harbor conservative views that consider anyone “playing the race card” and becoming emotional as playing unfair in a grievance, which will make it very difficult for him to have compassion for them.

A leader can be very open and tolerant, as well as insightful, about her or his diversity-related shortcomings, but lack knowledge of cultural differences. This is often the case. Ironically, these individuals tend to be perceived as prejudice even after their best efforts to appear otherwise. Behaving as though you know what you do not know about cultural differences can be more disabling than acknowledging that you do not know much about other cultures. Assuming that the diversity education goes beyond book knowledge, classroom learning and seminars we may increase our awareness and perhaps even change our attitude, but there is seldom sufficient practice to hone what you have learned. Even the campus’ most acclaimed cultural diversity professor is likely to be ineffective in facilitating real life intercultural conflict. Being the best researcher and classroom teacher for diversity on campus cannot offset practical cultural competence training without facilitation skills.

Summary & Conclusion
How would you handle the affirmative action discussion as the facilitator? The culturally competent facilitator always starts with ground rules to promote a learning community. When participants talk at the same time, they are reminded of the rule they agreed to about the importance of fully listening. Helping participants understand the emotions behind what people share helps them connect with each other. Brief lectures that teach participants about the assumptions underlying each party’s point of view grounds the dialog in a meaningful framework that helps the audience learn about differences. The anti-affirmative action stance is often based on the meritocracy assumption and the pro-affirmative action stance may be based on a social justice assumption. What each side has in common is the need for fairness—they just have different views about how to achieve it.

The complicated part of negotiation is getting beyond an all-or-none, zero-sum game stance to help the parties connect with each other. Getting different sides to shift away from its stance is the effective leader’s role. Discussions of hot topics, such as “White” privilege, the use of parody and satire to make fun of different cultural groups, meritocracy versus social justice, and the like can take place in the context of a learning community. First, establish the ground rules to create the context. Keep the focus on learning, which is what people have in common. It is pretty obvious on a college campus that learning is the common denominator, but continuous learning is also necessary for adjusting in the ever-changing, fast-moving environments of other modern organizations.

The facilitator models civic behavior, orchestrates it in the group dialog, and keeps the focus on the common goal of learning about differences. This does not mean that emotions are swept under the rug. Allowing people to show their emotions is part of learning as long as you help participants avoid shaming, blaming and complaining to the extent possible. You do this by keeping the focus on identifying the real problems that needs to be solved. Helping the fraternity group, for example, understand that the real problem is that there is lack of agreement on campus about the extent that ethnic party themes are acceptable—especially given that the campus champions inclusion.

The next step is to help both sides see the results of their actions. The theme party had an impact on the ethnic group that was the target of the satire, the campus as a whole, and on those participating in the event. How the insulted parties handled their reactions also needs to be shared for better or worse so that everyone has an opportunity to learn from the experience. As each side shares thoughts and feelings, emotions are likely to shift from anger and hurt to critical thinking. This is the “soft on people and hard on the problem” approach found in negotiation literature.

As a classroom teacher, I have the luxury of helping members of the class look at their attitudes apart from real world experience. Organizational leaders are trying to solve problems that in ways that keep people productive. In the end, the leader is the final decision maker for the organization. Let the two sides hammer out an agreement to the extent possible, and take the best information available to make a decision that serves the organization as a whole.

I do not see Americans making considerable headway in managing its diversity and inclusion in the near future. The catalyst for changing these circumstances is educating and training culturally competent leaders. A good sign of progress among leaders is their increased ability to manage emotionally charged discussions about cultural diversity in ways that capitalizes on the teachable moments when cultural collisions occur. The first place to start is in the classroom as early as possible and reinforced in higher education as well as the workplace.

References

[i] Vaughn, B. E. (1993) Teaching cultural diversity courses from a balanced perspective. In Creative Teaching, 5 (4), Newsletter of the California State University System Institute for Teaching and Learning.

[ii] Roberts, Bari-Ellen (1999). Roberts vs. Texaco: a True Story of Race and Corporate America. Avon Books.

[iii] Devine, P. G., Monteith, M., Zuwerink, J. R., & Elliot, A. J. (1991). Prejudice with and without compunction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 817-830.

[iv] Vaughn, B.E. (2003). Intercultural interactions as contexts for mindful communication. In Smith & Richards (Eds.), Practicing Multiculturalism. Allyn & Bacon: Boston.

[v] Mercedes Martin, MA, & Vaughn, B.E. (2007). Cultural competence: The nuts & bolts of diversity & inclusion. In Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Management magazine, Billy Vaughn, PhD (Ed.), pp. 31-38, San Francisco: Diversity Training University International Publications Division.

The Top Ten Business Responses to Marketplace Diversity

On October 22, 2009, In cultural diversity, By admin

The Top Ten Business Responses to Marketplace Diversity [i]

The combined purchasing power of ethnic group markets, according to Ethnic Trends is estimated to be $1.275 trillion dollars (African Americans $545 billion, Hispanic $460, Asian American $244). Each ethnic group’s purchasing power exceeds the GDP of more than 150 foreign countries. The marketplace is changing as a result of these demographic shifts.

All facets of business face the challenge of attracting these demographic groups with adequate strategies. The following is a list of questions your organization needs to address in developing the strategies.

How has our organization traditionally segmented the markets and customers?
What are we doing to discover how changing demographics may affect our traditional segments?
What preliminary information do we have about new market segments?
How do we begin learning about new segment customers in as much detail as needed?
How can we conduct valid and reliable market research so that we know as accurately as possible what their interests and needs are?
What are the economic consequences of not being able to compete for the products and services they want to buy?
How do we assess our market plan to make sure we are on track, and our advertising approaches to avoid cultural blunders?
How do our products and services compare to competitors’ or industry standards in terms of innovation, quality, desirability, and delivery?
Have our marketing and service deliver teams launched the marketing campaign in a timely manner?
Is the company gaining a share of the market and holding on to it? If so, why and at what cost?

The first order of business is to develop an ethnic marketing initiative. If you have one in place, assess the extent that your staff and sales force has the cultural competence needed to maximize the effectiveness of implementing the action plan. Keep in mind that it is not enough to put together a dynamite plan. Cultural competence safely drives the action plan past the landmines and over the obstacles of ethnic marketing.

If you find this article valuable, you will get a lot out of our diversity professional certification seminars. Click here to learn more.

[i] Based in part on Cultural Diversity at Work 10:2 (Nov 1997), p 14.

The Top Ten Ways to Link Diversity to Human Capital

On October 21, 2009, In Consulting & Training, By admin

Recent innovations in human resource management and organizational development provide us with the insights into how to make a modern case for diversity and inclusion funding. The main focus of the contemporary approach is on strategically promoting diversity as an asset. Identifying how diversity provides human capital that can positively affect the bottom line fits the organization’s resource allocation models. Professionals can specify more clearly funding need, and identify the return on investment.

The following list of secrets for linking diversity to human capital will help you develop your strategy.

1. Consider how to link the need for diversity training to the organization’s mission2. Consider how to link the need for diversity training to the organization’s core values.

3. Link what people know and can do to the organization’s performance.

4. Consider how the intangible human capital assets generate tangible benefits.

5. If your office is not separate from human resources, try form an alliance with that office. Teaming with them to come up with a strategy for making the link will serve their budgeting needs as well.

6. Work with HR to identify the key diversity drivers.

7. Argue for a budget to link selection and promotion decisions to competencies needed for each job category.

8. Link diversity competence to compensation and performance policies.

9. Understand your organization’s financial picture thoroughly to identify how your budget request fits within the overall scheme.

10. Measure the results of your budgeted activities to maximize your effectiveness in obtaining reasonable funding for diversity and inclusion.

HRCI has approved the DTUI.com CDP Seminar for PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification

On October 13, 2009, In News, By admin

Press Release

HRCI has approved the DTUI.com Cultural Diversity Professional Seminar for 32.5 (General ) credit hours toward PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification

San Francisco, CA., October 9, 2009: The Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI) approved the DTUI.com LLC Cultural Diversity Professional (CDP) intensive 5-day training seminar for 32.5 (General) credit hours towards PHR, SPHR, and GPHR recertification.

DTUI.com LLC (aka Diversity Training University International) is a free standing corporate university that provides diversity managers and trainers with tools, professional certification, seminars, webinars, and consulting services. The organization’s mission is to promote the diversity profession, champion diversity expertise, and contribute knowledge to advance diversity education.

Billy Vaughn, PhD CDP founded DTUI.com in the late 1990s. Since then, the organization has trained and certified diversity professionals across the globe, including Canada, the United States, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Japan, India, and Mexico—just to name a few. Most participants in the CDP program are HR executives or individuals serving as cultural diversity professionals. Examples of their roles include multicultural education resource professionals in small colleges (Arbor University), HR professionals with additional cultural diversity responsibilities (Gateway Healthplan), and seasoned Chief Diversity Officers in Fortune 50 companies (W. W. Grainger Inc.).

Participants learn state-of-the-art high impact diversity and inclusion strategies. In the first half, they learn how to design, develop, and implement diversity initiatives for modern organizations in the first half of the seminar. In the second part, they learn how to facilitate discussions about cultural diversity, manage resistance, and to strategically onboard the organization. The program consistently receives very high participant evaluation scores and great testimonials. Testimonials indicate that participants find the instructors very knowledgeable, the content very practical, and their level of learning excellent. An independent benchmark study highlights DTUI.com’s stellar customer service.

If you’d like more information about this seminar, please go to http://www.dtui.com/conferences.html. You can contact Gina Quinlan at +1.415.692.0121, 888.288.1603, or email her at gina@dtui.com.

Increase Initiative Funding by Linking Diversity & Human Capital

On May 7, 2009, In Diversity Initiative, By admin

Recent innovations in human resource management and organizational development provide us with insights into how to make a modern case for diversity and inclusion funding. The main idea is to strategically promote diversity as an asset. Identifying cultural diversity as human capital and linking it directly to productivity that positively affect the bottom line fits the organization’s resource allocation models. Professionals can specify funding needs more clearly and clarify the return on investment.

The following list of secrets for linking diversity to human capital will help you develop your strategy.
1. Consider how to link the need for diversity training to the organization’s mission

2. Consider how to link the need for diversity training to the organization’s core values.

3. Link what people know and can do to the organization’s performance.

4. Consider how the intangible human capital assets generate tangible benefits.

6. Work with HR to identify the key diversity drivers.

7. Argue for a budget to link selection and promotion decisions to competencies needed for each job category.

8. Link diversity competence to compensation and performance policies.

9. Understand your organization’s financial picture thoroughly to identify how your budget request fits within the overall scheme.

10. Measure the results of your budgeted activities to maximize your effectiveness in obtaining reasonable funding for diversity and inclusion.

From the Managing Diversity e-Coach Book (2004), Diversity Training University International, pp. 18-19. DTUI.com Publications Division: San Francisco, CA. Go to http://www.dtui.com/ebookadvall.html to learn more.

Tagged with: Diversity Initiative • diversity scorecard • making a case for diversity

How High is the Bar?: Cultural Diversity Talent Management

On April 27, 2009, In Consulting & Training, cultural diversity, Diversity Initiative, GLBT, Religion, Talent Management, By admin

This article covers three recruitment and retention recommendations based on recent research by Trower & Gallagher: (a) policies and procedure issues, (b) coaching and mentoring needs, and (c) the demand for cultural diversity. While Cathy Trower and Anne Gallagher of the Harvard University offer recommendations based on data collected from more than 8500 respondents in higher education, we found it easy to generalize their talent management recommendations to other sectors and cultural diversity.

I. Provide clear retention and promotion policies and standards
One of the trouble makers for employees of color is that lack of clarity concerning what Historically Excluded Group members™ (HEG) need to do to succeed in their organization—especially with respect to retention and promotion. 1

They want clear, specific guidelines about the requirements for success. HEGs hired into fast track jobs, such as in healthcare management and software development, tend to be especially savvy about the importance of clear success criteria. Some boldly state that they want a written contract that quantifies the criteria so as to make the conditions as transparent as possible.

Here are some of the questions they tend to ask:
• How can I get the mentoring support I need?
• What are the weights given to performing the different responsibilities in my role? Which work groups and teams will offer me greater value?
• What does “excellence” mean in the organization?
• Is there a checklist of things I need to cover?
• Is there a promotion manual that I can follow?

While the above set of questions may seem naïve and downright arrogant, they reflect reactions to the reality of organizations that lack a culture of inclusion.

HEGs want constructive feedback as often as possible and long before the formal performance review. They want to know how they’re doing (e.g., the timeline toward a promotion and the standards used to measure their progress). In addition, they want to be acknowledged by their manager when major milestones are reached.

They are looking to hear things like “You are great as a team member. Your work is in on schedule, you support other team members, and have shown leadership potential. It will help if you develop your ability to deliver a higher quality product in your work.” This type of feedback helps them understand how best to use their time and gauge specific performance improvement needs.

It is too often assumed that new employees know what is expected of them. Trower and Gallagher state that it is assumed that they are to learn it “by osmosis, socialization, or reading between the lines.” What managers and supervisors and even colleagues fail to realize is that HEGs experience the situation differently due to a variety of factors that include culture and socialization that is different from the historically included. They ask what appears to others as naïve questions. Instead of getting answers, HEGs quickly learn that asking questions mean that you are not smart enough to figure out the game on your own. At the same time, if you do not ask questions you are certainly to fail. Trower and Gallagher calls this a reaction to a “Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell” organizational culture.

Organizations should provide written, accessible promotion and retention policies that include timelines, important deadlines, clear performance evaluation criteria, and a protocol used in making promotion decisions. HEGs want managers and supervisors trained in using these criteria, especially doing so in a uniform fashion.

Too often HEGs perceive the organization as not walking its talk. This is particularly the case when they see what is practiced is inconsistent with policies. In a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell culture, it may be hard to ask questions that help you clarify what you are seeing for fear of being marginalized. One native American engineer we met in our consulting work said that her organization simply has no integrity when it comes to cultural diversity because managers can easily side step policy to get their way. “A person of color does stand a chance in this organization when the people who manage them are not compelled to follow policy,” she said.

It is difficult when you are “the first.” The first woman manager in an organization does not have other women ahead of her to observe and model. While the promotion process may be based on a set of clear criteria, she knows that the additional factor for her is whether or not there are enough male managers who are willing to allow her in their club. This is one reason women who emulate male behavior tend to be more successful in getting access to the club. One of the challenges for females “doing the male thing” in an effort to make it into their club is that too many may fall short of getting it right. An example is a woman that was sent to me for executive cultural competence coaching because she had “playfully” pinched a male colleague on the buttocks. While this was something she observed male managers do often and had been a victim of it, she was unprepared for their reaction to a female “conducting herself in this manner.”

Many HEGs are undecided on whether they want to be in the club. It may be elite, but it is not easily integrated into how they identify themselves as an individual and culturally. They want to be promoted and enjoy the benefits of more responsibility as a leader, but they agonize over whether or not they want to expose themselves to a leadership club culture that they find distastefully exclusive. They feel that in order to make the senior managers feel comfortable, they have to put up with off color remarks, going with a group of them for cocktails, and adjusting to white male culture.

Talent management is about providing your employees with the support needed to add value to the organization. It is especially important to provide them with access to the range of rewarding opportunities. Providing a system like a retention and promotion institute can offer HEGs the courses, mentorship, and social networks needed to feel supported and included. The institute that is built with a balance between the organization’s needs and the changing needs of its workforce in general, and particularly its cultural diversity, will offer the highest return on investment. While the data indicate that this kind of program will be perceived as valuable, I don’t know of any organizations using it. I can say that many organizations can easily combine the existing mentoring program, affinity groups, and continuous education program to create the institute with relative ease.

Interpret tenure policies.
Most institutions strive for clarity and transparency, yet HEG employees remain insecure about the promotion process. One reason is that the “one-size-fits-all policy” do not specify criteria that account for cultural differences. It is up to individual managers and their departments to clarify how to achieve a more inclusive promotion policy and process. This might translate into providing HEG employees with a clear explanation of how specific policies are interpreted by the department and the human resource office.

Many HEGs have at least one senior person who has taken an interest in them and their success, but the individual tends to fall short of the cultural competence needed to understand their challenges or know how to offer the encouragement needed to deal with barriers they face in being fully included. Far too many HEGs do not have anyone in a more senior position who they feel has any interest in their success. Clarity in the policies and encouragement from the manager help HEGs manage the terrain better.

Being clear about policies is helpful, but even the best policy is subject to interpretation. Too often an HEG and a manager do not see eye-to-eye in matters concerning performance evaluation criteria and deficits. Because a certain amount of subjectivity is inherent in any evaluation, organizations need talent management strategies to make the experience more rewarding for HEGs.

II. Coaching & Mentoring
HEGs understand the importance of mentoring. Ideally, they want someone who is of their same cultural background, but will realistically settle for someone who will champion them in their efforts to succeed and grow professionally in the organization. They also don’t want or need mentoring at the cost of having to tolerate insensitivity. It is the trusted colleague or mentor that they can turn to for advice on how to navigate the culture of the organization that keeps them productive.

Consider the following real life incident. An African American and his white American male manager became friends. In fact, they spent time together outside of work. On a company business trip, the two of them were having a lot of friendly, non-business related conversation. The white manager tells a racial joke that the African American found insulting. Things were a bit uneasy between them for the remainder of the trip. The African American filed a formal complaint against his manager upon their return. The white manager confided during executive coaching that he thought the two them were friends and his joke was not intended to be insulting. He could not understand why his “friend” did not accept his apology or discuss how he felt more before filing a complaint.

A manager’s attitude towards cultural differences figures heavily in HEG employee satisfaction. Trower and Gallagher indicated that satisfaction with the department head is more important than clear promotion policies and even ahead of compensation.

At least five factors need to be considered in determining the extent that an HEG employee will bond with her or his mentor.

A Fast-Moving, Ever-Changing Organizational Culture. The modern organization is a daily hustle and bustle response to environmental forces, initiatives, and time-sensitive projects. It is difficult to set up a meeting, have lunch together, or just take time out for collegial connections. If the mentor or manager does not carve out the time, keep changing appointments, or forgets them, the HEG employee will likely spiral downwards.

Confusing autonomy and isolation. It’s easy to feel isolated when you are the only HEG, or one of a few, in your department or organization. You may have chosen to work in a department that is under represented by HEGs, but you do not choose to be isolated. This is the case for individual in the early stages of her career or the seasoned professional who is new to an organization. Understanding the organizational culture as quickly as possible is imperative for success. This is one reason that affinity groups pay off significantly.

Weak support systems. Many successful HEGs come from backgrounds in which they were encouraged to speak up and contribute. This is one factor among several that have made them successful. Workplace satisfaction is difficult when an HEG speaks up in an effort to make a contribution and reactions from the audience make him or her feel devalued. This reminds me of a deaf engineer working for a city administration engineering department. He found himself missing out on a lot of short hallway meetings because his back was turned to the conversation and no one took the time to bring it to his attention. When he turns around to see that the meeting was breaking up and asks a colleague what had transpired, he is all too often told it that it wasn’t important. There were days he did not feel like getting out of bed to go to work due to the stress of coping with such daily indignities.

Need to be prepared for the competitive nature of retention and promotion. Administrators know that it is essential to create a welcoming and supportive environment for HEG employees. They try hard to let them know that the organization values diversity and will not tolerate harassment. Yet, the organization falls short of offering opportunities to enhance collegiality with mentoring, connecting with other colleagues, and promoting a culture of support.

Orientation programs for new HEG employees that extend beyond a single day, cover the range of opportunities and support, and make connections to colleagues across the organization give the individual a general sense of the culture and how to fit in.

It can be argued that much of what has been stated so far applies to most any employee, rather than HEGs in particular. The next section focuses on cultural diversity specific retention and promotion issues.

III. The Demand for Diversity
Many new employees prefer and even expect a culturally diverse workplace. This is especially true of recent college graduates who have grown accustomed to learning about and valuing diversity. They desire to work among colleagues that offer diversity of thought and ideas, as well as of racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The organization that embraces cultural diversity is considered a much more desirable place to work.

Embracing cultural diversity also creates a welcoming atmosphere for new recruits. The problem is that a gap often exists between the organization’s mission statement about embracing diversity and a commitment to removing barriers to inclusion. If the reality is that the organization remains steeped in a culture of exclusionary practices, HEGs see through it quickly because they have learned to have their radars up for such things. As one of Trower and Gallagher interviewees said “This place is racist, sexist, and tremendously homophobic. I’ve stopped going into the office and I hardly talk to anyone. The rewards and benefits given to my white, married male junior faculty colleagues with families and me are very different. I don’t feel like I fit here at all.”

The Trower and Gallagher study results show that minority faculty members expressed less satisfaction with nearly all climate variables measured, including the issue of how well they fit into the organization in comparison with their white peers.

A diversity and inclusion initiative with goals, objectives, and milestones is needed to offer the comprehensive organizational culture change program for removing barriers to inclusion. Of course, the high impact initiative is based on good data, which includes identifying the organization’s stage of inclusion.2 Unfortunately, most organizations equate developing a diversity recruitment plan with a diversity and inclusion initiative. The difference is that the latter aims to change the organization’s culture rather than to increase diversity alone. It is assumed that an inclusion cannot be fully realized without changing exclusive practices across the organization, rather than in recruitment practices alone.

Offer visible leadership. The promotion of the best and brightest HEGs to leadership positions offers needed talent management resources and sends the message that the organization is serious about becoming inclusive. Women, Native Americans, people with disabilities, and other HEGs will have more access to mentors that better understand their perspectives. These individuals will also model excellence and help fellow leadership team members better understand HEG needs.

Develop a culturally competent recruitment team. The recruiters should have a set of best diversity recruitment practices to follow and an ability to translate each of them into their organization’s culture. The recruit team should, for example, identify and discuss tactics for developing a broad and deep pool of applicants. More importantly, the diversity recruits need to perceive the recruiters as focused on their needs and concerns. This requires a recruiter that is more than someone born with the “right” skin color, a liberal-minded view of diversity, or a desire to learn. It is imperative that recruiters have learned about cultural differences in things like time orientation, expectations about how they wanted to treated, and collegiality.

It goes almost without saying that exploring individual recruiter’s unconscious biases concerning different cultural groups is imperative. We use an exercise in our work called “How Colorblind Am I? It involves using a checklist of values and beliefs about different cultural groups to uncover personal biases. Participants love it because it is non-threatening way to increase awareness of cultural groups you have ease or difficulty in valuing.

Recruit actively. Recruitment is hands-on for the best practice organizations. It is done on the phone, on the airplane, in the hallways, at lunch, and at the cleaners. You can hardly go anywhere today without meeting HEG professionals. Each person you come into contact is a potential recruit for your organization. Keep in mind that you only have about 1-2 minutes to leave a positive lasting impression. This is not only due to the brevity of many of our new contacts, but it is also the upper limit for forming impressions of people who do not know.

Once you get past the greetings, find out more about the person. What they do and what their aspirations are? You will more likely find many people who can be recruited. Managers, supervisors, and CEOs should personally be involved in reaching out to prospective HEG candidates and invite them to apply. This is especially true of high potential HEG talent in the pool. It is surprising how many leaders avoid the vary conferences and other industry wide events where potential HEG candidates are more likely to be present. If the human resource department is the only contact during the recruitment phase, the organization is destined to lose high potential candidates. They are smart enough to seek out the movers and shakers of an organization in order to get a sense of where they should be spending their time actively job searching.

Create target-of-opportunity internships. These programs are popular because they work. The idea is to offer a summer internship or part time internship during the school year to high potential HEGs. It is no guarantee that the interns will be considered for hire or take an opportunity when your organization offers it, but it affords you opportunities to learn about how to recruit these candidates and what is needed to retain them at the same time.

Showcase Diversity Talent. Showcasing the contributions HEGs make to the organization is a sure fire way of increasing inclusion and attracting the best and brightest. HEG employees looking for mentors can find those who best fit their needs. This includes showcasing their contributions outside of work, such as church responsibilities, children’s sports, community boards, and other activities that show social, environmental, and other commitments.

Summary
Recruiting and retaining HEGs requires walking your talk and stretching you and your organization. Putting more emphasis on recruitment without consideration for the barriers to inclusion HEGs will inevitably experience is setting them and the initiative up for failure. Expecting them to figure out what the “game” is without adequate mentoring and human resource policy clarity will result in a revolving door, increased legal jeopardy, and lower productivity. It starts with a diversity and inclusion initiative led by a capable diversity professional with the authority to make things happen. But, the individual must have the support of a leadership that is conscious of its own responsibility and biases towards inclusion.

Billy Vaughn PhD CDP is a Chief Learning Officer for DTUI.com. He can be reached at admin@dtui.com. This article is based in part on an article by Cathy Trower and Anne Gallagher of Harvard University’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education. Their article can be found at http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/02/2009020401c.htm.
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1. Historically excluded group (HEG) replaces the use of minority group in the Diversity Training University International (DTUI.com) diversity professional certification program. The goal is to avoid getting caught up in the controversy of using the term minority (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group). The assumption is that any group that has been historically underrepresented in organizations is considered an HEG.

2. See, for example, the Organizational Inclusion Assessment Toolkit at http://www.dtui.com/toolkit.html.

Tagged with: cultural diversity talent management • diversity recruitment. • recruitment and retention

Reading, Pennsylvania Police Union Files Suit to Remove Latino Officer: What Can Go Wrong Without a Chief Diversity Officer

On January 26, 2009, In Talent Management, By admin

Diversity Officers can learn a lot from a recent lawsuit.

A Reading, PA police union has filed suit against the city and it’s Police Civil Service Board. The lawsuit claims that the Police Civil Service Board ignored state civil service laws in hiring a Latino who was not on the required list of eligible officer candidates.

The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 9′s suit is over the hiring of Officer Daniel Cedano-Erazo and it challenges the city’s authority to ignore state law to comply with a federal mandate.

Cedano-Erazo was hired in June as part of the city’s response to the settlement of a federal lawsuit that the Pennsylvania Statewide Latino Coalition filed in 2003.

The FOP wants Senior Judge Albert A. Stallone to revoke the hire and force the city to follow long-established rules to find a replacement. It claims those rules require the city to hire from among the top three candidates on the civil service list, which is ranked by test scores.

Cedano-Erazo, the suit claims, ranked 29th on the list that expired in 2006 and has not been on any list of eligible candidates since.

Cedano-Erazo has completed police academy training and was sworn in Dec. 23, the day after the FOP suit was filed. He is in field training.

The suit also names Mayor Tom McMahon and council President Vaughn D. Spencer as defendants.

Police Chief William M. Heim, who was looking at alternatives to get more Latinos on the force, has been under pressure from the city’s Police Diversity Board, which was established as part of the settlement of the coalition’s lawsuit. The diversity board has recommended creating a separate hiring list for police candidates who are bilingual.

Some city officials oppose the recommendation so Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, the federal judge the diversity board reports to, has appointed Senior District Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. to serve as a mediator.

What can the diversity officer learn from this incident? First of all, responding to the federal civil rights suit requires more than compliance. You need to take care of all the stakeholders. This includes working with the police union in preparation for the changes.

The police union does not have to like the federal suit outcome, but they can start to consider how existing policies need to be reconsidered in the face of the federal mandate. Too often, the organization’s leadership put off talking to adversaries until a lawsuit has been settled. This protects against making hasty decisions at the cost of building relationships needed to address the outcome collaboratively. Both union representatives and the leaders of the organization with union members stereotype each other as uncooperative and self serving. This is where the diversity professional comes in.

Ongoing dialog between the parties with the goal of finding win-win solutions is the key. The diversity officer needs the competence and authority to mediate the dialog and keep it moving towards a solution in order to achieve the diversity recruitment goals.

Each party tends to see an all-or-nothing power battle when it comes to union negotiating on behalf of members. Diversity officers educate, motivate, tolerate, and communicate in their role. They educate the parties about changing demographics and the impact on doing business as usual. They show how preparing for the demographic changes in the present requires thinking differently. Toleration for resistance and disharmony while working towards workable solutions is a must. And listening until everyone feels heard is critical.

This report is based in part on an article by Don Spatz which appeared in the Reading Eagle News (12/31/2008 Last Update: 1/5/2009 7:14:00 PM).

How Can Cultural Diversity Increase Innovation When It Decreases Civil Engagement?

On January 7, 2009, In Diversity Initiative, By admin

Experts boast the promise of cultural diversity for innovation and competitiveness in making their case for diversity in the workplace. Social scientists have argued that poverty, rather than cultural diversity, is responsible for civil unrest. However, a recent study questions both assumptions as well as popular social science theories about intercultural contact.

Differences make us stronger. At least this is what you hear from politicians, organizational leaders, and diversity champions. However, a recent study by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and author of Bowling Alone (2000) has found that civic engagement decreases as American communities become more culturally diverse.1

By civic engagement he means things like voting, volunteerism, charitable giving, and neighborly trust. Neighbors in multicultural communities trust each other about half as much as those who live in culturally homogeneous neighborhoods, according to the study. A replication of the study in the Netherlands by Jaap Dronkers of the European University Institute (Italy) found similar results, especially for trusting neighbors.2

The studies come at a time when businesses, communities, and politicians are championing diversity. With demographic trends pushing western nations inexorably toward greater diversity, cultural diversity opponents have fuel for their argument. So, the challenges for diversity professionals and HR specialists are (1) responding critically to cultural diversity opponents when they use Putnam’s data and (2) managing the unsettling productivity challenges that Putnam’s research predicts.

Address both concerns by pointing out that cultural diversity has historically created challenges temporarily and leaders need to put structures into place to reduce tension. Communities that settled immigrants, such as the Irish, Italians, Germans, and most recently people from Muslim countries, did not escape tension. Apart from a few town hall meetings and funding social science studies of the problems, community leaders did little to manage the problems. These limited responses suggest that they were ill equipped to do more. In each case, tolerance and even intercultural marriages slowly replaced tension. A business organization cannot afford to wait until things settle down on their own. The diversity initiative led by an expert diversity officer offers the structures needed to increase civility in the interest of improving productivity.

Ground rules and a communication strategy determine the diversity initiative’s effectiveness. Make certain that there is alignment among the people in the organization about the how to treat one another along with effective policies, procedures, and training to support the ground rules. Getting the people in the organization in alignment relies considerably on a communications strategy that helps them understand their cultural differences and how to manage them in the service of productivity. Click on the link to check out the article Makes You Wanna Holler: The High Impact Cultural Diversity Initiative Communications Strategy to learn more.

It would be great to have an organization or community in which everyone is invited and people accepted the reality that cultural diversity poses challenges. However, human beings need time to get use to cultural differences. Unfortunately, it is unproductive and costly to allow people to get comfortable with each other at their own rate. The cultural diversity expert knows how to create a climate in which civility is expected in order to follow the ground rules and avoid behaviors that sever trust.

Author: Billy Vaughn, PhD

1. Putnam, R. D. (2000). BOWLING ALONE: THE COLLAPSE AND REVIVAL OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY. New York: Simon & Schuster.

2. Putnam, R. D. (2007). E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and community in the twenty-first century. The 2006 Johan Skytte prize lecture. Scandinavian Political Studies, 30(2), 137-174.

3. BRAM LANCEE AND JAAP DRONKERS (2008). Ethnic diversity in neighborhoods and individual trust of immigrants and natives: A replication of Putnam (2007) in a West-European country. European University Institute. Paper presented at the International Conference on Theoretical Perspectives on Social Cohesion and Social Capital, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Brussels, Palace of the Academy. May 15, 2008 http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/English/trust.pdf

A Rev. Rick Warren Family Values Christmas Party Invitation Gets Media Attention

On December 18, 2008, In Consulting & Training, cultural diversity, Diversity Initiative, GLBT, Politics, Talent Management, By admin

The winter holidays give organizations an opportunity to show appreciation to employees and customers. Celebrating the holidays in an increasingly cultural diverse workplace can challenge human resource, leaders, managers and diversity officers. Do you follow tradition and celebrate Christmas at the cost of excluding non-Christians? Should you have a multicultural holiday celebration at the price of Christians feeling slighted? Well, these challenges pale in comparison to what a large Missouri-based electronics company is dealing with.

KSPR News in Missouri reported that a company email upset employee Clint Bradley so much that he felt compelled to give it to the media. You see, the email memo gave details about who employees were allowed to bring to their company Christmas party. The email presumably reads….”The only person an employee can take as a companion to the Christmas party is an individual that they are married to, or under the current laws of Missouri, they can marry.” “What went out from that email was blunt discrimination,” said Clint Bradley who was working in the human resources department for the electronics company at the time.

Bradley stated that “To start dictating to the employees who you can bring to a company Christmas party out of appreciation still says you are not completely welcome here at this company. We appreciate you labor, but you are still not completely welcome.”

Bradley said that he was standing up for his coworkers by forwarding the email to the media, which ultimately cost him his job. The company later publicly stated the email does not reflect company policy. “They told me I had jeopardized confidential information outside to the public. It wasn’t a confidential email. There was nothing that stated confidentiality,” said Bradley. Presumably the company also posted the memo on the bulletin board, which Bradley claims is another indication that it was not a confidential notice.

Although the company later notified the employees verbally that the party was limited to those eighteen years and older, Bradley thinks the bottom line is that the company set a negative precedent for its employees. He says, People of same gender orientation “just want to have the same equal amount of rights, knowing they are as good of an employee as the next person who’s working just as hard.”

This real life incident is a good example of organizational exclusion and the daily indignities people who “don’t fit it” experience in the workplace. While religious beliefs and homophobia may be the root problem, the leadership, diversity officer, and human resource professionals cannot afford to collude in exclusionary practices. Notice the media attention that company received after Clint became so appalled that he felt a need to go public—even though he knew it would cost him. Suddenly the company is in the public eye and has to worry about how suppliers and customers will react.

Excluding anyone in the workplace because you do not agree with her or his choice of partners will cost you. It drives talent away, lowers productivity, and jeopardizes the organization’s reputation. Avoid allowing homophobia or efforts to live by one’s religious beliefs jeopardize making sensible business decisions. You owe it to the employees, customers, and other stakeholders to take the high road on diversity matters.

If you are the organization’s leader, you may be worried about what your employees may think about supporting the inclusion of gays and lesbians. Your concern might be that their productivity may suffer or they will choose to leave the organization. There is one thing I have noticed about organizational change. People change when the leadership is serious about doing things differently. Yes, you may lose one or two valuable employees, but you will gain levels of talent and productivity that exceed what you have in a repression environment. Research shows that acceptance of gay life style correlates highly with innovations that stimulate the economy in major metropolitan areas.

What do you need to do in order to successfully include GLBT employees even when there is considerable resistance? Take a few moments and go to http://www.diversityofficermagazine.com to learn more. You can also give your two cents on this matter in the blog comment area.

Stay tuned as we continue to talk about breaking diversity news and offer you solutions to address them.

Staff Writer, Diversity Officer Magazine (http://diversityofficermagazine.com/magazine/?page_id=324)

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