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

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

How High is the Bar?: Cultural Diversity Talent Management

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

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

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

Post Election Racial Tensions Challenge HR & Diversity Professionals

On November 17, 2008, In Consulting & Training, Politics, Race Relations, Talent Management, cultural diversity, By admin

Human resource and diversity professionals have been contacting DTUI.com in an effort to figure out how to manage volatile discussions about Barack Obama being elected as the next U.S. president. Seminar Ad

The presidential race has been especially tense since the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic decision to declare George W. Bush the winner in 2000. It did not help matters after the final tally weeks later showed that Al Gore won the popular vote. George Bush won a second term in 2004, which further infuriated his opponents. One bumper sticker states how some felt about him as their leader—“Somewhere in Texas a Village Is Missing Its Idiot.” So, it may not be surprising that people have some pretty harsh things to say about our new president, Barack Obama. Imagine the things opponents are saying about the first president of color.

Check out these news reports:
Baylor University (11/05/2008)
• One guy taunted Obama supporters by saying “You’re in Texas and y’alls vote didn’t count because Texas still voted McCain.”
• One African American woman says she overheard some white males talking about how they were going to beat up the next black person that walked by.
• The Lariat, Baylor’s student newspaper, posted video of the burning of Obama and Biden campaign signs on their Web site.
“Those expressions of disagreement or that ‘my candidate didn’t win’ can take on a racial overtone, either on purpose or indirectly,” Baylor sociology professor Kevin Dougherty said in response.

The Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes, said there have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual.
• There have been cross burnings.
• Schoolchildren have chanted “Assassinate Obama.”
• Black figures have been hung from nooses.
• Racial epithets were scrawled on homes and cars.
While most of the reported incidents were in southern states, they certainly have not been limited to the south.
The major problem is that people have to take sides in these incidents which most often than not reproduces racial divisiveness. Consider the following reported incident:

University of Texas backup center Buck Burnette was kicked off the team by Coach Mack Brown after he posted the following message on his Facebook page:

. . . “all the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse”

Before he took his Facebook page down, Burnette offered the following as an apology:

“Clearly I have made a mistake and apologized for it and will pay for it. I received it as a text message from an acquaintance and immaturely put it up on facebook in the light of the election. Im not racist and apologize for offending you. I grew up on a ranch in a small town where that was a real thing and I need to grow up. I sincerely am sorry for being ignorant in thinking that it would be ok to write that publicly and apologize to you in particular. I have to be more mature than to put the reputation of my team at stake and to spread that kind of hate which I dont even believe in. Once again, I sincerely apologize.”

One reader’s comment about his remarks stated:

“I am glad he was kicked off. He supposedly is a “Christian” and spoke to youth groups at his home town as a role model. What a terrible example of christianity he is. I am embarrassed to say he is from Wimberley [Texas]. Those comments don’t just accidentally get posted. Buck’s true colors are showing.”

Someone else felt compelled to stick up for him by stating the following:
“What he said was stupid and inexcusable. That being said he is still just a 20 year old kid. He deserves a second chance as much as anyone. Who among us didn’t say or do something you later regretted when you were 20?”

You can imagine this discussion in a diversity course. People will take sides, disagree, and the discussion may heat up to the point that the facilitator will need to intervene.

Now consider the potential impact of post presidential election discussions in creating tension among workplace colleagues. This real life case from Canada drives the point home.

“When his boss labelled him a “terrorist” and referred to him as Bin Laden, car painter Sashram Dastghib struck back with a discrimination complaint. Dastghib, who emmigrated from Iran in search of a better life, often worked 14 hours a day at Richmond Auto Body in North Vancouver and rose through the ranks to become its highest paid painter.”

Although he claimed to love his job, Dastghib alleged co-workers Joel Franske and Peter De Santis made him the butt of racist jokes. This included addressing him over the loudspeaker as Bin Laden, and [posted] a “Wanted — Dead or Alive” poster, portraying him as a terrorist. The poster claimed he dressed in drag, had been indicted for bombing, was arrested for prostitution and was involved in bestiality and pornography.”
“Dastghib was fired after a workplace altercation with coworkers and laid a complaint of discrimination before the B.C. [British Columbia] Human Rights Tribunal. The managers admitted to the poster but denied repeated racist name calling. They claimed the human rights application was trumped up as retaliation for his being fired.”

“Everyone in the shop had a nickname based on some personal characteristic, they said. The employer maintained Dastghib never protested and furthermore participated in the workplace banter. Dastghib allegedly joked in one lunchroom exchange that he was entitled to a $1-million reward from the wanted poster because he really was a terrorist.”

“Many of the company’s claims may seem sensible — the workplace was collegial, and Dastghib socialized with the very people named in his complaint. The Tribunal heard that Franske, for example, had invited Dastghib into his home to hold his newborn child. The group even took scuba diving lessons together.”

“The tribunal disallowed the employer’s defence of ‘consent,’ saying the poster was a ‘particularly venal” diatribe. ‘It would be bad enough for this poster to come from a co-worker but it is much worse when it comes from a manager,’ the tribunal said, in concluding ‘the company created a poisoned environment’.”
“It also rejected the company’s claim the human rights complaint emerged only when Dastghib was fired for cause after the altercation. It found the discriminatory actions by the managers, including the poster, contributed to Dastghib’s anger, and was a factor in the outburst that lead to his being fired.”

In other words, Dastghib had to endure a hostile workplace that led to his anger and the altercation—and management was a perpetrator instead of protector.

It may appear that our right to vote for our candidate of choice translates into openly showing our disdain for the opponent even in the workplace, but doing so can create a hostile environment. Human resource and diversity professionals must be prepared to manage workplace hostility to guard against legal action and lower production.

What is the best way to handle workplace conflict due to heated presidential elections discussions? Here are a few things to consider:
1. Get the top leader(s) of your company to make an organization wide statement about the need for post-election civility and that inappropriate conduct will not be tolerated.
2. Use expert facilitators to hold a town hall meeting to discuss the election focusing on the racial, gender, and ageism tones that characterized the campaigns and how they can creep into the workplace. A diverse team of facilitators is a must.
3. Establish ground rules for talking about the town hall topic and sharing opinions.
4. Use an Ice Breaker that will help participants feel more comfortable with each other.
5. Discuss the costs and benefits of sharing personal views with workplace colleagues.
6. Teach participants how to use the Powerful Questions technique as a method of inquiry in sharing and learning about other groups.
7. Break participants into ethnic or racial groups to share their views safely and have them return to the larger group to share what they learned in the dialog. You may want to use an incident like the one involving Buck Burnett to discuss the pros and cons of kicking him off the team or helping him learn a lesson from the incident.
8. Have the groups reflect on what they learned from the summaries the groups shared, especially focusing on seeking clarity and understanding each other’s perspectives.
9. Break participants into randomly assigned small groups to discuss what they had learned and to learn from each other. Have each person write down what she or he learned from the town hall meeting.
10. Have an open discussion in the general group about what was learned.

Of course, you need excellent facilitation skills to create a safe environment, maintain civility while allowing people to get emotionally involved, and to identify teachable moments that you use to increase learning.

About the Author: Billy Vaughn, PhD CDP is a certified diversity professional with DTUI.com. He is a master certification trainer, cultural competence coach, sought after consultant, professional speaker, accomplished author, and cultural diversity thought leader. He can be reach at billy at dtui.com.

Navigating the Landmines of Diversity Leadership—Part 3

On September 8, 2008, In Consulting & Training, Diversity Initiative, cultural diversity, By admin

Diversity professionals must navigate the rugged terrain of uneven support, hostility, and apathy. Doing their job well takes political savvy that some people are born with, but most of us must find a way to learn it. The human resource officer and organizational development professional typically enjoy comparably little resistance in their work because it is perceived as less political. But, where would diversity professionals have learned the skills needed to manage social politics? Most of them do not have a degree in diversity leadership, cultural competence, or organizational development. Most have learned how to succeed in the diversity business from the School of Hard Knocks. A few can get by with this trial by error approach, but most will struggle along unless they take continuous education seriously.

In installment two, I pointed out that you can take the political issues concerning a diversity initiative by linking it to the organization’s purpose and return-on-investment. I emphasized the point that even the most politically savvy diversity professionals succumb to the pressures of nonsupporting leadership and limited authority when it comes to the diversity initiative.

This third article in the series continues the discussion about the top ten things diversity leaders need to know to navigate diversity politics. The full list includes the following:

1. Become a cultural diversity leadership expert and actively pursue continuous learning
2. Be clear about your own diversity lenses
3. Take the sting out of the diversity program in your business case
4. Be clear about the diversity and inclusion ROI
5. Have a really clear plan based on the big picture of the organization
6. Get the leadership on the front lines of promoting diversity and inclusion
7. Become part of a diversity professional network
8. Establish allies within your organization
9. Align the steering committee
10. Request the authority needed to do your work effectively
11. Neutralize diversity trouble makers
12. Hold managers accountable
13. Work with unit managers individually
14. Avoid personalizing criticism of the diversity program
15. Pat yourself on the back

The entire summary of the is too lengthy for a single article. I covered the first six items in the first two installments, which can be viewed by following this link. In this installment, I cover diversity politics items 7-9 which are shown above in red font.

Become Part of a Cultural Diversity Professional Network

Too many cultural diversity professionals are isolated. They may be the only in-house expert or consultant on the job. I learned from my mentor, Judith Katz, Ed.D., that we should always find a way to work in partnership with at least one other professional. Our work is too tough and we are under too much scrutiny to work in isolation. Even when you have a staff, this does not always translate into a support system. I know diversity professionals who have acquired their staff by default. One Chinese American human resource officer in a large accounting firm announced that she was ready to quit her job when her boss offered the diversity professional position in order to retain her. She did not have a clue about what the position required. A related point is that the most qualified person for a new diversity resource role is seldom based on cultural competence. How long you have been with the organization typically trumps diversity expertise. Yes, the person knows the organization’s culture, but that does not directly translate into being able to manage social politics.

The in-house diversity expert may be someone who has been hired from the outside as the “new” diversity officer. No matter how much homework you do in making a decision about whether or not to take such a job, inevitably you will find that the place is not as inclusive as you were led to believe. I often hear clients say that while the leader said all the right things to appear sincere about her or his diversity commitment during the job interview, it was absent in everyday reality on the job. In fact, most new hires for a new diversity position feel isolated, lonely, and poorly understood.

A common story I hear from diversity officers is that the first staff member they acquire is someone who is “appointed” by their supervisor. The supervisor protects an employee who has lost her or his position by requesting that the diversity officer accepts the individual. All too often the “new” hire brings with him or her very limited cultural competence and many of the deficits that led to dismissal.

One of the best ways to deal with isolation is to hire a diversity coach. This is someone who is an established expert. The individual basically champions the diversity professional, assist in problem solving, and keep the diversity professional motivated. Most diversity professionals find solace in attending professional conferences. I have personally attended the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE) for more than ten years. I am also fortunate enough that they request me to offer a workshop or presentation each year. I have grown fond of professional relationships I have established over the years of attendance—especially exchanging stories. This is one of the conferences that offer me opportunities to refresh my commitment to the profession.

Conferences and seminars are great, but they are for limited time periods. I also recommend an online community for diversity professionals. I conducted a Google search to look for a diversity professional organization I use to belong to, but it appears to be out of existence. The only one I came across was The Diversity Trainer and Professional Network, which DTUI.com sponsors. Click Here to check it out.

Establish Allies Within Your Organization

Allies are people who support your organization’s diversity initiative and you. They can assist you in concrete ways even if they choose to forgo being active members of your diversity steering committee. This is especially important for the diversity professional who has been hired from the outside because these diversity champions know the organization’s culture.

1. Make a list of people in the organization that would support the diversity initiative and recruit them as allies.

2. Set a goal to recruit a specific number of new allies. Then tell them that you need their support and be clear about what you are asking of each individual. For example, wouldn’t a member of the leadership team be a value asset in making certain that the diversity initiative is consistently part of the agenda? Will a long-standing diversity champion go to lunch with you on occasion so that you can use her or his knowledge of the organization in strategy development? How can you partner with the human resource officer to make the diversity initiative part of the solution to a range of HR processes? These are the questions you ask in determining who would be a good ally and how he or she may be supportive.

Branch out and stretch a bit. Most of your potential allies will be obvious to you. But perhaps you have not considered the compliance department or the finance office. The compliance department has a lot of data, for example. They can help you make your case for the strategy you want to sell to the leadership.—especially in terms of talent management and succession planning. The finance department has a clear view about budgetary matters. Learning about how they view organizational processes from a budgetary perspective can provide insight into how to make the best case for your budget.

Align Your Steering Committee

You may have heard me talk about this in the past. Few things bog down a diversity initiative more than diversity steering committee members having different assumptions about why their work is important. If one member, for example, believes that diversity means people look different on the outside, but everyone must buy into the organization’s existing culture while another member believes the culture must change to accommodate different identity groups, you have a potential lack of alignment. Lack of alignment is not due to their differences, but to the potential for conflict. The savvy diversity professional will have the competence needed to harness differences among committee member assumptions in the service of designing and developing the best diversity initiative.

Alignment work involves taking the time needed to learn about different assumptions among team members and understanding the possible consequences for group decision making. Again, the goal is not to get everyone to agree on the same set of assumptions. That is a recipe for disaster. Instead, the focus is on using the differences among team members as microcosm for the larger organization. Working towards becoming a model of cross cultural team work will serve the organization as a whole.

Summary

The cultural diversity professional role is too often political and controversial. Add the limited resources and lack of leadership support and you have a role that requires a considerable amount of endurance and savvy to succeed in the work. Membership in an online diversity professional network and conference attendance provide support groups to manage isolation and feeling undervalued. Establishing allies within your organization can also be a source of support, especially when mentoring is involved. You may also consider a diversity coach who will champion you and provide support during the trying periods. While a diversity steering committee may offer some support, it can be a source of stress as well. It is best to align the committee in order to get the most out of it. Otherwise, you will spend a considerable amount of time trying to get the members to agree on goals and objectives. Even if members go along with the proposed goals and objectives, alignment work will make certain that they are on board instead of quietly waiting for opportunities to resist the program’s implementation.

It is not easy being a cultural diversity professional. The tools we provide in this set of lessons can make work life less challenging. I will discuss gaining the authority needed to do your work effectively, neutralizing diversity trouble makers, and holding managers accountable in Part 4 of this lesson.

Navigating the Landmines of Diversity Leadership—PART 2

On August 21, 2008, In Consulting & Training, By admin

In the first installment of this series, I stated that diversity professionals must navigate the rugged terrain of uneven support, hostility, and apathy. Doing their job well takes political savvy that some are born with. In contrast, organizational development and effectiveness skills must be learned. But, where would diversity professionals have learned these skills? Most of them do not have a degree in diversity leadership, cultural competence, or organizational development. They have learned how to generally succeed in the diversity business from the School of Hard Knocks. A few can get by with this trial by error approach, but most continue to struggle especially in the area of diversity politics.

While a considerable number of diversity professionals can competently navigate organizational politics, even the best succumb to the pressures of an nonsupporting leadership and limited authority when it comes to the diversity initiative.

This second article in the series continues the discussion about the top ten things diversity leaders need to know to navigate diversity politics. The full list includes the following:

The entire summary of the list of items is too lengthy for a single article. I covered the first three items in the first installment, which can be viewed by following this link. In this installment, I cover diversity politics items 4-6, which are shown above in red font.

Be clear about the diversity and inclusion ROI

Until recently cultural diversity initiative funding was primarily targeted for compliance protection training. Anti-harassment, civil rights, and cultural diversity awareness training received most of the resources. Today, managers want to make certain that they are getting a sufficient return on their diversity initiative investment (ROI). They expect better talent selection, increased productivity, a reduction in insensitivity complaints, and improved employee retention for the resources they allocate. These are basic cultural diversity talent management expectations.

Measurement of diversity initiative ROI starts with defining the diversity initiative business case, determining how much the initiative will cost, and verifying the amount of return.

Questions you will address in making your case are:

Why is the diversity initiative important?
What are the goals and objectives?
What is the amount of investment needed for a successful initiative?
How is the return on investment measured?

Start with making a case for the initiative

One of the most impactful cases for a diversity initiative based on my experience is made with results from our diversity scorecard analysis. In one case, our client’s diversity committee struggled with getting on the same page about why their initiative was important. One group felt that the company had an obligation to society to promote a diverse organization. Another group emphasized the fact that the metropolitan area’s demographics were changing with the increased numbers of people of Mexican descent. The need to remain a competitive and innovative bank was a third rationale offered by another group of committee members. Different committee members were voicing different opinions about the group’s work to colleagues and managers as a result their different views about why the initiative was important.

We used the diversity scorecard method to create links along four levels of analysis: the bank’s bottom line (top of chart), its mission and vision, the operations needed to produce results, and the cultural competence needed to be productive (bottom of chart). Participants were asked a series of questions and the responses were characterized by arrows pointing between the four scorecard levels on the scorecard chart.

The set of arrows across the scorecard levels indicate that the bank’s ability to increase revenue is directly linked to its excellent customer service vision and mission, and that demographic changes require new skills in order to fill the mission and impact the bottom line. While other diversity initiative goals expressed by the diversity committee were appreciated and maintained in the overall business case, the culturally competent customer service delivery piece took center stage.

Diversity Initiative Goals

Once the culturally competent customer service cultural competence goal was established, the need to provide training became the focus. Obviously, if the bank wants to determine the ROI for training, the allocated resources, especially hidden expenses, must be accounted for. The assessment data from our example indicated that customers of color find the bank tellers so difficult to talk to that they avoid using the services to the extent possible. One young Latina said that “I have to go to the bank often. The tellers act as though I am a burden to them. They are unfriendly and talk to me as though I am not able to speak and understand English. I was born and raised in the United States.” The woman tries to avoid using the services. She is considering moving her money to another bank.

The bank tellers, on the other hand, say that they know it is important to provide each customer with excellent service, but find those with limited English difficult to serve. Their stereotypes about Spanish-speaking people being in the country illegally and not putting enough effort into learning English make it difficult to serve these customers equitably. Training is the key to making the customers feel included and the tellers feel more competent.

Measuring the ROI

The amount of investment in the diversity initiative is determined by the goals and time line. Our bank client wanted to have a competitive edge over other local banks in reaching out to Spanish-speaking members of the community. They invested in the initiative as though it was extension of their advertisement. They saw the investment as an imperative.

The most important factor in measuring the return-on-investment for training is the diversity initiative goal. Measuring the amount of new accounts generated by the tellers before and after the training, for example, and then comparing the increase revenue with the cost of the training is the typical way to measure the ROI. Different components of the diversity initiative can be measured in a similar way. The diversity officer’s salary, support staff, and employee time away from the desk for training are other factors considered in ROI analysis.

Summary

Take the political game out of diversity initiative by linking it to the organization’s purpose. Instead of getting caught in the trap of uneven commitment and negative stereotypes about cultural diversity programs, get your audience to focus on the bottom line. The rationale for implementing a cultural diversity initiative should be to improve the organization’s bottom line. A non-profit organization’s bottom line may be to improve customer service, while a for-profit organization may focus on increasing shareholders’ value. Help your audience make the connection with a diversity scorecard analysis.

The investment in an initiative consists of the cost of designing, developing, implementing, and sustaining it. By measuring the effect on the organization’s bottom line before and after implementing different parts of the initiative, and then comparing with the costs, diversity professionals can determine the return-on-investment.

The next installment of this article about Navigating the Landmines of Diversity Leadership will focus on (a) the benefits of belonging to a diversity professional network, (b) establish allies within your organization, and (c) align the steering committee.

By Billy Vaughn, PhD–If you like this article you will love this one (Click Here).

The Key Elements of a Cultural Diversity Talent Management Strategy

On June 17, 2008, In Consulting & Training, Talent Management, cultural diversity, By admin

Keywords: cultural competence, Talent management, Cultural diversity talent management (CDTM), multicultural recruitment and retention, Onboarding

Summary

Talent management is not a one size fits all approach in modern organizations. This article focused on the need to tailor talent management to meet the needs of a diverse organization. Cultural diversity requires thinking about how to tailor recruitment and retention practices in order to meet the specific needs of different cultural groups represented among new employees. First you need a strategy based on data that provides insight into the points of view across different cultural groups. Providing culturally appropriate practices will increase recruitment and retention.

We have entered a period of talent scarcity. At the same time, demographic changes have led to an increase in cultural diversity in the recruitment pool. In an era of abundance talent, implementing a diversity initiative is the best strategy for harnessing cultural differences in the service of productivity. The goal is to reduce the challenges cultural differences create in people working efficiently and effectively together. In order to attract the best and brightest in a shrinking, yet diverse talent pool, the strategy must include tailoring recruitment practices to meet the needs of different cultural groups.

It is well known that the baby boomers will retire in the next few years, which will result in a “brain drain.” The knowledge and experience of about 40% of the workplace will leave with the retirees. Even with the recent increase in U.S. birthrates, the workforce is expected to decline steadily between the years 2000 to 2050 (Monthly Labor Review, November 2006). Even with more workers opting to retire later, the number of younger generation recruits in the pipeline is insufficient to meet the labor force demands. In addition, retention of college graduates is increasingly difficult. To sustain productivity and high performance in an era of stiff competition, population shifts, and the challenge of managing diversity, organizations must address the unique needs of different cultural groups they hope to attract and retain. Maintaining talent and the drain of knowledge that retiring workers will take with them is the central concern.

Talent management is the key to addressing the inevitable knowledge gap challenges. Cultural diversity talent management (CDTM) can address multicultural recruitment and retention challenges. CDTM is a unique approach that requires customization similar to the human resource practices that tailor performance to individual needs.

Here are three things to consider in developing talent management practices for cultural diversity recruitment and retention:

Develop a strategy
Provide culturally appropriate recruitment and performance review processes
Provide cultural appropriate career development practices

Developing a CDTM Strategy

It is not surprising that collecting data is the key to developing a CDTM strategy. One of the most important benefits of affinity groups, turnover interviews, and mentoring is the valuable data they can make available. A study by Sodexho and the National Council of La Raza (2008), for example, indicates that a significant number of companies view the Latino affinity group as an invaluable resource for customer insight and product testing. Human resource officers and managers can use these groups to gain insight into how to customize talent management programs. Ideally, the human resource officer works with the managers and the cultural diversity resource specialist in using the data to develop tailored talent management strategies.

Using a combination of quantitative survey data and focus group interview qualitative data offers the richest source of information. Certain groups, such as Native Americans, will be less open to survey data than group interviews. Focus group interview data collection tends to increase the odds of participation, but the trade off is that data analysis is more challenging. The more difficult it is for people to talk about the subject matter, the more clever data collection techniques will have to be.

HSB C used a group of “robust, consistent and transparent methods” for global talent identification. The multiple sources of data included 360 degree feedback instruments, interviews, panel reviews, self and manager assessment. The capability framework was constructed to identify the behaviors of outstanding HSBC performers.

Culturally Appropriate Recruitment and Performance Reviews

One of the big mistakes managers and human resources officers make is relying on the same recruitment and performance review practices that were “successful” when the organization was monocultural. They soon realize that something is not working as it should as these out-dated practices fail to include a more diverse set of employees. The second common mistake is thinking that diversity recruitment and performance review skill building alone will solve the problem. While this is a reasonable approach, care must be taken in developing skills without the awareness and attitude needed to support them. In other words, the approach fails to consider the cultural competence components that serve as a foundation for skills (e.g., awareness, attitude, and knowledge).

The key elements of performance review cultural competence is awareness of one’s own cultural diversity lenses, attitude towards cultural differences in performance, knowledge of what performance means across cultures, and the skills needed to competently manage cultural differences (See the DTUI course on this topic for more details). This is definitely one of the training areas for which there is increasing need.

Provide Culturally Appropriate Career Development Practices

Career development is where mentorship programs and performance evaluation programs overlap. Much of what has been offered above about performance evaluation is relevant here. The primary difference is that the mentor and mentee tend to meet more often and the relationship is less hierarchical.

The use of Onboarding for recruitment and retention is increasing in popularity. According to Madeline Tarquinio, Onboarding “encompasses the variety of tasks and requirements involved with acclimating and engaging a new employee in the company.” It has been shown that Onboarding improves retention and reduces the time new for new employees to reach expected productivity levels, according to a study by the Aberdeen Group (2008). Onboarding can be easily extended to CDTM for meeting the needs of employees across cultures. You want to make certain that socializing new employees into the organization’s culture is inclusive to the extent that it is tailored to meet the needs of different groups. The younger generation employees are acculturated to social networking, which translates into making certain that these new recruits are quickly introduced to as many of networking opportunities in the organization as possible. Best of class companies Onboard before the new employee starts, according to the Aberdeen Group study (2008).

Summary

Billy Vaughn, PhD
Chief Learning Officer
billy@dtui.com
If you like this article, you should check out our Cultural Diversity Talent Management webinar series starting August 13, 2008. Click here to learn more.

The Short-Sighted Washington Post Article About Diversity Training

On January 20, 2008, In Consulting & Training, By admin

IN THIS DIVERSITY BLOG ISSUE

Diversity Lesson: The Short-Sighted Washington Post Article About Diversity Training
Diversity News
Diversity Events
You Get to Comment on this Issue

The Short-Sighted Washington Post Article About Diversity Training

News reports of recent studies questioning the merits of diversity training have been published since July 2007. The studies are limited in assuming that diversity training is conducted primarily to increase the number of women and other historically excluded groups in the management and leadership ranks. A January 19, 2008 Washington Post article about the studies suffers from under-reporting the results describing the different outcomes for white women and African Americans.

My blog, Diversity Training is Not Dead—It is Undergoing Head Surgery (July, 2005), resulted in republications on a lot of websites. I argued that diversity training is needed today to develop cultural competence. The school teacher, healthcare worker, and inner city fire chief will tell you that diversity matters. Will diversity training offer them the knowledge and skills to manage cultural differences? You bet—if an expert designs, develops, and delivers it.

The primary focus of the Washington Post and similar news articles is on arguing that the research does not support the effectiveness of diversity training for promoting women and people of color into management ranks. You do not need my twenty years plus as a diversity expert to realize that expecting one course to change an organization is simplistic at best. Most organizations engaged in a serious diversity effort today focus on building an inclusive organization, for which diversity training is one of several programs in a larger diversity education initiative. The data from the studies indicate that mandating sensitivity training for managers does not lead to increased management level positions for non-white males. A closer look at the data however shows that the outcomes for white women and African American group differ. African American women tended to benefit from programs that reduced their isolation, while structural changes in the organization led to the comparably superior benefits for white women. African American men as a group did not benefit from any of the programs.

The study results confirm what diversity professionals and human resource officers have known for a long time. It takes a long term effort to promote an inclusive organizational culture. Scott Page’s research shows how diverse teams outperform monocultural teams on a range of problem solving tasks. Scott says that teams in the real world must work through their cultural differences to achieve the results he finds under controlled conditions. It is more profitable to mandate diversity training when an organization’s productivity is expected to increase with mandatory multicultural team building training.

The obvious argument against mandatory training is that it will not work if people resent it. A social science study published in the early 1980s showed that while participants viewed affirmative action as offering an unfair advantage, they liked the results because it increased opportunities to work with people of different cultural backgrounds. Why wouldn’t they utilize valuables skills that increase their effectiveness in working with people across cultures? In fact, this is what people are asking for in my experience. They are tired of the sensitivity training that focuses on making white American males feel guilty about women and people of color having a disadvantage.

I conclude that diversity training has a poor reputation due to limited theory development and research to support. One of the most important contributions is the introduction of the term cultural competence among human service scholar-practitioners. Cultural competence is conceptualized as comprised of components and sensitivity and awareness make up just one of them. The best diversity training is based on assessment that identifies the cultural competence an organization needs to target for high impact diversity education (http://www.dtui.com/consultbkadv.html ).

Diversity professionals need to take back diversity training. Otherwise short-sighted scholars and journalists will continue to undermine our work.

DIVERSITY NEWS

Racial harassment still infecting the workplace

By Eve Tahmincioglu, MSNBC contributor

updated 6:24 p.m. PT, Sun., Jan. 13, 2008

Despite decades of civil-rights progress, workers’ complaints are rising

Racial harassment cases have more than doubled since the early 1990s, hitting an all-time high of 6,977 in 2007, according to EEOC data. (Blacks file nine out of 10 race harassment charges.) From fiscal 2000 to 2007, the EEOC received 51,000 racial harassment charge filings nationwide, already over the number received during the entire 1990s.

The big racial harassment payouts tend to get the headlines. Earlier this month, Lockheed Martin Corp. agreed to settle a case and pay $2.5 million to a black electrician who claimed he was harassed on a daily basis. He was threatened with lynching and once told: “If the South had won then this would be a better country.”

But cases like this with smaller monetary penalties are numerous, although they may not get as much press coverage.

According to an EEOC lawsuit involving AK Steel settled last February, workers were allegedly subjected to Nazi symbols, nooses, KKK videos, and graffiti with messages to murder blacks. In January 2007, EEOC settled the racial harassment suit against the company for $600,000.

And in July 2006, Home Depot paid a $125,000 settlement in a suit that alleged, according to the EEOC, “that a black former night crew lumberman/forklift operator was subjected to a racially hostile work environment because management condoned racial remarks by his supervisors who called him ‘black dog,’ ‘black boy.’” One manager even was charged with stating “that the Supreme Court had found black people to be ‘inferior.’”

These over-the-top acts at major corporations, probably have you scratching your head wondering what ever happened to diversity training, the endless videos on race-relations etiquette and human resource departments hell bent on weeding out such behavior.

Despite all these efforts that expanded greatly in the 1990s, hatred and ignorance apparently remain alive and well. There are a host of reasons racial harassment is escalating, according to labor experts, everything from a struggling economy that has caused major job insecurity to more people of color in the workplace, and even some blame violent video games.

“Acts of violence and hate have been glorified in some video games and through the Internet, as well as being perpetuated in the news and entertainment media,” says the EEOC’s Grinberg. “Therefore, some people may have become desensitized, almost to the point of becoming immune, to inhumane behavior that leads to racially hostile work environments.”

But whatever the reason, the bottom line for a worker who experiences such hostility is they are often stuck between a rock and a hard place when such bias occurs. Reporting such behavior often leads to retaliation, an increase in the harassment, or years of litigation, as happened in the recent Lockheed Martin case and employee Charles Daniels.

“I endured it way too long,” says Daniels about the harassment he suffered at the hands of four coworkers and one supervisor. He made several complaints to management but was told by an HR manager, of all people, that “boys will be boys.”

While we think of cases of harassment typically hit the rank and file, some legal experts have seen an uptick in black managers being harassed. Judy Broach, an attorney who represents workers, says she’s seen many black managers quit their jobs in disgust because of harassment.

“I think there is now a sense that it’s OK to display some degree of racial insensitivity” that wasn’t OK ten years ago, she adds, because many people wrongly think the time is over for special treatment because “blacks have achieved so much. Companies are relaxing standards and we’re sliding backwards.”

The influx of Gen Yers may also be contributing to the rise in reporting of such harassment, surmises Steve Pemberton, Chief Diversity Officer for Monster.com. “The younger generation isn’t as tolerant as the baby boomers,” he explains.

Myrtle Bell, an associate professor of management for University of Texas at Arlington, says it’s all about the sluggish economy.

“The economy is much worse than it has been, so when times get tough people who feel entitled begin to feel things are being taken from them so they take it out on people whom they feel get things unjustly,” she explains.

In the case of Daniels from Lockheed Martin, he decided to take his issue to the EEOC and won. Raymond Cheung, the EEOC attorney who led the agency’s case, says, “To combat the harassment and threats faced by Mr. Daniels is at the heart of why the EEOC was created. Despite concerns of retaliation, this man had the courage to stand up and make public what happened to him, in an effort to ensure that it would not happen to anyone else.”

Alas, not everyone has the wherewithal to make such a journey, nor would his or her efforts be guaranteed to lead to such a victory. In fact, less than 20 percent of race complaints ever end up with some sort of monetary or work-related wins, says Bell.

So what’s a worker to do?

First off, find a place to work that you know is friendly to your race, gender or sexual preference. Bell says people searching for a job should do their homework beyond just what salary or benefits are offered. Talk to workers about their experiences at the company; check out social-networking sites like Facebook; and find out if the company has affinity groups, or programs for minorities.

This kind of research should be done on your own time before you send out your resume or at least before you go for the interview. Stay away from talking about affinity groups and the company’s treatment of race issues unless the hiring manager brings it up. Some hiring managers or recruiters, afraid of litigation, may take this as a sign you’re a troublemaker.

If you’re already in a job where harassment is taking place, use some logic to diffuse the situation.

Maybe you are dealing with a manager or coworker that isn’t aware how his or her words, or pictures on their desk offend you. Kerry Patterson, who co-authored “Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior,” says he sat in on a meeting recently where a manager from the South was referring to certain workers at “darkies.”

“A black colleague in the room said: ‘You know what, in lots of parts of country that’s an insulting term. I’d rather you not use that,’ and he said, ‘Ok,’” Patterson explained. “It didn’t go to court or end up in a fist fight.”

If common sense does not prevail or you just don’t want to confront the harasser, you should first find out if your employer has a protocol on how to handle these situations and follow it. Also, advises Bell, you have to document everything that happens and save any e-mails or notes that support your claims.

In cases where your boss is the harasser, you don’t go to your boss, or his or her supervisor. Head for the HR department and state your case, including a written account of what’s been happening.

There is always the EEOC if nothing comes out of your complaints. (Check out the EEOC’s Web site for how to file a charge.)

But if a court fight is not for you, Bell suggests you consider leaving your employer because years of harassment can do damage to your body and soul.

Unfortunately, Bell adds, this type of bias against blacks isn’t going away anytime soon because it’s engrained in our society.

And even though Barack Obama is showing such potential as a presidential contender, the way people view him may be part of the problem. “People refer to him as a black candidate. He’s just as much white as he is black,” Bell points out. “That says a lot about race in America.”

Cultural differences alter brain’s hard-wiring: New research finds that social perspective influences how we see the world

By Clara Moskowitz

updated 10:28 a.m. PT, Fri., Jan. 18, 2008

It’s no secret culture influences your food preferences and taste in music. But now scientists say it impacts the hard-wiring of your brain.

New research shows that people from different cultures use their brains differently to solve basic perceptual tasks.

Neuroscientists Trey Hedden and John Gabrieli of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research asked Americans and East Asians to solve basic shape puzzles while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. They found that both groups could successfully complete the tasks, but American brains had to work harder at relative judgments, while East Asian brains found absolute judgments more challenging.

Previous psychology research has shown that American culture focuses on the individual and values independence, while East Asian culture is more community-focused and emphasizes seeing people and objects in context. This study provides the first neurological evidence that these cultural differences extend to brain activity patterns.

“It’s kind of obvious if you look at ads and movies,” Gabrieli told LiveScience. “You can tell that East Asian cultures emphasize interdependence and the U.S. ads all say things like, ‘Be yourself, you’re number one, pursue your goals.’ But how deep does this go? Does it really influence the way you perceive the world in the most basic way? It’s very striking that what seems to be a social perspective within the culture drives all the way to perceptual judgment.”

The results of the study were published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Hard work
The scientists asked 10 Americans and 10 East Asians who had recently arrived in the U.S. to look at pictures of lines within squares.

In some trials, subjects decided whether the lines were the same length, regardless of the surrounding squares, requiring them to judge individual objects independent of context. In others, participants judged whether different sets of lines and squares were in the same proportion, regardless of their absolute sizes, a task that requires comparing objects relative to each other.

The fMRI revealed that Americans’ brains worked harder while making relative judgments, because brain regions that reflect mentally demanding tasks lit up. Conversely, East Asians activated the brain’s system for difficult jobs while making absolute judgments. Both groups showed less activation in those brain areas while doing tasks that researchers believe are in their cultural comfort zones.

“For the kind of thinking that was thought to be culturally un-preferred, this system gets turned on,” Gabrieli said. “The harder you have to think about something, the more it will be activated.”

Individual flexibility
The researchers were surprised to see so strong an effect, Gabrieli said, and interested in the reasons for individual variations within a culture.

So they surveyed subjects to find out how strongly they identified with their culture by asking questions about social attitudes, such as whether a person is responsible for the failure of a family member.

In both groups, participants whose views were most aligned with their culture’s values showed stronger brain effects.

DIVERSITY PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES

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Diversitypedia is Coming Soon

Heard of Wikipedia? Well Diversitypedia offers Wikipedia style access to an encyclopedia of diversity words and extended articles about what they mean. The diversity professional has a resource for generating training materials. Students can quickly learn about cultural diversity. Healthcare workers can better understand their patient’s cultural backgrounds. These are just a few practical uses Diversitypedia offers. More interestingly—Anyone can contribute to the website’s contents. It grows each time a user makes a contribution. We will send an email about where and when to access it.

DIVERSITY EVENTS

January 21, 2008—Martin Luther King Day Celebration

Diversity Professional Certification Seminars—Spring 2008

Get an edge on the competition with credentials. You can complete the DTUI.com Diversity Professional Certification program no later than the end of Spring 2008 by taking advantage of the following opportunities:

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http://www.dtui.com/conferences.html

National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE) May 27-May 31, 2008 in Orlando, Florida. (www.ncore.ou.edu) 7:12 PM 1/20/2008.

Diversity Training Isn’t Dead. It Is Undergoing Head Surgery!

On December 15, 2004, In Consulting & Training, cultural diversity, By admin

Diversity training has undergone change over the past couple of decades and significantly so within the past five to ten years. Why? Poor training and a market driven by legal pressure are certainly among the most important. I don’t want to dwell too much on the historical stuff here though. You can go to the following link for a more substantial discussion (Click Here).

The point I want to make here is that diversity training has not been used to develop competency people need to live better and work more productively with people from different cultures. It is used for social engineering (It’s the right thing to do!) and to protect against lawsuits due to incompetent behaviors. But it is too rarely used in a serious effort to increase cultural competence.

We can see the need for cultural competence in our daily lives and in the news media. It is not uncommon for a teacher, minister, parent, or public figure to say or do something culturally incompetent. The Republican Trent Lott lost his coveted position as House Speaker and sports announcers have lost their jobs for making racially insensitive comments about black athletes. One of the primary reasons there is a war against terrorism is the poor international relations competence within the United States government.

The more distressing aspect of the whole matter is the out-dated and limited understanding of how to identify and train cultural competence among diversity professionals. Early on diversity training necessarily need to focus on making people aware of cultural differences and their impact on behavior. Awareness training even jived well with the legalistic use of the intervention.

While the legalistic concerns continue to drive diversity work, the reality today is that globalism, increased awareness training in public and private schools, as well as diversity training-saturated market makes the approach outdated. Organizational leaders finally understand what the people they lead have been saying all along. We need diversity training that gives us something we can use, rather than social engineering.

That is why I focus on identifying cultural competency gaps and developing training to address them. This is the surgery needed to develop culturally competent diversity professionals. You can learn more about my views at the following link (Click Here).

I welcome your comments.

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The Short-Sighted Washington Post Article About Diversity Training

Diversity Training Isn’t Dead. It Is Undergoing Head Surgery!

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