let me tell you about harry harry is the second highest-ranking executive at a multi-million dollar corporation he's a successful white man in his early 60s with an ivy league education harry is well connected he has a conservative political worldview and he supports a number of charities and on the outside looking in harry is very similar to the other five white men and women cease me in his organization he loves his work and enjoys having great relationships with his peers but in august 2020 that began to change you see that summer brought global attention to the
racial injustices that people of color particularly black people faced in the u.s and in harry's mind his peers seem to have changed overnight they started talking about the need to invest in diversity equity and inclusion or dei for sure and these concepts were seldomly brought up before then they started acting and speaking differently they started sharing plans to aggressively only hire future leaders that are people of color because the optics of their team wasn't good and whenever harry questioned their decisions they would likely joke with him oh harry your opinion doesn't matter dei has nothing
to do with you it's not for privileged white men harry your bias is clouding your judgment harry your privilege is showing for the first time in his career harry felt uncomfortable he felt outnumbered he essentially felt unsafe to speak his mind at a company he was effectively leading months later his company decided to hire my firm to help them begin their diversity equity and inclusion journey and two weeks before that project began harry actually invited me to a virtual meeting i remember when i entered that meeting room i could see the look of worry in
his face even though this was going to be our first conversation i had never seen that look in the eyes of someone with his background in power harry then started to express to me the concerns that he had about the future of his organization and he believed that my team and i were going to ruin the culture and divide the employees with our dei initiatives harry was afraid after that conversation i didn't sleep for several days i was quite conflicted because on one hand the fear and worry that harry was experiencing for the very first
time in his career was something that black indigenous people of color feel and continue to feel in the workplace but on the other hand he was actually in a position to make things better for everyone that day harry and i spoke for about two hours about the misconceptions of dei in the workplace and it all came down to this if we redefine our individual relationships with the concepts of diversity equity and inclusion together we can create a great place to work not just for some people not just for others but for everyone today i'm going
to take that two hour conversation and summarize it in minutes so that you can take some of these lessons back into your workplace and your communities so while there are a lot of misconceptions about dei i want to walk you through the five myths to unlearn about diversity equity and inclusion myth number one dei is only about race and gender and it excludes certain people specifically white men now did you all know we all have over 20 different social identities that make up who we are a social identity is things like what language we speak
what do we like to do for fun where did we grow up so as you can see we all are made up more than just our race and our gender identity well you may be asking yourself why does there seem to be so much emphasis on race and gender what's interesting is that despite decades and decades of legislation social movements and dei effort to advance racial and gender equity we're still just talking mostly about that regard in addition to the 20 plus social identities that are there power and privilege systems continue to slow down his
progress the fact that i can tell you that story about harry with a general description of a senior leader is pretty telling now i did get harry's permission to tell this story and i changed his name had i been talking about a woman or a person of color leader at a large u.s firm within days you could have figured out who i was talking about having said that we can walk and chew gum at the same time diversity equity and inclusion is about embracing all differences and we can do that while amplifying the needs of
underrepresented individuals we can do both of those things without excluding anyone in the process myth number two dei is a zero-sum divisive game designed to create winners and losers now to think that someone must lose in order for someone to gain is rooted in a fixed scarcity mindset when dei is actually about a growth mindset to support a growth strategy when diversity equity and inclusion is authentically implemented in an organization i'm going to repeat that again when diversity equity and inclusion is authentically implemented in an organization study upon studies have shown that profits wise market
shares expands and new opportunities are created as a result dei is the right thing to do morally culturally and financially and while people try to weaponize dei it's actually a politically agnostic it doesn't matter whether an individual is an independent liberal or conservative all world views are welcomed myth number three all people of color want to be involved in diversity work at their organization being a person of color does not automatically qualify anyone to create and lead a dei strategy people of color are not a monolith they have lived they have different lived experiences skills
and backgrounds and yes you're going to have some employees of color that will jump at the chance to advance diversity at their companies you'll even have some that will share their own stories to help shape policy but others will not so to make the assumption that all people of color want to be involved in diversity work creates yet another obstacle that employees of colors have to face and overcome in the workplace myth number four dei is about hiring unqualified people now this narrative stems from biased thinking that somehow under representation in a role means that
there are no skilled qualified candidates available and we find time and time again that that's just simply not true it also comes from a growing disturbing trend of individuals making forced tokenized hiring for the sake of optics all of a sudden diversity recruiting has become identity recruiting let's look for only x-rays or why gender to fill abc role at all cost this lose-lose scenario creates lasting negative impacts for all i mean can you imagine an under represented individual coming into an organization hired this way will most likely be tolerated instead of celebrated for the skills
and experiences that they bring to the table true diversity recruiting is actually about shifting focus internally into a company to change mindsets and create inclusive behaviors true diversity recruiting it's about casting the widest net and attracting all types of candidates to your company organically because they will have a thriving career as a result of the culture that's been created true diversity recruiting is about redesigning a process that reduces biases and decision making and holds leadership teams accountable true diversity recruiting is hard work and it takes time myth number five dei is hr's problem no dei
is actually a team sport everyone from the ceo down to every single employee in an organization has a role to play to bring the ei to life and yes hr should act as a strategic partner because they enable various different processes that impact the employee experience however companies shouldn't solely rely on their hr teams to implement dei programming dei also should be factored into all other business functions such as marketing information technology or procurement dei should also be sitting outside of hr and reporting into the c-suite as a result of the vast matt the vast
whiteness that they have in terms of representation dei is not a trendy fad diet project but more so an organizational lifestyle change core value so why do these myths continue to spread well there's a lot of different conversations about dei a majority of the discourse is coming from two extreme positions it's almost like a bell curve you have on one hand a small percentage of the population that believes with all their hearts that dei is a divisive racist concept that should be left out of the workplace and then you have on the other hand a
small percentage of the population that believes with all their hearts that dei should be in the workplace but it's only for few and anyone that doesn't believe that is also racist and then what about everybody else most of us are silent scared to speak our minds most of us are scared to say or do the wrong thing so many of us decide to do nothing many of us think that having biases are a bad thing most of us are ashamed of our privilege and as a result of that fear we continue to pretend it doesn't
exist in order to feel safe and that fear paralyzes many of us from being part of the solution and then you add social media to this you got online memes posts comments a lot of them being fueled from those two extreme positions but also spreading dangerous misinformation and then you pepper on top of that cancel culture that it fuels and inflames an already complicated highly misunderstood topic into sound bites we have got to stop this madness council culture continues to compromise one of the fundamental benefits of diversity the ability to embrace differences of opinion i
envision a day when we can move past cancel culture we will never advance dei as a collective society if we cannot grow and learn from each other so what happened to harry well after that two-hour conversation he seemed somewhat relieved has finally spoken and gotten all of the questions that he had answered and was able to speak to someone about what was on his mind about the topic but he wasn't really quite convinced we kicked off the project and we took some time to really help his peers unlearn a lot of these myths as well
it's been a fascinating journey to actually watch harry become a confident inclusive leader he not only became more engaged and vocal he actually started to also support and provide input into the dei strategy and guess what two years later the company's still standing dei didn't ruin their culture nor did it divide the employees the company was actually reborn so what can you do as motivational speaker lisa nichols says sometimes our biggest breakthroughs in life is not in what we learn it's in what we unlearn take the time to start actively unlearning the myths surrounding diversity
equity inclusion and that starts with looking inward at yourself really getting a chance to understand your own lived experiences biases and privileges as a fabric of who you are the journey to understanding dei begins with a journey of self and that means owning up to the totality of who you are i too had to go on that journey i too had to recognize and understand my own biases and privileges so for example every single day i am deeply committed to advancing women in the workplace yet i'm aware of a bias that i have towards seeing
men in authoritative decision-making roles a bias shaped by my childhood i am deeply committed to being an inclusive leader every single day yet i'm aware of a bias that i have towards connecting with people that went to the same college as i did i had to understand my own earned privileges as a result of my work experiences my network and my education so yes dei consultants have biases and privileges too that is because we are human and these constructs are part of the human experience but it's not enough for me to just understand and recognize
my biases and privileges i have to be more intentional about interrupting my biases when i'm making decisions at my company i have to be more intentional about using my earned privilege to help uplift others as i continue to climb don't be afraid to be your authentic self and it's never too late to do a reset and begin that journey we continue to build and create constructs of power and privilege and we have to remind ourselves that we are all one connected human race we all need each other to come to a place of greater knowledge
we can unlearn these constructs by simply choosing to do so in a way that brings us all together redefine your individual relationships with the concepts of diversity equity and inclusion so together we can create a great place to work not just for some people not just for others but for everyone thank you [Music] you
