Good soup.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a big fan of defining key terms. What may have started as a holdover from my days in academia has become a practice central to facilitating discussions, helping organizations establish “ways of working” practices, and encouraging healthy communication and conflict. Despite using a lot of the same terms in our day to day, our definitions of these words exist on a spectrum. How an organization defines key terms impacts not only its culture but its commitments – internal and external.
Diversity is a term that is having a moment right now, but it remains unclear just what people mean when they talk about diversity.
Recently, I attended a conference about the future of hiring and how to attract millennial and gen z talent. The two-day schedule was packed with sessions about diversity and inclusion. Time and again, we were told that young workers want to be in organizations that reflect their values and celebrate their diversity. But then something happened that demonstrated a critical disconnect.
Near the end of the conference, a group of presenters met on the stage for a panel discussion. They were sitting in casual chairs for this discussion, and the chairs leaned back when they were sat in. As the female panelists sat down, one remarked that they had been advised to not wear skirts because of this set up. A man on the panel then jumped in and said, “and that’s why I wore pants.” Attendees in the audience laughed and the discussion began.
Let’s talk about what happened here. I was at a conference with several hundred people in attendance onsite and virtually (as I was). Given the size of the conference alone, it is probable that someone in that group of people was outside of the gender binary. It is even more likely that someone in that audience knows someone who is transgender or nonbinary, possibly even works with them.
And the joke that was made was considered funny because it assumes (a) that we can tell a person’s gender by looking at them and (b) that when people deviate from the gender that we, as viewers, think they should be performing, it’s funny. Great joke.*
If this was a one-off experience, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it. But this is the third event I attended this fall that plugged diversity in one breath, and then made in-group jokes immediately after. By in-group I mean, jokes that mock the outsider status of genders, disabilities, ethnicities that are seen as safe to laugh at.
These experiences have led me to ask: what do these presenters and the organizations in attendance that diversity means?
It’s my assessment that where organizations go wrong with implementing their diversity plans is in thinking about diversity like lego. In this way of thinking, diversity is a self-contained add-on that can be attached to the side of any organization to make it Diverse™. Lego diversity doesn’t require the organization to do any self-reflection or re-assessment, and largely the organization remains unchanged by the addition of the diversity expansion pack. It’s Institution: now with Diversity™!
Lego-model diversity is the anti-racism statement at the end of job postings for organizations where racialized staff are predominantly found in entry level positions and rarely as directors. It’s organizations saying that they welcome applicants of all ability levels but not completing an accessibility audit of their policies and procedures. It’s a rainbow profile picture in June without providing employees with medical benefits. It’s inviting the historically marginalized employees to create a DEI working group in the dusty diversity annex, creating extra work for them without a buy-in or commitment from people in positions of privilege and power (both organizationally and historically) that their labour will result in organizational change. It’s attending cultural sensitivity training on Wednesday and being back to cracking jokes over after work drinks by Friday.
What do we mean when we say diversity in the workplace is a good thing? And is your organization committed to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) or just diversity and inclusion? And if it is the latter, why? If your organization is prioritizing diversity now, why now and to what end?
Don’t get me wrong. I want to see more meaningful JEDI work in organizations. But getting there requires two things.
First, organizations need to not fetishize diversity as the secret for luring in new hires in a competitive market.
Diversity isn’t a magic flute. It is a daily practice of building, nurturing, and celebrating healthy, safe, vibrant workplaces.
Which brings me to my second point. If you treat diversity like a lego brick, it will eventually fall off the side of your organization.
Diversity can’t be a separate, discrete package of initiatives. JEDI has to be woven into and through everything. In truly inclusive and equitable workplaces, we can’t point to the little postage stamp area that has been eked out for diversity’s sake. In truly inclusive and equitable workplaces, diversity and equity are in the DNA of how teams work together, plan together, and achieve together. Put another way, if an organization is soup, JEDI is the water. It shapes every part, surrounds every part, determines every part.
Kids these days aren’t asking for diverse workplaces because it’s fetch. We want to know that the places that we invest our creativity and time in are invested in us, not resenting us for who we are.
So if your organization is thinking about adding diversity, I want to encourage you to think about what exactly you mean when you use that word. Then get to work to build the organizational culture that your diverse employees deserve. I recommend Quake Lab if you’re in Ottawa and looking for support doing an organizational audit.
Lego’s out. It’s time for soup.
Good soup.
*I’m not going to get into why jokes like this reinforce a culture of violence against trans and gender expansive people. If you’re interested in learning more about that, I encourage you to google the Transphobic Pyramid of Violence.