How Your Leadership Ideals Might Be Creating Blind Spots in Diversity Efforts

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This week, we’re discussing leadership ideals and how they could potentially be creating barriers to your goals of increasing diversity within your company. Have you ever considered how such ideals might be hindering your initiative to increase diversity? If this resonates with you, I highly recommend watching the Team JTC video on the topic. If you find it helpful, please like the video and subscribe.

But if you’re keen to continue reading (wink), here’s a summary.

Before we jump into what those three ideals are, I want to talk about what this whole notion of an ideal is because you’ve heard about ideals throughout your life. There are three in particular that I like talking about. One ideal we’ve heard was in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, where he said, “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Another one is a phrase from the Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” which is an ideal. And the last one—that’s an ideal etched into the Statue of Liberty, where it says, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

When we’re thinking about our workplace, we have similar ideals around the workplace environment and what we care about. But what’s important is that we’re paying attention to the current reality while we’re on the road toward reaching those ideals.

Blind spots occur when we miss what’s happening in the current reality because we’re so blinded by who we are meant to be that we stop paying attention to who we are today. So, the idea here is that we’re focusing on intent versus impact, or intent versus outcome. The intent is the ideal, while the outcome or the impact is the current reality.

Now, without further ado, here are the three ideals.

Ideal #1: “We Have a Culture of Inclusivity and Belonging”

This is an ideal. But it’s important to question: What’s the current reality? And who feels included and feels like they belong? Is it all employees on this journey toward having a culture of inclusivity and belonging?

Maybe along the way, you missed some people, and some additional people need to be brought along on that journey.

Ideal #2: “We Embrace Diversity”

Another ideal is that we embrace diversity, which is also the intent. But what’s the reality? What’s the outcome?

When you look at your data, are you still highly underrepresented within certain populations? When you’re looking at your candidate pool or the pool of people that get referred into your organization, what is the reality?

Ideal #3: “Our Employees Are Our Most Valuable Asset”

This is another common ideal. But which employees? When you begin thinking about ideal versus outcome, are all employees feeling like you value them as the most important asset within the company, or are there specific groups that are getting that experience?

The goal here is we’re talking about increasing diversity, which means we also have to consider retention. What’s the reality of our current workplace environment?

Bridging Ideals and Reality

One objective way to get a better sense of reality is to look at the data. What does the data suggest? When you’re asking questions about having a culture of inclusivity and belonging, embracing diversity, or cherishing your employees as the most valuable asset, use the data to find out if everyone feels the same way.

Some companies are using engagement survey data. When they’re looking at the results, they’re likely looking at a comprehensive overview of the results. What does everyone feel? Begin dissecting, slicing, and dicing that data demographically.

And if you’re slicing and dicing it demographically, begin looking at it intersectionally as well. Slicing and dicing the data demographically means asking the question—how do people who identify as, for example, having disabilities feel? Do they feel they’re included in this workplace? Do they feel you embrace diversity? Do they feel they’re a valued asset within your company?

To look at the data intersectionally entails shifting from saying, for example, “black people feel a good sense of being included and belonging” to “black women feel a good sense of being included and belonging.”

That is, the idea is to look at whether you’re overrepresented by, for example, black men within this subgroup. And now, when you look at black women, you realize their experiences are different. So, the question becomes—how closely do you want to look at that data to find out what the current reality, environment, or output looks like within your organization?

Because that information and the details in those data are going to help you understand, or it’s going to help you remove those blind spots on the roadmap to increasing diversity. It is not enough to be an individual or organization that says, “Oh, I’m a good person,” or “But our organization believes in diversity,” or “Our organization believes in inclusion.”

That’s no different than saying, “But I’m a good person. So leave me alone.” It’s one thing to be a good person and to have great ideals as an organization. But it’s another thing to say, “Even though I’m a good person, I’m still going to check myself. Even though we have these ideals as an organization, we’re still going to check ourselves.”

JOIN ME IN THE COMMENTS: How are you bridging the gap between ideals and reality? I can’t wait to hear your insights in the comments.