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ILRHR553: Diversity and Inclusion in Practice.for.HR

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Transcript: Welcome The focus of this course is organizational inclusion. Although the terms diversity and inclusion are often bundled together, and they're talked about as if they're one and the same, we're going to be differentiating between the two in this course. What I'll be doing is presenting to you a three-‐pronged approach to thinking about the drivers of inclusion. While a lot of discourse on organizational inclusion tends to focus on various organizational level policies and practices designed to promote inclusion. We're going to move beyond that and talk also about the important role that workgroup climate and inclusive leadership behaviors play in promoting inclusion within organizations. By the end of this course, I hope that you will be a more educated consumer and participant in discussions related to diversity and inclusion. And that you'll not only be able to distinguish between diversity and inclusion, but help your organization to evolve in its conversation beyond one simply about diversity and to really be a conversation about inclusion. I'd like you to be able to think critically about what your organization is doing. To move towards inclusion and to be able to help your organization, to assess its progress againsts its inclusion goals.

Transcript: Distinguishing Between Diversity and Inclusion So the question that I just posed to you is whether or not there's a distinction between diversity and inclusion. Everyone refers to the two simultaneously. We are even saying D and I when we refer to this base, and in my own personal experiences, talking to people who practice D and I in organizations, it seems to me, when we start to talk about it, there is a distinction that's being made between diversity and inclusion, with the idea that inclusion includes more of the intangibles. This idea of creating the kind of environment where people can be successful, where people feel valued in their work. But as my conversations continue, I start to feel like, actually, inclusion is a very slippery construct. There's a saying that I've heard, which I think is pretty, pretty, appropriate here. The idea that trying to define inclusion is like trying to nail jello to the wall, it's very difficult. And, so, what I want to do is really try to clarify what we mean by that, because often what I find, is that as we talk about inclusion, and as I ask questions about what companies are doing to practice or facilitate inclusion, it ends up feeling like we're talking about classic diversity management again. That the focus ends up being on things like targeted recruiting, mentoring programs, being very careful about tracking pay and promotion rates, and providing diversity training and

ILRHR553: Diversity and Inclusion in Practice


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employee resource groups and the like. And so, it starts to feel like maybe it's old wine and new bottles. That is, we've been doing these things for quite a while. These practices have been in place and have been considered best practices for quite a while. So, what is it that's different, about the inclusion tag that we're now adding to the conversation? Do these practices really help to promote inclusion? Once we define what we mean by inclusion, I hope that we'll start to see that maybe these practices alone, are not sufficient for also cultivating inclusion in organizations.

Transcript: Corporate Example: Part 1 To make our discussion of inclusion a little less abstract, I thought that it would be useful for you to read through a corporate example that we'll take through this course. I'll add to the description that you'll read now about companies A and B and we'll continue to talk about the differences between them.

Transcript: Organizational Level of Inclusion So the question that I asked you is whether or not you expect company A or company B to be more inclusive. Most people focus on the fact that company A has a lot of diversity best practices, or D and I best practices in place. And given that, it's easy to assume that company A is probably more committed to diversity and inclusion issues. And that therefore people might be able to expect that the company will invest more in their success, that they are more likely to feel valued if they work for that organization, and probably that they'll experience some sort of pride for working for a company that has these best practices in place. And, it's true that well designed diversity and inclusion practices are indeed important, and it's good for companies to have these practices in place. But the question is whether or not having these practices in place alone guarantees that employees will experience inclusion. It's important to keep in mind that these practices alone are often insufficient for promoting inclusion in all the different ways that we'll be talking about in this course. So I've, I once heard somebody say that traditional diversity management is like counting numbers, whereas I think we can think about inclusion as making those numbers count. So a lot of these practices that have been in place for a while, like targeted recruiting, and having these mentoring programs and the like, help to attract people to an organization, help the organization to hire diverse employees. But they don't guarantee that the employees, once hired, once in the door, experience inclusion and end up staying with the organization. What inclusion it requires, is a fundamental shift in the organizational, organization's culture. It requires that there is a change in the way that people interact with each other at work, such that traditional stereotypes can be debunked, and people can start to really interact in much



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more authentic ways such that one's particular social category, membership, like gender or race ethnicity or or disability status, any of these social categories should no longer be predictive of how successful one can be within the organization, how integrated somebody feels within the organizational context. We'll talk a little bit more about these different definitions of inclusion. But what I'm trying to point out to you here is the idea that these, these D and I best practices alone will not guarantee inclusion. In fact, there're some recent research by Alexandra Kalev and her colleagues that shows that these diversity practices that have been implemented by organizations for decades now, are not actually successful at helping to increase representation at higher levels of the organization and senior management although this, some might argue this is not inclusion per se. It is indicative of a lack of inclusion if people are not staying with the organization and advancing through the organization such that women and ethnic minorities are represented in these senior leadership positions. And so we're starting to really focus in the research literature on the idea that we need to expand our view of what needs to happen within organizations in order for people to be successful and to experience inclusion. The primary reason why these practices maybe insufficient, there are actually probably two main reasons. One is that even really well-‐designed, well-‐intentioned practices are often not consistently implemented within an organization. There are a lot of reasons for that—managers have competing demands on their time and their resources, and managers differ in how committed they are to diversity. How much they value these practices and implementing them carefully. So that's one reason. The other is that these practices tend to focus on individuals. So, individual's decision making, hiring certain individuals, training them to have different knowledge and awareness. They also tend to focus on key kind of decision making moments in time. So, again, like hiring, pay and promotion. The practices don't tend to focus on the dynamics between individuals. So they don't address the social relational sources of discrimination and bias within organizations. And so, even though they might help individuals to improve in certain ways, and to develop new skills, and amass new knowledge, they don't alter the social fabric of the organization. And to the extent that that's true then we'll always continue to have these interpersonal dynamics that can get in the way of true success of individuals who belong to historically marginalized groups.

Transcript: Ask the Experts: On Diversity with Inclusion It has been interesting, the evolution of diversity and the inclusion of inclusion in part of this practice. What we learned is that having people that were different was not enough. If they were not engaged in the company, if they didn't feel they had a say and they could influence the organization. So that adding of the word inclusion really changed the practice, not just by bringing people into the organization, but developing, creating advancement, and retention of



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those people that were different that the normal of each one of the organizations. I believe letting our case at MetLife, we also evolved, and in the last couple of years we have looked at different ways of creating inclusion. Mostly in giving managers the tools to rethink about the way they behave. We usually say you don't do diversity and inclusion on Monday morning and then you manage the rest of the week. You really do inclusion everyday as a leader when you interact with your employees, with your teams, so that's how we're talking about diversity inclusion differently at MetLife. And I think that Elizabeth is right there, the shift from just on diversity and why we're talking about inclusion really has started to pull in a lot of different components of what you want to do with it. The toolkit. Different, breaking down, I think, the misconceptions that people have had in the past about what it all means and, and why we're doing it. Why it's important. We've been doing a lot of work around unconscious bias which, to me, has really taken diversity and inclusion as a practice to another level. So that people understand not just the, what people perceive as the nice to do, or the right thing to do, the politically correct thing to do. But the reasons why we are who we are, because at the end of the day, it's not about having people not be who they are in the workplace, it's about celebrating the differences that people bring to the workplace, but understanding where everyone's coming from at the same time. >> I also think that inclusion has brought the white male into the conversation. Before they felt that they were not part of this. And now when we're talking about inclusion they see their role and when we're talking about diversity we're bringing diversity in the broader sense. So it's not about one characteristic, it's everything that you bring. That is to say bringing the whole self, and inclusion allows us to create that conversation that this is not for some people. This is really for the organization. Right. I'd say in the last decade there's been a big push to move from talking about diversity practices to diversity and inclusion, and I've been at Citi nearly 20 years. So in looking at the work we've done across those 20 years, the definite shift to inclusion has been more focusing on looking at the mix which is what diversity has historically looked at. Who are you bringing in? Is that mix bringing in significant representation from the available labor pool? Does it take into consideration groups that historically have been underrepresented? And then the shift to inclusion really has supported a mindshift to looking at how are people being, how are they being perceived. Are they being fully developed? Are there any roadblocks in the way? And looking at it more proactively, so I think for a lot of people I work with, they have always, you know, sometimes I'd come to talk to people, and they would immediately, think it's like an audit. Let me get my metrics out. Let me show you what we're doing, and what I want to talk to them about are people. How are these people doing? What's going on within the organization? What's the environment like? Let's look at who's being promoted. What's the succession plan look like? Are women part of that? What other diversity is part of that? And so, it starts to look at it as a broader ecosystem. So I think it's an important shift because historically again, looking at making sure we're making these good faith efforts around the world, generally that's



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women. And then as you start to look at different local countries, there are different groups that might be diverse in that country and historically haven't been part of the labor mix. And then once individuals are in, now it's inclusion. Around are people feeling respected, valued? Are they feeling like they look up and see people that they can see as role models? And not necessarily people that look like them, but people who clearly value them. So it's an interesting shift and it's a very important one. Otherwise, it's really a check the box exercise around ensuring that the mix is there and not really looking at the broader impact of bringing people in who are historically different. One of the things that we've been doing differently to support inclusion is we're using the word, first and foremost, the aspect of including the word creates conversation. So, when they say, why are you diversity and inclusion, why the semantics? So, adding the context of the language is helpful because people start to then understand what it is in terms of this continuum. So we bring in this diverse mix of individuals, but the inclusion aspects look at ensuring the environment is supportive and also how we approach the work. So a lot of what we do now focuses around development of the workforce and the lens that we bring to it is looking at individuals across various strands. You know, characteristics and understanding the various characteristics and how they might be supported more effectively. So as an example, in the last number of years in the United States, there's been a real thrust on looking at the opportunity to recruit military veterans. So as we look at our recruitment, and sort of recruitment programs, leadership development programs, even our employee resource groups or networks, are they groups that can just naturally bring in a population that's somewhat different at Citi or is there an opportunity to differentiate? So one of the things we've seen in particular around military veterans has been a fabulous growth of employee resource groups focused on military veterans, open to all employees but there are individuals who become part of it, they themselves might be members, former military service men and women, they might be individuals who have children deployed, they might be individuals who had military service members in their family or they might be individuals who just want to learn more about the military or get more involved in for example, community efforts. So that's a, it's pretty good departure from where I'd say we were 10 years ago, where if someone had said what are you doing in the U.S. around military veterans? We would have had focused on recruitment you know, in particular around ensuring just sort of that regulatory purview, and, what are we doing to support military veterans? We would not have had all of those other nuances around the work that we're doing. So I think that sort of illustrates how inclusion has become much more focused on not only what we're doing across the common community. But also, what are the things we can do to support these characteristics that are increasingly changing as we go through the years. Some of the awards that the process of going through an award that exists there in the market is important cause it gives you an idea of what other companies are doing, as well as some of what the media and the external customer is expecting of our organization. So, it is the process of going through the award that for me it's the learning for the organization. Looking at what



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other companies are doing from an employee resource group. Can we be looking at that and learning from that? What are they doing from a communication perspective from their leader? So the process of going through awards are important, if you take that as a learning process from your organization versus a check in the box for the organization.

Transcript: Thinking Beyond the Organizational Level The purpose of this extended corporate example was to highlight to you that there are things other than the organization's D and I practices that influence the experiences that employees have of inclusion at work. Earlier we talked about the fact that these organizational level D and I practices play an important signaling function. They signal to employees whether or not the organization is likely to invest in their future and their success. And that is a form of inclusion. The idea that employees can develop a psychological contract that tells them that they have a chance to be successful within this organization. But as you'll see in this example, company A does have this impressive focus on the organizational level D and I practices. But it appears that they place less of an emphasis on employee's everyday experiences of inclusion at work. And so people within company A tend to experience some barrier, some psychological barriers to really bringing their whole selves to work. This is probably a term that you've heard people talk about. But the idea that people, employees in company A don't always experience in all aspects of their their work, this freedom to be really themselves, to feel really included. And so what this starts to highlight is that for many people, the most salient context that determines their experiences of inclusion is their work group. It's where they have their everyday interpersonal interactions. And the nature of those interactions really starts to determine, determines how people feel, how included people feel. And this is consistent with what we've heard from things like the Gallup poll for ages. The idea that people leave companies based on their experiences with their coworkers and their immediate manager. It tends to be less about the organizational level stuff that's going on. And if you talk to anybody and you ask them so, what is it like to work at your company? Often people say well, it depends. It depends on where in the company you work. Right, it depends on your coworker. So this is the idea that we're highlighting now. The idea that one's immediate work group, the climate of the work group, the norms of the work group, the interactions that tend to unfold within that work group, are an important determinant of experiences of inclusion. What we see is that in contrast, company B may not have had these slick D and I practices in place and yet people experience that company quite differently. Employees experience the culture's being highly collaborative and participative, and chances are if you talk to employees in that company, they would say that in the interpersonal realm, they experience inclusion at work. It's helpful I think in thinking about these individual personal experiences of inclusion. To take a look at this definition that was introduced by Lynn Sure and her colleagues. And this definition



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is based on two fundamental questions. So what you'll see here is that you can be high or low on, in response to these two questions and the combination creates four possible cells. So the first question is whether or not an individual feels like he or she is treated as an insider within the organization. Does somebody experience a sense of belongingness, high or low sense of belongingness. And the second question is whether or not an individual feels that his or her uniqueness is valued within the organization. So the most ideal state, inclusion, is when people feel like they are an insider, that they experience belongingness within the organization. And they are very much themselves. And the way that they are that is their uniqueness is highly valued. I think the most common is for people to experience some form of pseudo inclusion. So, both the assimilation category and the differentiation category are examples of this. So, first. About assimilation. Assimilation is when people experience a sense of belongingness, but there's a cost. It comes at the cost of hiding parts of oneself to blend in. Of assimilating, right to be accepted. To be in accordance with whatever normative, you know, ingroup exists within the organization. And as long as you don't rock the boat and you fit in, you can experience a sense of belongingness. So, there's a cost to that. There's a cost both to the individual. We know from research that when people have to adopt facades of conformity, or a different persona that they experience higher levels of strain. It's more tiring. So, those are the cost to the individual. And, there are costs to the organization as well, because what that means is that the diversity that should be in play within the organization by virtue of having diversity in the workforce, is actually not in play if people are withholding parts of themselves. The second form of pseudo inclusion is this differentiation. So the idea here is that people may not experience high levels of belongingness in that they may not feel like they are part of true, kind of ingroup of the organization, but they do feel like their uniqueness is recognized and valued by the organization. So, classic example here may be when people who are members of minority groups feel like the organization cares about their opinions, cares about the way that they perceive things. Usually, when those opinions or perspectives can help the company to reach niche markets, to reach customers that maybe look like these employees. And so they feel valued. They feel that the organization needs them. The organization would like to see things through their lens. But, they are still experiencing the organization more from the margins that is, called up and included when it is for specific instances, or when it is useful and valued by the organization, but not necessarily in the everyday kind of operational decision making of the organization. And of course the least favorable box or cell to be in is exclusion where people experience neither a sense of belongingness or uniqueness. So, what I hope you'll see here is that there is an emphasis on learning in inclusive work groups. And that in order for learning to occur, people have to feel like they belong. They have to experience a sense of safety in order to speak up, and they have to have their uniqueness in play so that they can share that. And when they do, what you create is the possibility for people in this diverse workforce to really learn from each other. This is the whole value and diversity hypothesis that people talk about. There are two very highly respected scholars, Robin Ealy and



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David Thomas of Harvard, who argued that the real competitive advantage of a diverse workforce is the capacity of its members to learn from each other, and to develop an expanded range of competencies and understanding that they can apply to their work, to all aspects of their work. This is quite different from utilizing the diverse groups to reach niche markets. It's not to say that companies shouldn't continue to do that, but true inclusion goes much beyond that, and is about this learning that occurs in all directions. It's not the typical learning you know that goes down hierarchical levels of an organization. It's more learning across these levels, across demographic boundaries. The idea that everybody in the organization is both a teacher and a learner, and when you can create the environment where that happens, that's when people experience a true sense of inclusion.

Transcript: Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes So the idea that inclusion is about creating the space where people can engage in this mutual learning is a good one. I that think we can all, it appeals to all of us. But it's actually quite difficult to achieve. So as I was saying earlier, it requires that people experience both a sense of belongingness and uniqueness, but we can't take for granted that this will happen. It's actually, there are a lot of social psychological dynamics that can get in the way, especially within the context of diversity. And we'll talk a little bit more about those, but they are very well established, almost automatic processes, perceptual processes that influence the way that we interact with people who are similar to us versus different from us. And so, creating this kind of inclusive workplace necessitates that we actively, proactively counteract these processes. I think a really great illustration of what these processes look like can be seen in a classic experiment that maybe some of you have heard about or even seen, that was done by a woman named Jane Elliot in the 1960s, and it's called brown eyes, blue eyes. I'd like you to watch the clip, and we'll talk about some of these psychological processes.

Transcript: Forming Stereotypes So what did we see in this video about the brown eyes/blue eyes experiment? What we saw is that, in the beginning, the children differed based on whether or not they had brown eyes or blue eyes, but there was no social value or significance associated with having blue or brown eyes. People weren't motivated or concerned -‐ motivated to group people, right, into brown versus blue eye groups. It didn't matter to the children whether or not they fit into either category. But as soon as the teacher, Jane Elliott, attached some social value or significance to having either brown eyes or blue eyes, even when this distinction is largely arbitrary, in that it's not really associated with differences in competence. The teacher was still able to attach the social value to the categories and as soon as she did, it altered the way that the children



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interacted with each other. The children became motivated to categorize themselves and others into the groupings, either the higher or the lower status groupings. And they started to see each other, not as the people that they were, the friends that they were, but as representatives of these categories. Representatives of the stereotypes that the teacher had established about brown-‐eyed people versus blue-‐eyed people. And what we started to see was that strong in groups, versus out groups formed and it was the us versus them effect. Research shows that these stereotypes that we have about different groups tend to form pretty quickly; they tend to be pretty stable, even in children. For example, research on gender stereotypes shows that children as young as two, three and four already have very clear stereotypes about what girls are like, and what boys are like or what girls should be like, and what boys should be like. As children, as early as children can speak, for example, boys tend to tell very aggressive stories 87% of the time, whereas, girls tell aggressive stories only 17% of the time. So they're acting in ways that are consistent with these stereotypes that they have about how boys versus girls should act. And when children aged two to four were asked to work together for rewards, boys tended to use physical tactics 50 times more often than girls, again reinforcing the power that these stereotypes can have on people's behavior. So stereotypes are thought of as a type of schema, they're merely a cognitive or knowledge structure in the brain. So you can see here in the graphic what happens is that every time a particular trait or characteristic is associated with a label, so here you can see the F is meant to denote females, and the M is meant to denote males. So take for example, that the, the label female is associated with the trait emotional or dependent. Every time that somebody sees this association between the label and a trait it becomes strengthened. And so different socialization experiences, different exposure to the media can repetitively reinforce these associations until they basically become so strong and so reinforced that they become automatic. So what happens is that the moment somebody sees the label female, or sees somebody who would be categorized into that label, female, the traits that are associated with that label automatically become assigned to that person. This is what some people call top down information processing, such that as soon as you, we see somebody, we, as people, tend to have a need to categorize them. And once categorized, we use that label, and we apply all the different, the information that is part of that label to that person, regardless of how well the individual actually fits that label. Psychologists link this back actually to a basic human need and animals do this too. It's the basic tendency to have to categorize somebody as friend or foe. All right, so we take visual cues and we need, we have a need as people to categorize them, so it's thought to be an almost automatic process that happens in the brain. Transcript: Assess Your Own Stereotypes I’ve just told you that schemas or stereotypes are cognitive structures that are pretty stable once they're established through exposure to socialization and the media. It's really important that we're aware of what these stereotypes might look like and whether or not we hold these



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stereotypes ourselves. That's one important first step to understanding how to dismantle or counteract the effects of these stereotypes. So what I'd like for you to do is take a moment to assess your own stereotypes. So please follow the instructions on how to access the IAT, or the Implicit Associations Test.

Transcript: Why Should We Care About Stereotypes? Okay, so you've had a chance to assess your own stereotypes. Now, I want to talk a little bit about why we should care about the stereotypes that we might have. I want to tell you about some of the effects that these stereotypes have on our perceptual processes. So the first thing is that stereotypes influence what or who we see. So the most prominent physical features that a person has, for example, their sex and their ethnicity or race, trigger the most rapid categorization. And once categorized schema content is applied to who we see, regardless of how similar that person actually is to the prototypical type of that stereotype. And so if you think about what the danger is here, it means that it, it, leads us to assume things that we might not actually see and it leads to comments like they're all alike. And it prevents us from seeing the variability that actually exists across people in a particular category. Because we're assigning all the characteristics or traits of that category to all the individuals who become labeled as belonging to that category. A second thing that happens is that the schemas or scare, stereotypes influence the information that we attend to our notice about a particular person. We tend to notice information that is consistent with our schema, and we tend to disregard or not notice information that is inconsistent with our schema. It's more difficult for us to process information that is not consistent with the schema. And so what we see in research is that, if you provide somebody with a label, or a schema or a stereotype, prior to exposing them to somebody, or to some stimuli, then it influences what information they notice. I'll give you an example of a a great research study on self-‐fulfilling prophecies, which really is what we're talking about here. So a researcher, Dov Eden researched trainees in the Israeli military context and what he did was tell the people who were training this incoming group of trainees that these people were very, very carefully assessed on a number of different performance and competence criteria, and that they had been sorted into high potential, average or somewhere in between in that there wasn't enough conclusive evidence to categorize some of the people. So there are basically two, three categories of these trainees. And the trainers were told we have indicated next to their names, which category, label we have assigned to them. But you don't need to know what they are. Just make sure that you learn their names. So the trainees come into training. And a week later, a third party somebody who is unaware of the labels, or even that people have labels, comes in to assess the performance of these trainees.



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And what do you think they found? They found that the people who had been labeled high potential were actually performing at higher levels, and the people ha, who had been labeled average, were performing at lower levels. And the people who didn't really have a clear label were somewhere in between. This is one week into the training. They then assessed performance again several weeks later. And the differences became bigger and bigger. And they asked the trainees about their experiences with the trainers, the leaders, you know, are you satisfied with the trainer? What was it like? And what they find is that the people who had been given the high potential label had much more positive interactions with the leaders. What the leaders did not know is that these people, the trainees, have been selected into this group to be part of this experiment precisely because there was actually absolutely no discernible difference among them. So what actually happened is that the labels that the, the leaders were given influenced what they saw in the behavior. They saw behavior in the trainees that they thought was consistent with being high potential or average and then they reinforced that such that the leaders invested more in the trainees who had been labeled high potential, they probably rewarded, praised their behavior more often and this is in part why the trainees also enjoyed that interaction more. But this is the power of labels. This is the power of self-‐fulfilling prophecies because we end up seeing what we expect to see. And it can end up having very profound, impact on what we see as actual performance in that these self-‐fulfilling prophecies end up you know, leading to behavior, or to incidents that confirm are stereotypes. The third thing I want to tell you about stereotypes is that they also influence what we remember. So, not just what we encode and what we notice, but what we can recall or remember about people. So people tend to more easily recall information that is consistent with the schema and we tend to have more difficulty influencing remember irrelevant information. And people also tend to be able to remember more details about in-‐group members, people who are part of the me, the we-‐group, and have a harder time remembering things about out-‐group members. When we do take a look at what people can remember about out-‐group members, we see that it's easier to remember negative things about out-‐group members and it's also easier to remember ways in which these out-‐group members are different, rather than similar, to members of the in-‐group. So when you think about what the implications of this could be within an organizational context you could think about, when somebody interviews somebody who is similar to or different from them, what they're able to remember from the interview about how well that person might fit the job, for example. Or when someone is doing a performance evaluation they might be able to recall more positive things about people who are similar to them and more negative things about people who are dissimilar to them. And so a lot, scholars argue that these seemingly small biases in perception and recall can end up snowballing over the course of a career, so that these performance evaluations in one year, end up influencing evaluations in another year. And maybe over a time these unconscious biases help explain some of the gaps that we see in the representation of women and ethnic minorities and members of other groups in senior levels of management.



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Transcript: Reducing Prejudice So talking about the negative effects that stereotypes can have on perception, I think, can be a little bit depressing. I don't want you to take away from this the idea that if the IAT showed that you have some type of stereotype against some group, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will behave in a prejudiced way against members of that group. Research shows, so meta-‐analysis, studies of studies show that the relationship or correlation between a particular stereotype and engaging actual prejudicial behaviour against members of that group is only 0.27 the highest correlation is a one. So that means it doesn't necessarily mean that stereotypes lead to prejudice-‐but they can. They can if the stereotypes are left unchecked. What we know is that difference between prejudiced people, and non-‐prejudiced people is that low-‐prejudice people, engage in controlled processing. This is in contrast to automatic processing. That means that they actively reject stereotypes, right, the content of these stereotypes. And they've replaced them with more egalitarian thoughts. They've replaced them with motivation to try to see what's actually there, how a person actually is, instead of allowing their assumptions, right, the traits that are associated with these stereotype labels, to guide what they see. We have to be aware, however, that if you don't engage in this active, controlled processing, then these stereotypes or unconscious biases can affect decision making in significant ways. So, there are a number of ways in which we can motivate people to engage in that controlled processing instead of the automatic processing. Some people also refer to this controlled processing as bottom-‐up processing. So you're actually collecting personalized individuating information about a person based on what you see and you're using that to formulate a more accurate image or understanding of the person. And so there are two categories of factors, let's call them, that can influence whether or not somebody engages in that controlled processing. So we've got these external motivators. So external motivators are when you can motivate somebody to avoid prejudice, because they feel some sort of obligation to be that way. Or because they want to avoid embarrassment or punishment. Or any sort of other negative consequences. So, we can do this in organizations by holding people accountable for the personnel decisions that they make. And reward more positive behavior, or penalize negative behavior. So, this is really more of a compliance focus. We can also have personal decisions made by a panel. So rather than have a single individual rate somebody in an interview or in a training context for example, you have more than one person do it. And so then all the raters are aware that there are also other people rating performance and their motivated to try to be accurate so they don't look to off base. Also when people know that they will receive some feedback on the way that they are evaluating somebody they tend to try to be more careful because they don't want to receive bad feedback. As you can see these are all examples of trying to behave, behaving in a certain way because you're trying to control how people will react to the way that you're behaving, or to



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the way that you are evaluating other people. There're also internal motivations for engaging in that controlled processing. So, somebody that is internally motivated wants to be non-‐prejudiced because it's important in and of itself for them to be that way. It's when somebody values that non-‐prejudicial behavior. For example, they value being open-‐minded, or they value learning about other people. Then they tend to slow down and collect that individuating information that allows them to form a more accurate understanding of the other person. So we see this happening more when people's outcomes are dependent on somebody else. If what you value, what's important to you, is dependent on somebody else, then the accurate understanding of that person becomes much more important. You need the predict the way they're going to be, you need to coordinate with them better. And this produces this motivation for people to slow down, check themselves, and make sure that they understand the other person better. When people recognize the costs associated with bias and exclusion, they can also be internally motivated. It could be that they, themselves, have experienced some form of bias or prejudice, and therefore, are motivated not to produce that same reaction in other people. Perhaps they've seen other people suffer from bias and inclusion, and therefore don't want to perpetuate it. Or it could be also that they have experienced some sort of negative or inefficient group dynamics as a result of group prejudice and so they realize that that hurts everybody. And then become motivated to try to stop that process. Also when people share stories with each other, when they reveal things about themselves often also when people make themselves vulnerable to other people, we tend to see that this elicits a good reaction and that it tends to promote liking and trust. And when people reveal more about themselves, then they tend to become more motivated, to see that person as the person has revealed themselves and to behave in a way that's fair, right, for that person. And so they tend to start to disregard the stereotype, and utilize instead that information that has been shared with them by that person.

Transcript: Influencing Inclusive Behavior in the Workplace It's important to differentiate inclusion in everyday decision-‐making from inclusion for purposes of reaching niche markets. While both are certainly important for organizations, it's when employees are encouraged and motivated to integrate their ideas across demographic boundaries, functions and hierarchical levels that the organization benefits the most. I'm sure you've heard lots of people talk about this. They make, a lot of people make this argument. So why are we taking the time to talk about it? It's important to talk about because it's actually quite difficult to achieve. It can't be taken for granted. There are a lot of proactive measures that actually have to be put in place to counteract a number of psychological processes that can get in the way of this when diversity is in play. To get this discussion started, I'd like to begin with a poll question.



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Transcript: Making Inclusive Decisions So if you answered A, you're right. What happens is that groups tend to focus on information that is shared by group members prior to coming together, than information that is unique across members of the group, and this is called the Collective Information Sampling Bias. The information that is held by more members of the team tends to be more influential, regardless of whether or not that information is correct. Teams tend to spend too little time discussing unshared unique information. And if you can imagine within the context of diverse groups, that's a problem because that means that the unique perspectives that are held by the diverse group members tend not to actually be shared by the group members. This happens because we tend to prefer to be validated by other people. Then to risk apprehension evaluation, that is, expressing some idea and perhaps having it shutdown or have people disagree or if people disapprove of what we're saying. The thing to remember though is that when people have strong social ties, it makes it more likely that they're willing to take that risk in sharing information that may differ from the information held by other people. So this is just that within organizations it's important to help highlight the similarities that exist across people, to help build those bridges that make it more likely that people will share that unique information, and for them to not focus so much on what they have in common, right, the information they share, but instead to be willing and motivated to share the information that is unique among them. So here I'd like to talk a little bit about the diversity value proposition. So you've, no doubt, heard people talk about the value in diversity, and there is, indeed, potential for diversity to lead to more innovative decision-‐making. The idea is that when you've got diverse members in a group, that diversity brings with it a diversity of perspectives and experiences, perhaps beliefs and values as well. And if people feel comfortable expressing that diversity of ideas and experiences, they will engage in some type of conflict. I think maybe your reaction to the word conflict is negative. We tend to want to shy away from conflict. It can certainly be uncomfortable, but here conflict is not a dirty word. It's a good thing for people to engage in that sharing of different ideas and perspectives, and to the extent that group members are able to do that learning occurs, and the integration of those diverse ideas tends to lead to a more innovative solution or decision at the end. The problem is that there are a number of obstacles that get in the way of this process. In particular, the willingness that people feel to engage in that conflict. So there are a few main obstacles that I'd like to highlight. So one is that there tends to be a lack of trust often between people. And a lack of shared expectations for the group. That is, the importance of actually engaging in this kind of debate or conflict. People often adopt more of a judging lens versus a learning lens. So, you've probably experienced when you feel that somebody is listening to what you're saying in order to get ready to counteract or provide some sort of counter argument to what you are saying, rather than really listening to learn from what you're trying to say. To try to understand what it is that you're trying to say. So the group needs to have a shared understanding for this dance that they will have as they express these different opinions. A second issue is that people often



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have preconceived notions of competence. That is, there are often stereotypes that are associated with higher levels of competence. And stereotypes are associated with lower levels of competence. And so depending on the groups that people belong to, right? Within this group, I mean the demographic groups that they belong to, some people may have greater or stronger voice than others within the group. Which means that those with lower status, or those who belong to a category that is associated with lower competence may feel less comfortable speaking up, or when they do, may be discounted more than other people who have more voice. And so, these stereotypes are, can be detrimental, and these stereotypes, often as we've talked about before, can lead to these in-‐group, out-‐group sort of effects where within a particular work group you may have subgroups that form. And what happens when we have these subgroups is that people tend to share more information with subgroup members. But not as much information is shared across those subgroups, but that's where we need the information to be shared if we're going to have diverse perspectives shared within the group. There are a number of conditions that can help to facilitate this process, right, that can help to counteract the obstacles that I just mentioned. So an important first step is to eliminate any of these status differences that might potentially get in the way. And the group manager or the group leader can play an important role in making this happen. The second is that people need to have opportunities to develop stronger, more personal ties with other members of the group for them to really establish a more personalized understanding of other people. And when they do that when people take the time to do that, they tend to start to establish that this sense of psychological safety of speaking up. The trust leads to a sense of safety in taking these risks and speaking up and disagreeing with other people. And the last thing that groups need to focus on is really establishing clear group norms about the importance of going through this process. That conflict is not bad, right? That it may be uncomfortable, but it's good for the group. So let's continue on in sharing our different opinions. Transcript: Facilitating Psychological Safety Psychological safety is a construct that helps to explain the differences that people experience and whether or not they feel comfortable admitting when they don't know, or taking risks within their work group. Psychological safety refers to the belief that people are safe in taking these risks, and expressing their work-‐relevant thoughts and feelings. The issue to think about here is if team members can't bring themselves to speak what's on their mind, that is, they censor themselves, then they won't experience inclusion, nor will the group benefit from their perspectives. If team members don't trust each other, then they're going to waste time and energy thinking about what they should say, and what they shouldn't say, and wonder about the true intentions of their peers when they're interacting with them. In order to actually speak up within a group context, people need to know that even if they make a mistake, if it's a well-‐intentioned mistake, then others won't think less of them, that they won't be penalized, they won't be resented for saying what they did, and that it's okay for them



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to ask for help and for them to ask for information or feedback, that that's not a sign of weakness. That instead it's actually something that's expected as a part of learning. Within the context of diverse groups, it's essential that people share these expectations about the kind of impact, if any, that these cultural differences can bring to the group. If people value the idea that different perspectives will help the group, this should help to promote psychological safety and help people to feel that it is safe for them to express the perspectives that they have, even if they might be counter to those that have been expressed by other people. In order to facilitate psychological safety, one of the most important conditions as I've already alluded to, is that you need to prioritize trust and respect within a group. There are a number of activities that groups often engage in to try to promote trust. It's good to take these or other steps proactively rather than assume that trust will develop well in a natural way. So, you've probably heard of outdoor ropes courses, and maybe you've even done one yourself. The purpose of these courses is to take people out of the work group content and really focus on developing trust across people, across members of the group. But there are other less physical outdoorsy ways of doing this, too. So, one method that is sometimes used in organizations is to create, deliberately create the space for group members to engage in storytelling or sharing personal information about themselves. So one example is for each group member to answer a set of questions. So here are three questions for that, that could potentially work. So, one would be very kind of easy introduction into this discussion would be, where did you grow up? How many kids were in your family? What was the most difficult or important challenge of your childhood? And people then have a chance to tell some story about where they came from and how they grew up, and in telling that story, often people make themselves vulnerable, and the people then listening see that, and that tends to promote a sense of liking and a sense of trust. And, it also, you know, in revealing something about your personal life, people learn to get comfortable being open about other things. If I can be open about something that was really difficult to me, well then I can be open about something that's happening today at work. And when people share these personal stories they also develop a deeper understanding of each other, and they start to then be able to interpret their co-‐workers' behaviors within the context of this more personal information. There are other things that groups can do, too. So, during what we call the chartering process, that's when a group comes together, it's important for the group to take the time to establish the goals and expectations that the group has for itself. And in this process, it's important to speak explicitly about psychological safety, for people to establish shared expectations for the importance of protecting that psychological safety and for the importance of sharing these dissenting views, that we will have this openness to diversity, diversity of perspectives and ideas. And the group leader, but also other members of the group, can play a very important role in providing kind of real-‐time permission to group members to continue with that sharing of diverse ideas. To say look, I know we're having a really difficult conversation right now, it's uncomfortable, but this is good, let's keep going, let's try to get to the bottom of this. That real-‐



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time permission can be more powerful than kind of theoretical abstract permission for the group. And finally, it's important, I emphasized this several times, but it's important to minimize status differences within the group to the extent possible. What happens when we have status differences is that the people who are in a lower status position tend to censor themselves more. They tend to feel pressure to assimilate and to the extent that they feel that way, they're less likely to feel safe in expressing any sort of dissenting views. And, if that happens, well, we've kind of lost the value in diversity.

Transcript: Creating an Inclusive Climate I'd like to talk about climate for inclusion. I'm thinking here about the climate of a work group rather than the climate of the larger organization, because what we see in research is that the different groups or departments within an organization tend to take on slightly different climates. The construct of climate for inclusion helps to pull together some of the ideas that we've been talking about, related to the importance of meaningful and to personal connections, and psychological safety, and trust. I think that most people are used to talking about organizational culture. They think of organizational culture as an organization's personality or values. Organizational climate is a related construct, but it's more specific, and it's more strategically focused. So I'll tell you a little bit about organizational climate in general, and then move to talking about climate for inclusion more specifically. So climate, organizational climate refers to the shared meaning that employees attach to the events, policies, practices, and procedures that they experience. And what that communicates to them about the behaviors that they see as being rewarded, valued, supported, and expected within the organization. So, climate has a strategic focus, so in this case, we're talking about climate for inclusion, so it refers to employee-‐shared perceptions about what the organization's policies and procedures communicate about inclusion. And the behaviors, the inclusive behaviors that they see as being rewarded and valued and expected of them, within their day to day work lives. So climate is created and maintained through a number of different mechanisms. Probably the most noticeable are the policies and practices in structures of the organization, those that support the formation of a particular type of climate. That is that, support the formation of inclusive climates, including things like reward systems, training content, and the factors that are emphasized in selection and promotion decisions. So the question is, whether or not employees receive the message through these various organizational practices. That inclusion is indeed a priority for the organization. So this is akin to the first source of inclusion that we've talked about, that is that organizational policies and practices communicate something very important to employees about inclusion. It's also important to keep in mind that it's a form of both direct and indirect communication that comes from up above about the importance of inclusion within the organization. But the day to day behavior of managers also plays a very



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important role in forming climate. So, managers engage in role modeling. They communicate to their employees what's important, based on the kinds of behaviors that they attend to, the kinds of behaviors that they reward in their employees, and the expectations that they communicate, and so forth. We will turn again to talking a little bit more about the role of managers. The other thing that helps to shape climate is the set of norms, the behavioral norms that employees themselves create within their work group. So what employees actually do, and what they expect of each other. So within this broader definition of climate, I'd like to now turn to talking about climate for inclusion more specifically. The important thing about inclusive climates as I'll define it here is that the inclusive climates provide the conditions under which people rely less on stereotypical thinking. And under which groups are less prone to these counterproductive in-‐group out-‐group dynamics that can get in the way of that diversity value chain that I spoke about. There are three key dimensions to climate for inclusion. The first is that again, think in terms of a work group or work department. The employment practices within that group, that unit, need to be implemented in a way that is perceived as fair by the people working within that unit. So employees are always looking for cues that tell them whether or not some employees, members of some groups are favored over members of other groups. That is, by virtue of being a man or a member of some other demographic category, does somebody have a higher chance of success? Does somebody have greater access to resources and opportunities? To the extent that they do, then that will perpetuate these status hierarchies based on in this example gender. But to the extent that in a work group, the way that practices are implemented does not have anything to do with one's gender or other demographic background. Then in that context, those status hierarchies are invalidated. They become delegitimized and that's what we need. We need for it, people to really perceive that HR practices are fair, in order for them to buy the message that inclusion is actually valued, and to start to break down some of those in-‐group out-‐group effects that we spoke of before. So, that is a kind of a precondition for inclusion, but that's not enough. So, what also needs to happen, this is the second dimension, is that there need to be strong norms that cultural differences among group members will be integrated. That people are not expected to check their identity at the door when they come to work. That instead people bring their whole selves to work. You've probably heard this term before. the idea is that people don't experience pressure to, to assimilate to some dominant majority. And that people are expected to develop these cross-‐cutting ties. By cross cutting, I mean cutting across traditional demographic groupings. And that people are also given the latitude and the opportunity to engage in that kind of discussion that leads to more personalized understandings of one another. So here the ideas, okay, so the diversity is now at work, right, people bring it to the table, so to speak. But it will only benefit the organization to the extent that the diversity of perspectives are actually leveraged in decision making. So that's what the third dimension refers to, is the extent to which there's inclusion in decision making. Groups



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have to take proactive steps to actively seek and integrate the diverse perspectives that are represented among the employees in a group. People have to have a common commitment, a shared commitment to working through those differences. This conflict that I spoke of, people have to be committed to doing that. And there have to be mechanisms in place to make sure that those different ideas are actually expressed within the group.

Transcript: Learning from Others I've indicated that a critical barrier to inclusion in learning is a lack of psychological safety. Inclusive climates help to mitigate against psychological safety in a couple of important ways. So the emphasis that is placed on interpersonal sharing and learning within inclusive climates means that group members are more likely to develop trust in each other. When I think about the kinds of situations that I've been in that help to illustrate how this happens, I think, in particular, of this one experience that I had where I went to a meeting at a large Fortune 100 company, where the Chief Diversity Officer of the company called this meeting with about 20 people from different parts of the organization, came to meet with her and with me to talk about a particular issue related to diversity and inclusion. And they're pretty high-‐level people who were invited to this meeting. Some of them knew each other. I didn't know any of them except for the Chief Diversity Officer, and we only had an hour and a half together. And before we started the meeting, she said to all of us that she would like for us to go around in the circle and to provide some information about our background, and in particular to talk a little bit about why we were passionate about this topic that we were gathered around to discuss, and to provide some information about our background that helps link us to this topic that we were talking about. And it probably took us a good 45 minutes, half of the time that we had together, to go around the circle and to share that information. And I think a lot of managers would say we don't have the time. We have to get, we have to dive into the material and focus on the discussion at hand. We don't have time for this chit-‐chat. But what happened in the remaining 45 minutes of our time really showed me the importance of taking the time to develop these more personalized understandings of each other, because once we started to actually talk about the issues, we were immediately making links to each other, and we knew who was present in the room, what kinds of expertise was present in the room, and therefore how to shape how we discuss certain issues. And I certainly felt, in a room of 20 leaders I didn't know, I didn't feel the need to censor myself as much. I wasn't wondering as much, whether or not people, how people might respond to what I was saying. I think the 45 minutes we had left were much more productive than the hour and a half would have been had we not taken that time to get to know each other. I also think about this other example that a colleague of mine was telling me when I was talking about inclusive climates. He told me that at his university that they have explicitly recognized



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the importance of making these more personalized connections to open kind of communication pathways. And what they did in their school is they have this main hallway in the business school, and on one side of the hallway, they have these posters that describe various research projects that people, the faculty, are engaged in. And this is actually really helpful because we tend to get stuck in our offices working on our research and, and lose track of what other people are working on. So that's helpful in and of itself. But what was really unique about what they did was on the other side of the hallway, they put up photos of each of the faculty members. Posters where people could present, where people were asked to present a non-‐work side of themselves that was really important. And so people took pictures with their family or doing things that they love to do, their hobbies. And then, what ended up happening is that people started to learn things about each other that they didn't know. And they might say oh, you love mountain climbing. So do I. And people who previously had very little reason to communicate, or at least they thought so, started to communicate and that connection then opened up better communication pathways related to work. And they found that committee work and other departmental discussions tended to go much more smoothly once they had established these bonds. And so the point here is that when people have the opportunities to develop these more interpersonal bonds, they start to feel more comfortable. Also talking more openly about work-‐related issues, which is ultimately what we're trying to promote. Also when people develop these more personalized understandings of each other, you start to believe, to trust, that you're less likely to be misunderstood for something that you say. And I think being misunderstood is one of the most frustrating things. And so feeling like people get you, because they know more about you, can make you feel more comfortable actually speaking your opinion. And the other thing about inclusive climates is that because they tend to emphasize the importance of incorporating these diverse perspectives, then people are less likely to feel that there's some risk, right, associated with expressing their ideas. So, it reduces that sense of apprehension. It increases psychological safety, which is what we're trying to do. So it's important to remember that it might not be quite enough to say that everyone's opinion is valued, right? That might not be enough to promote psychological safety, because dominant personalities can still, right, dominate a discussion, and subtle interpersonal dynamics can still silence some group members and make them censor what they do and don't say. So groups do have to take proactive measures, and put in place various mechanisms to make sure that people do contribute their ideas. When I was in graduate school, my advisor who, she led these research groups that we had, and what she always had us do, this is an example of the mechanism, she always had us brainstorm on her own about the things we would be discussing in our meeting. And she always said the kitchen sink, you know, anything that comes to mind is game. And so we'd brainstorm on our own, and then we would send our ideas to her independently, and then she would bring all of those ideas with her to the meeting. That ensured that we didn't hold back our ideas because it seemed that nobody else had them, or because they were counter to ideas that other people were experiencing. It made sure that all those ideas were part of our discussion. So there are other mechanisms that organizations can



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take to try to make sure that people do contribute their various ideas. There is an organization called IDEO, that is well known for taking various measures to make sure that there is this inclusion in decision making. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from what they do, within their organization. So one thing is that it is a very flat organization. In fact the founder makes fun of titles, right, that often exist in organizations, and different status labels. He says it's impossible that just because I am of higher rank I know the answer. You have to get rid of this notion of status and rank if you're gonna get people to speak up. Another thing that they do is when they are trying to brainstorm, they have people just put up, paste their ideas up on the wall. You don't write your name on the idea. You put your different ideas up on the wall. And then, once everybody has done that, they go around the room, and they vote on the ideas that they think are really good. And you might have a red sticker for a really great idea, and a yellow sticker for a somewhat good idea. And again, you're not printing your name on the sticker, so you're not influenced by who else voted with a red sticker. People are just going out, around the room in a very democratic way. Everyone has a sticker. Everyone has a voice and they vote. And the idea that has the most stickers is the one that they start with. But that makes sure that everybody is voting. They also have this bell. One person in the group has this bell, much like you have at the front desk of a hotel. They have it on their wrist, and the job of that person is to, to ring the bell when somebody in the group is sharing an idea, and then somebody else jumps in, but jumps in a that's likely to silence the person who's speaking. If you do that you get the bell, which tells you, [SOUND] stop, let this person finish talking, and let's remember to build on each other's ideas instead of interrupting or silencing each other. One other thing that they do is they celebrate their mistakes. So they have examples of their mistakes all around the office. And what this does is that it normalizes making mistakes, and it kind of celebrates the idea that unless you're making mistakes, you're not doing enough to learn, and that you have to take risks if you're going to get anywhere at all. And you have to have people feel comfortable suggesting somewhat wacky ideas if you're going to be able to build on those to come up with something great. So, these are specific things that companies do. There are others, of course. But, they are very strong norms and processes that are put in place to protect that inclusion in decision making.

Transcript: The Role of the Immediate Manager So, now I'd like to talk about the important role that line managers play in fostering inclusion within organizations. There is certainly a lot of attention that's played to the role of senior leadership, when talking about diversity and inclusion. And, it is true, senior leadership is critical, a lot of things have to happen from the top. But it's not enough to focus on senior leadership. A lot of what happens, the experiences that people have at work, are shaped by their immediate supervisor, not the people at the very top of the organization per se. And this



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is an idea that has been supported by decades of research. Including research done by organizations like Gallup that show that people end up leaving their organization because of the experiences they have with their immediate supervisor. Not necessarily because of the experiences they have with the broad organization or its policies and practices. So the manager is important, because he or she is the implementer of practices. So you can have really great diversity and inclusion practices on paper, that have designed well by the senior leadership. But how those practices impact employees depends on how a manager, a particular manager implements those practices. So, how consistently do they implement them? How fairly? How reliably? How do they talk about the practices? So, the manager is this filter in a way. Through which the organization's practices are transmitted before they actually impact employees. Within the context of diversity this is certainly the case. What we see is that most barriers to diversity management actually emerge at the level of the line manager. So employees might learn about an organization's policies and practices during training or during socialization process when they first join an organization. But what they learn there is tested against their day to day experiences which are impacted or shaped by the line manager. And so it's really important that organizations focus on what these managers are or are not doing to promote inclusion. Ideally these behaviors should be part of the more general performance management system. That there should be clear signals that managers are expected to engage in these behaviors as part of everyday management. And that diversity and inclusion is not this add-‐on thing that they occasionally attend to. It's a way of managing employees on a day to day basis.

Transcript: Manager Behavior: Fairness So now I'd like to talk about some of the specific manager behaviors that can help promote each of the dimensions, each of the three dimensions of climate for inclusion. So the first dimension has to do with the fair implementation of various employment or HR practices. So the question is what should managers attend to to try to ensure that they're implementing these practices fairly? One of the first things that managers need to be aware of is the fact that we all have some unconscious biases, these stereotypes that have been formed through socialization. The key is for managers to be aware that they may have them and to actively counteract them. Because as we've said before there isn't an automatic connection between having an unconscious bias and acting in a prejudiced way. The key is to be aware of them and actively counteract the effect that these stereotypes or unconscious biases might have on decision making. So managers need to be aware of them and they need be committed to challenging these stereotypes and to challenging any inequities that might exist within the broader society or within the organization more generally. And to be very attentive to these when they're implementing the HR practices within their particular group. So this involves



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being hypervigilant about optics, about how things may be perceived by employees within the group. It requires being uncompromisingly ethical in the way that he or she does things, and to be very transparent both about intentions, and about the way that decisions are made within the group. So that the employees within the group can develop a sense of trust in the way that things are being implemented and therefore be more likely to perceive that these practices are being fairly implemented.

Transcript: Manager Behavior: Cultural Integration and Differences So the second dimension of climate for inclusion has to do with the extent to which there are these norms for people to bring their whole selves to work, and for the differences that exist across employees to really be part of the fabric of the group. Doing that, promoting that, requires that the manager invites it. I mean, truly invites it. And so, the key difference here is between managers who tend to be primarily task-‐focused, versus managers who are also actively attending to the relational and social aspects of their leadership. Often in organizations we find that the task-‐related competencies tend to be emphasized more than these relational behaviors. And so what we're trying to emphasize here is that it's very important for organizations to signal that these behaviors that promote the bringing of whole selves to work, right? That these behaviors are valued within the organization. So, what a manager can do to promote that is take the time to have these authentic conversations with employees and to encourage employees to have those conversations among themselves. To take the time for people to get to know each other and share these things before they begin a task. For managers to use discomfort or a misunderstanding as an opportunity for learning rather than to avoid it and run away from it. These should be seen as opportunities for people to enhance their self awareness, right, of themselves but also their awareness of other group members. The manager also needs to recognize that we bring our own lens and our own identities to bear on a particular situation, that we see it through that lens. And so they need to be aware of what their lens is, and also that the lens of other people within the group may be different. And to be sensitive to those differences. And the manager needs to also be keenly aware of the fact that it's not just what he or she says that will create these norms, but it's also in the non-‐verbal behaviors that these norms are communicated. So how a manager listens to what somebody is saying, can communicate a lot about their level of interest and acceptance for what is being said. So, these micro-‐messages, these non-‐verbal behaviors are also very important to attend to.



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Transcript: Manager Behavior: Decision Making So the last dimension, the third dimension of climate for inclusion, is inclusion in decision making. That is, the steps that are taken to make sure that people's diverse perspectives are actually expressed and then integrated into the way the group makes decisions. So, what can a manager do to promote this participation in decision making? One of the kind of foundational requirements is for a manager to recognize and also express to his or her employees that it's simply not possible for a single person to see the whole picture. And that if we are going to do a good job of considering alternatives and therefore making good decisions, it's necessary that we involve more than one person. It's also not possible or not true that somebody is likely to know a particular answer, just by virtue of their title or their background, that the answer actually can lie anywhere. And that's an important open stance for the manager to have, and to expect of his or her employee so that people are actually listening to the ideas that are being expressed by people. People should also feel free and welcome to express dissent and the manager should be sensitive to any breaches that might occur to this building of psychological safety. If people are cutting each other off, or overreacting to each other in a way that's going to reduce psychological safety within the group, the manager has to manage that and respond to that. And part of the way in which a manager can do that is in the way he or she actually listens to what other people are saying, so that they're listening to learn and they're listening in a way that helps them to build on the ideas of other people. So I really love the advice that Tina Fey, who is an alum of Saturday Night Live and a really, really funny actor gives about improvisational theater. I think it's actually quite relevant here. So she says that two of the most important rules are to one, begin by saying yes, that you agree to what somebody says within your group. And even if you don't fully agree with what they say, by saying yes, you're opening up the possibility that their idea is is a good starting point. You have an open stance from which the dialogue can then grow. But the second is to say and. Instead of but, but would cut somebody off. You say and. And by saying and, you are adding something to what the person has said, you are contributing to the discussion, and it's a really important thing to keep in mind. You know, once I read that, her advice, I paid attention once in a meeting that I had in my department. And I realized how often we say yes but, and by saying but, it's to say yeah but, no not really and that's a silencing thing, right? To do to somebody else in your group, so this is again in a way a type or micromessage to attend to and that the manager can promote more productive ways of interacting among group members,. And the other thing is for the manager to kind of, help the group to resolve conflicts productively. To not run away from them, to help people approach conflict as a source of learning and to also not punish people, right, for disagreeing with other people. And also not punish people for not knowing or just saying that they don't know. These things help to promote psychological safety, which is precisely what we need if we're going to have people actually contribute and engage with each other in a way that promotes learning.



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Transcript: Ask the Experts: On Leading for Inclusion It is important to have senior leadership commitment. You can't really change the culture and the way you lead an organization without your CEO and your senior leaders, their direct reports involved. Now it's not easy and not everybody is at the same level of knowledge of experience what it is to manage a diverse workforce. So our role is to help them figure it out. What are some of their unconscious bias? What are the things that they are used to do, that they may be doing differently. How this feeds in the full organizational health of the organization. And how D and I supports that leadership that you want to achieve with the organization. Now I have to say, not all leaders understand this. Most of them do because they have had an experience of either not being part of the clique or not being part of power so, if you can help them relate to that, how does it feel not to be included, they can start to relate to others that may not have had the opportunity to share power or be part of an organization, and they can get that from themself individually and relate that to the organization. Now it's interesting when you think about senior leadership and their commitment to diversity. Among the things that generally most organizations have, and I've seen this both in non-‐profit and. for-‐profit organizations across different sectors, is that the governing bodies generally, for example in my organization the board of directors, is very focused on diversity and inclusion at our company. So, the CEOs that have been at the helm since I've been there. I've always been accountable for diversity and, they annually, myself, the CEO, will go to the board of directors, we talk about our efforts, so there's always a sense that the CEO is committed. What I've seen work really well is when a CEO is personally engaged and personally committed. And it's generally been some experience they've had, someone they've mentored. Maybe they're a parent, and now their daughter has had some challenge in the workplace. They sort of are at a place also where many CEOs are thinking about their legacy. So what kind of a legacy of leadership do they want to have? So the CEO is generally committed and the individuals I've worked with, all have been have males, have had some experience either they themself, whether it's someone in their family, or someone in their orbit has had some experience that has really brought them to a personal level of commitment. The conversations we've had, of how can they use that, that shadow of the leader, to really drive it further down. And where I've seen it most successful, again I've had the opportunity to work with a couple of different CEOs, and then prior to this company, with the university president, where it's been the most impactful, has been where there's personal accountability. So for example, our current CEO has a diversity measure in his scorecard that will go to the board at the end of the year. And he has driven that down to all of his direct reports. And, you know, simplistically we often think like what gets measured gets done. But there is a real strength there. And so, I would say the personal commitment along with the, you know, the



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hearts and then the mind around having the accountability have really been the strongest drivers I think for ensuring that it's something that gets into the company's DNA, it's part of the business strategy, and it's considered a real priority.

Transcript: Aligning Three Sources of Inclusion I'd now like to talk a little bit about the importance of aligning these three forms or sources of inclusion. When thinking about the inclusiveness of their organization, employees draw from their experiences with all three forms of inclusion. Obviously, optimal or true inclusion is experienced when organizational practices, workgroup climate, and leadership behaviors are all aligned in their support of inclusion, and it's when all three of these are high that we tend to see the best individual, and group, and organizational outcomes. I'll talk a little bit about what these three types of outcomes include. And this is based on research. So at the individual level, when inclusion is high, employees tend to report experiencing high levels of psychological safety. That is, they feel that there is little risk associated with being themselves and with speaking up. They tend to be more likely to develop high levels of interpersonal and cultural competence because of the learning that is occurring between them and their co-‐workers. They tend to be more engaged in their jobs, also more satisfied and more committed to their organization. And they experience higher levels of psychological and physical well being. And ultimately all of this amounts to higher propensity for them to experience professional success. At the group level when employees experience inclusion and the group can be characterized as being inclusive, then the group benefits in many important ways. So, within these types of groups we see that the status differences are minimized, the status differences that can often get in the way of real quality exchanges. And as a result we tend to see fewer in-‐group, out-‐group conflicts and so the group as a whole experiences higher levels of kind of collective identification or cohesion. They tend to communicate better, they tend to engage in more learning and more innovative decision making and ultimately we see this play out in terms of higher levels of performance for the groups. As you can imagine, at the organizational level, what this amounts to is that organizations that create the kind of environments in which individuals and groups are experiencing inclusion will benefit from higher levels of retention, increased market share often with customers also being more interested and excited about doing business with the organization. They have, tend to have a more positive reputation in the marketplace and end up being able to also recruit more easily and recruit diverse talent more easily. And they also tend to enjoy higher levels of representation across the different hierarchical levels of the organization. So, it's not uncommon though for people, employees to experience high levels of inclusion in one of these three areas but not the others. Or in two of the areas but not the third. For example it's quite



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possible that an organization might work for an organization that has award-‐winning diversity and inclusion initiatives in place. And it has been touted by the media, various sources in the media, as being a very inclusive organization. And so the employee might walk away with the impression that, indeed, this organization is inclusive. And the organization is also likely to be speaking quite openly about its pro-‐inclusion stance. But if the individual doesn't experience both belongingness and uniqueness within his or her immediate work group, or feels misunderstood by colleagues, or doesn't feel fully included in the group's decision making, then his or her overall impression of the inclusiveness of the organization is likely to be negatively impacted.

Transcript: Alignment from the Employee Perspective In thinking about the level of alignment that exists across the three different forms or sources of inclusion, I thought it might be helpful here to summarize some of the things that we've been talking about. So, here are the kinds of issues to which employees attend when assessing how inclusive their organization is. So at the organizational level, employees tend to pay attention to the diversity and inclusion policies and practices that are in place within the organization. And they tend to also attend to formal communication from senior leadership, from HR, from the EO or diversity and inclusion office. This may take the form of kind of the mission statement that the organization puts out there, for diversity and inclusion, any stories that they post on the internet, things that they say in their annual report about diversity and inclusion. Or the kinds of values that they espouse during recruiting and training and the like. At the work group level, employees are focused primarily on whether or not they experience their work group climate to be inclusive. And related consideration is whether or not they experience both belongingness and uniqueness within their work group. And also whether or not they feel that they are a participant in the value in diversity proposition that is, are they are a contributor to that interpersonal and group learning, that is taking place within their group? And then ultimately whether or not employees within the workgroup experience prejudice or more subtle forms of incivility as a result of diversity. In the third category here related to inclusive managers, employees tend to focus on things like the following. So, is the manager a reliable, ethical, and transparent implementor of HR and diversity and inclusion practices? Does the manager help to eliminate ingroup-‐outgroup distinctions by role-‐modeling the importance of creating a more kind of shared collective identity within the group? And does the manager help to create psychological safety for members of the group? And also uphold strong expectations that everybody else in the group does the same? So, one way to consider whether or not there's a lack of alignment between the organization's espousal of inclusion through its diversity and inclusion practices and through its formal communication and what employees actually experience in their day to day work lives is



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to ask some of the following types of questions. So first, does management walk the talk when it comes to diversity and inclusion? Or does all this stuff happening at the top seem like window dressing to employees? Does your inclusion experience measure up to the way the organization is portraying itself? Do the organization's actions, the managers within the organization, their actions too, do they match the formal communications of the organization? And based on your experiences, do you think the organization actually follows through on what it states publicly, with regard to diversity and inclusion? When there is a lack of alignment between the organizational-‐level espousal related to diversity and inclusion and what employees actually experience in their day to day work lives, an employee could react in one of two ways. On the one hand, an employee might perceive that the organization has been trying hard to really promote inclusion. And is, really means, right, what they say related to diversity and inclusion. It's just that it takes a while to accomplish these goal. And so the organization just needs more time. But the intentions are right, the intentions are good. Or an employee might think the organization lacks in necessary knowledge about how to accomplish these goals. But once again, the intentions are solid. On the other hand, employees can feel like the organization doesn't actually care enough, about the employees or about diversity and inclusion to implement fully and reliably and carefully implement what they claim, or that the organization is concerned primarily with keeping up with competitors or maintaining its public image and less about really making sure that these practices are implemented fully within the organization. Or sometimes, I've heard employees say that top management can be out of touch with these issues, because it lacks diversity in its ranks, or because senior leaders tend to experience inclusion as a function of their high level within the organization. And, whether or not employees attribute this misalignment to, it's just a matter of time, but the intentions are good, versus, mmm, not so sure that the intentions really match the words. That can have a pretty significant impact on how employees react. On the one hand, they may be okay with the, the lack of alignment. But on the other hand, if they feel that the diversity and inclusion efforts are more superficial than they are real, then, this can lead to backlash on the part of employees.

Transcript: Ask the Experts About Aligning for Inclusion Some of the challenges we faced in going from being a diversity office or a diversity officer to focusing on inclusion has been to help people come along with you on this journey. Generally people, and in particular in many of the business environments are very focused on understanding if there's been progress and the way that they understand that is by looking at outcomes and results and when you think about diversity, very often people think how do you measure? How do you know that you are doing this well and as we look at that often people want to look at the numbers. What, how many women do we have at what level? What are the percentages in the U.S. of racial and ethnic minorities? And our movement toward talking about, let's talk about the culture. Let's talk about development. Let's look at the extent to



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which these people are feeling fulfilled in their careers, might feel a bit soft to some people who are managing numbers everyday. And at the end of the day are looking for results. So, you have to really get people to look at the business case around diversity and focus on the growth that it might bring to accompany relative to customer knowledge, the ability to recruit the best and the brightest from across all groups and to move it from here are the things diversity brings to here's why it matters. And that is really a, not such an easy process for a lot of people because they want to see results. And so moving them from the numbers to sort of, the reasons and the business case is a lot of work. And so for individuals who are working in this space, you really do have to know your numbers. You have to know the benchmarks. You have to know the research, but you also have to engage people in a way that they see why it matters to them, not only as a leader but why it matters to their business. When we talk to leaders around the organization we know there's a third of them that are really engaged with this topic. That they either understand because they had experienced diversity in someway or another. And they kind of get it without us having to explain it that much. Then we have another third the, I call them, you know the one third really still testing us and when we start to talk about commercial opportunities, they go like, oh, there's money behind this, so maybe there's something that I have to pay attention. And the other one is a third, and I don't know if it's a third and a third, but there is still a group that we, almost feel that they, they're not ready to take this. And we have so many in those other two thirds or a little bit more than that or 70% but that has been our strategy. Work with those groups, with people that really get it because they understand it, they feel it, or because they see opportunities for the organization. And as we get them engaged, they're the ones that are going to bring the other group onboard. So that has been our strategy. And we have a CEO that is very committed, we have a couple of leaders directly reporting to him that are very committed, then some other said its not that they don't believe but this is not their their flag necessarily, and then below that. So we have identified in each one of the level people that could be our ambassadors, and we call them ambassadors among ourselves and for them. See, this is the opportunity that we have. An example of that is we have a Global Women's Initiative and originally we when we decided we were going to have an executive sponsor for that, we thought we have two women who direct report of the CO so usually any company would have gone for one of the two women to be the executive sponsor. We actually had the president from Asia who was new to the organization, had a great track record of developing and attracting women who raised his hand and said I want to be the executive sponsor. For two reasons, one because this is global so you can't have someone in headquarters in New York to be the only sponsor. And then because I can show that I know how to do this and that I can support you. So we went back to the two women that were senior women and we said, "What do you think?" And actually they were very excited. They were champions no matter what. Now we had an executive sponsor at the direct report of the CEO who was a male outside the US supporting our strategy.



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Now, he runs this strategy the same way that he runs any business strategy, so we have monthly meetings, we have quarterly reports, he just brings this back to the organization and even to the board of directors as part of the responsibilities that he has. And I think In my role in the organization, I manage our employee resource groups. And I think some of the challenge is similar to what Elizabeth spoke about with not all the groups of managers being on board, but I think that as we start to talk about the different tools and the different resources and drive the connection to the business imperative, I think we'll start to see some of the challenges, the resistance, I guess. I don't know that I would say it's a strong challenge. I think you see pockets of resistance. But as we move forward and we have new initiatives that we implement and people that get on board and get involved, and they tell someone and then that keeps spreading and keeps going on I think we're going to start to see a little less resistance. So the big question that we all have, is the CEO support important or not? And we all say it in every piece of the literature that it is important. Think about diversity and inclusion the same way of a job of the CEO the same way that he'll think about the job of the CFO. Could you have a CFO really successful if their CEO was not in alignment with the work that they were doing, or the head of technology or the head of marketing. So it has to be an alignment between What the CO wants to do or the company and the work that the Chief Diversity Officer provide. Now there's an expertise that the Chief Diversity Officer has the same way that the CFO has and the same way that the head of technology will have. So I do see the importance of having a CO involved in the strategy that includes the the diversity and inclusion strategy. I have been lucky enough in the last two jobs to part of my interview process to interview with the CEO. And the same way that they were assessing me on my capabilities to do the job I was assessing them on the commitment to the diversity and inclusion. Now for those that have a skeptical CEO, there's a lot of information on companies. How companies do better and perform better from a revenue perspective, from a brand perspective, if they have diversity inclusion embedded in the organizations. So there's data out there. And what people need to do, what CDOs need to do is understand their CO's interest and find data that will resonate with them. Now, you know, when I look back, cause I've been in this space now, in this particular role for more than ten years, but in the area of diversity for more than 20. There are a couple of things that you feel went particularly well, and there are a couple where I felt didn't do that very well, and this story combines both so, we go back a couple of years, the University of Michigan had come forward and asked companies to support the amicus brief, and at that time, they were being challenged on their affirmative action efforts, so they were a couple of us that felt very strongly that we should sign, we should be a signatory, we felt that the idea of affirmative action and good faith efforts was very important to building a diverse student population, in turn we would be recruiting across the country from from universities that had made good faith efforts, had diverse student bodies, and then in turn made our pipeline richer. And we went about it. We were very passionate. And at the end of the day we didn't sign it, and when I



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looked back at that time we were incredibly disappointed but we didn't really do the homework right. Didn't really build the stakeholders, went at it from a passionate perspective, but didn't have really all of the data. And when you work in environments that are driven by data and metrics, you have to have, we have to have those in order to make your case. So fast forward, this past year we were again approached about signing on to the amicus friend of the court for the Edith Windsor case that was going to look at overturning section three of DOMA and this time we were much more strategic about how we went about looking at the opportunity to do this. And it really was critical to have stakeholder engagement and stakeholder alignment. And I think because I'm further in my career you also are really comfortable. Putting aside your ego, putting aside any idea that this is about you or diversity, it's really for the greater good, and so, getting all the ducks in a row you need to be able to do something like that and in corporations that are big or small, sometimes having and making a decision like that, to sign on to a friend of the court brief to the Supreme Court, if there's no precedent is a really big decision. So, what we had everything in order and just started it. I almost felt like it must be like what it's trying to get a bill passed, because we were just to the last hour we were dealing talking with the lawyers that were filing the brief, and they said you've got about two more hours to tell us if you're in or not. And the very last decision was being made by our CEO. And he said yes that we would sign. And I think what made that work and where it didn't work a number of years ago is we had all the data in place, it was completely aligned to what we were doing, and we had also really worked hard to get that stakeholder engagement. So I think I learned a lot from that that you know, it's great to think about things that are important and that you know from your heart that it matters tremendously, but you have to think about it strategically, too. How to get it across the line.

Transcript: Inclusion Metrics So I've had a number of conversations with different companies about what they're doing around inclusion. And when our conversations turn to a discussion about the evidence that they see for increasing levels of inclusion within their organization, here are some of the types of evidence that they have, that companies have talked to me about. So I'd like to first tell you a little bit about what these sources of evidence are. But then also pose a few questions about them, so here we're practicing being, critical consumers of this evidence, because we want to really be sure that the diversity and inclusion practices are actually having the impact that we think that they're having. If they're not, there's no point in continuing on with the particular practice. So one form of evidence is that, is the claim that, that there have been increases in retention or improvements in retention within the organization. The issue consider here, is that higher retention itself Is not evidence of inclusion, because there may be many other factors that are contributing to that retention. It could be, for example, that there's an economic downturn that leads people to stay with their organization because they have fewer options on the external labor market. It could be because of other changes that have been made within the



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organization. So, it's possible that retention is an outcome, but unless the companies carefully link the two, it could be that it's superfluous, right, relationship between the two. Another form of evidence, is the idea that well, engagement scores have gone up by a few points in the last year or two. And that's when we've implemented this new program. So, therefore, this new program should be, right? we can think about it as effective because it's accounted for increases in engagement. Certainly it's true that increasing engagement is an important goal for organizations, but it can again easily be explained by other factors, factors other than inclusion. And so the relationship may or may not be a direct one between the diversity and inclusion practices and engagement. Companies often also talk about inclusion index. Some companies have included a few items in the annual employee survey to measure employees' perceptions of diversity and inclusion. And then they might combine it to create some inclusion index, and show any changes in this inclusion index, right? Look at that as a sign of improvement in inclusion. And again, it's possible that these changes are indicative of a change in inclusion, but what I find when I look at these items oftentimes they, they are very superficial in that, and they don't get at all three forms of inclusion. And one or two items simply just aren't enough to cover, right? The breadth of what really we should be trying to measure in organizations to get at inclusion. Another source of evidence that companies often mention is that they have higher levels of minority representation in senior levels of their organization. But this, too, may not be a result of inclusion per se. For example, companies often hire externally to fill these senior management positions, and it could also be that you know, people are being promoted through the organization, and accepting promotions through the organization even though they're not experiencing full inclusion in their day to day work lives, few people would say no to a promotion. So in and of itself it's not necessarily an indication of inclusion. And then the, the last piece of evidence, that companies might turn to are the, is a list of external accolades or best companies lists, right? If they make it on to a best company for women or some other, minority group, a company might think, here, here's the evidence that we are indeed an inclusive organization. And again it could be true, but what's important to, for us to think about is the possibility that there can still be some incongruence between what the external market sees with regard to the diversity and inclusion practices that are in place within the organization that often account for these awards and, employees' actual experiences in their day to day work lives.

Transcript: Assessing the Effectiveness of Practices In terms of analytics, the best way to assess the effectiveness of a particular diversity or inclusion practice is to follow the following steps. So, the first is to collect some sort of baseline data on the outcome of interest. This is the pre-‐practice implementation data. And then the second step would be to implement the initiative or practice in question. Ideally, you would have a control or comparison group that does not, that is not affected by the practice or



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initiative. And then after it's been implemented, you would collect data, post-‐implementation data on the outcomes of interest. And the idea then, is to examine whether or not there's been some change in the outcome of interest when comparing the pre-‐implementation data and the post-‐implementation data. And to the extent that there has been some change in the outcome, but only for the group that received the practice for the initiative, and not for the comparison or control group, then we can conclude that it was the implementation of that initiative, that accounts for the change in the outcome of interest. Another way to assess the effectiveness of diversity practices is to use data that's collected across organizations. So, the idea here is that an organization that hasn't yet adopted a practice serves as the control or comparison group against the organizations that have adopted a particular practice. And this is exactly what Alexandra Kalev and her colleagues did. And they published the, the results of their study in 2006 in this really great paper. And what they did was they used data on 708 private firms, that, this data spanned a period, ranging from 1971 to 2002. This is federal data, high quality data, and with this data, what they were able to test is whether or not companies that adopted a particular practice, right after adopting the practice, whether or not there were changes in the representation of women and ethnic minorities within senior management. That was their outcome variable of interest. So with their data, they could see whether or not a company had implemented a practice, and exactly when they had done so, to see whether or not that implementation was leading, right, led to a change in representation in senior management. And what did they find? You might be a little surprised to hear about what they found. So they focused in their study on six practices that are widely considered to be kind of diversity best practices and that are adopted by lots of organizations. And they can be sorted into kind of three categories of practices. So the first are practices designed to try to minimize bias in decision making, in particular, bias that managers might have in decision making that would negatively impact women or ethnic minorities. And this can be done through one of two ways, at least in, in the context of this study. So diversity training is one, where the focus is on trying to have managers become more aware of their biases and stereotyping, and therefore motivate them to make decisions in a different way. And the second is to evaluate the decisions that they do make for their implications on diversity. Again, the idea here is that if managers think that their decisions are being reviewed then they should be more motivated to be careful about the diversity implications of their decisions. The second set of practices here, the mentoring programs and the networking programs are designed to try to help minimize the social isolation that women and ethnic minorities have reported experiencing in organizations. So, if you give people a mentor, or you create affinity groups or network groups within an organization, then women, and I think minorities, should have better access to information about jobs and about career decisions that they might, that they might consider making.



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The third set of practices has to do with increasing the organizational responsibility for diversity and inclusion. And this can take the form of affirmative action goals and/or creating specifically an office that is responsible, a diversity office that is responsible for managing diversity within the organization. And as you can see in the last column here, the results indicated that actually these practices tend to have, at best, mixed effects on the representation of women and ethnic minorities in senior management. They don't have the, the consistent positive effects that we may have hoped for, or assumed that they had. The only practice that's consistently and reliably good is the last one. So when organizations have a dedicated staff responsible for diversity and inclusion, we tend to see better outcomes than in organizations that don't have a dedicated staff. So you might be wondering, why is it that these practices are not having the impact that we would like to see. I think there are two primary explanations for them. So one is that these practices are too narrowly focused on individuals, they're focused on manager stereotypes, a manager's biases, with the hope that you might be able to motivate better decision making. They're also focused on individual women and ethnic minorities, that is the social isolation that they experience or the lack of access they might have, to information that could help their careers. The second point is that these practices tend to target moments of decision making. So selection and hiring decisions made by managers, or the career decisions made by individuals, right, by virtue of the information that they have access to through these mentoring and networking relationships. These practices don't sufficiently address the interpersonal social relational sources of discrimination. So, it's possible for these practices to be in place, but for women and ethnic minorities to continue experiencing some form of bias or harassment from their co-‐workers, or for them to feel like they're being seen as a representative of their group. That is, it's possible for stereotypes to still be in play, in the day to day lives of employees. Even if you can try to minimize the role of stereotypes in these key HR decision-‐making moments, they can still be playing a big role in the day to day interactions that employees have within the organization. And it's also quite possible for groups to still be experiencing some dysfunction because these practices don't address group dynamics or interpersonal dynamics. And so, overall, we can think of these practices as failing to address the two kinds of employee-‐level sources or forums of inclusion. That is climate issues, work-‐group climate and interactions, right, on the one hand, and also the everyday inclusive behaviors of managers.

Transcript: Refocusing Diversity Best Practices I'd like to be clear about the fact that I'm not suggesting that these practices should not be implemented by organizations, but that it may be useful to think very carefully about them and potentially expand these practices so that they do a better job of promoting inclusion and to the extend that the inclusion is increased, then we should also see improvements in the representation of women and ethnic minorities in senior management. So I'd like to provide just a few ideas related to these six practices that were included in the study.



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So with regard to diversity training, rather than focus on awareness about stereotypes and bias, which actually can backfire, there's some research that shows that you make these stereotypes more salient and then people are more likely to act on them, that instead of doing that type of awareness training, it can be very useful for organizations to think of training as a means of facilitating better communication and better group processes. This is just one example, but Pepsi did a two-‐day training for all of their manager and subordinate dyads, and the focus of this training was to have the dyads develop a better understanding of the other person's lens, right, the other person's preferences, and to be able to engage in better perspective-‐taking, so that they could ultimately communicate better as supervisors and subordinates. And they found that this really did help to improve the relationship among supervisors and their subordinates. There are companies that also that are providing opportunities for people to really practice their listening skills and their communication skills so that you become more sensitized to not speaking over people and to really listening to people and validating what other people are saying. These are just some of the examples. It's also possible to think about sending a group to training together so that you have a facilitator who is specifically focused on the dynamics faced by that group. So you might start, for example, by talking to the group about what the group would ideally look like if people experienced full inclusion, and how does that compare to what they're currently experiencing? What are some of the obstacles that are getting in the way of true inclusion? And then have the group members brainstorm on some of the changes that perhaps could be made to improve the way that the group functions, then they can talk about which of the alternative may be better for their group which might be more realistic, and once the group then collectively and together Identifies a particular course of action that they think might help their group. Then they can start to talk about how they're going to make sure these changes actually take hold. Who's going to take responsibility for making sure that we don't kind of fall back to the way we use to do things, and we do indeed implement these changes that we've talked about and so the method in this case matches the message, which is an inclusive method of having the group involved and trying to promote better inclusion within the work group. So those are some changes to training to consider. With regard to diversity evaluation, rather than focus on monitoring the decisions that a manager makes, or perhaps I should say in addition to doing that, it's useful to embed in the performance evaluation system, right, in the competencies against which a manager is evaluated, to embed inclusive leadership behaviors. So, directly hold managers accountable for engaging in the behaviors that we know help to promote inclusion for employees. It starts to then kind of improve their literacy around these issues, it sends the message that the organization really does care about these competencies. And it's even better if the compensation of managers is tied, at least in part, to these behaviors. So it's not just financial or task-‐related performance, but it's also this kind of social, relational performance that is Important for a manager's compensation. That really gets their attention. With regard to networking programs, some of what I worry about is that if you have separate group, different



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employee resource groups, for example, for the different demographic groups within an organization, what you are doing is creating safe havens within these groups, for these groups, but you're also potentially creating some silos, in that you are not promoting the cross-‐boundary relationships that are so critical, another way to think about networking is to structure work around these cross-‐level, cross-‐functional, cross-‐role, dyads or teams, to provide people with many opportunities to work across these boundaries. So rather than be siloed, you end up with what one scholar has described as a plate of spaghetti. If you were to link, create lines linking all the people and groups within the organization, you shouldn't have neat lines and neat boxes. You should have something that looks like a plate of spaghetti because people are linked in so many different ways. With mentoring, one of the concerns is that the mentor/mentee meet within the context of the mentor/mentee relationship, but the meetings might remain somewhat formal, with the mentor seeing the mentee as a mentee, right? And that it's difficult for the pair to develop a really kind of organic authentic relationship. To the extent that these dyads, or mentors and mentees, work on a particular project or task together and have shared goals related to that, you provide opportunities for them to actually engage in discussions that are not just about, what can I do for you. But that are focused on something that they both care about. And that enables them to develop a more deeper bond and that ultimately really helps the mentee quite a bit and often it also helps the mentor to learn as well. With affirmative action, if we think about the people responsible for affirmative action goals as focusing primarily on representation, I think it's important here to think about expanding the focus to other metrics, in particular to survey data for example, that really helps the company to understand whether or not employees are experiencing inclusion. And then ultimately the EEO staff and committee, these would be the people overseeing all of these changes and making sure that they're aligned and sending consistent messages about the importance of inclusion.

Transcript: Working Toward Evidence-Based Management As you think about the metrics that need to be in place to evaluate the effectiveness of diversity and inclusion practices, it's important to keep in mind the difference between a focus on metrics and a focus on analytics. Ultimately, it will benefit your organization the most if you have, if you take with you the perspective of analytics, rather than metrics. So, the metrics tend to focus on more descriptive reporting of how inclusive the organization is, for example, whereas analytics focuses more on predictive analysis. So it involves asking questions like not just how well are we doing on inclusion, but under what conditions are employees experiencing true inclusions, that true inclusion. And what are the outcomes of that inclusion? So it may be for example that the drivers of inclusion differ across different parts of your organization. It may be that the factors that are most important for driving inclusion in geographically dispersed teams, like global virtual teams for example, is quite different, or different from the factors that you need to attend to for groups that are co-‐located. Or it may



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be that there are different issues that are emerging across functions or across the types of jobs depending on how interdependent employees are within their group. There are a lot of factors that can impact the importance of a particular driver of inclusion. And to the extent that you have these metrics in place you can start to answer these more sophisticated questions about which drivers under what conditions for what employee groups. And it may be that certain diversity and inclusion practices for example, are more important for driving inclusion than others, and that gives you really useful information about where to focus your attention, where to focus your money, within the organization. Collecting this data and thinking in terms of analytics will also help you, enable you to test the impact of a particular initiative or a practice to help you to measure any changes in inclusion. If you are collecting the right data you can start to then practice this evidence-‐based management which is really useful for being able to go to senior leaders within the organizations to say hey, here are the outcomes associated with this practice, here are the changes that we're driving, and here's why it's worth this line in our budget that we should continue to invest resources in diversity and inclusion to the extent that you have the right metrics and you're doing these analytics, I think the whole diversity and inclusion function starts to have more voice, greater voice within the organization.

Transcript: Ask the Experts: On Assessing Effectiveness So usually companies have started looking up our representation and in our strategy, when we relaunch the strategy, and we put our effort on inclusion, we realized that we needed to measure inclusion. And we faced a couple of opportunities. We looked at what other companies were doing, best practice around engagement. At the time we were implementing a tool from one of the big consulting companies called Organizational Health. In that tool there are 160 practices of management and organizations too. So were able to identify out of those 160 some of them that had to do with inclusion. And actually we defined what were facets of inclusion. We talked about information, access to information. We talked about loyalty and engagement of the organization. We talked about respect and trust. So, out of those 160 we selected the ones that we believe would give us an information on how people feel or not included in the organization. We also included one question that was our question to measure the impact of D and I implementation in the organization, and that really asked, do you believe that there's positive impact after the implementation or because of the implementation of the Dand I strategy. So we now have a baseline from 2012, and we are now re-‐measuring in 2014. We can cut that information in different demographics. It's information that we have globally, and we're helping now, managers look at what were their own scores, for their own function? And looking at what are the opportunities.



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So what are the three or four important practices that they can have a real quick fix but then they have to sustain to insure that there is inclusion. We still are looking at representation, we look at gender globally, we look at different groups in the United States, so it's not that we're not looking at representation, but the way to engage more managers in the ability to really change the way they manage is really talking about inclusion. Some cases, you can hire more people. But what do you do with the organization that you have, and how do you insure that they get opportunities for advancement, that they get opportunities for development, and you retain that work force. And I think that the other thing that we have started to do, is we are looking within the initiatives that are taking place across D and I, on how we measure that, so we really have a good story to tell. So, with the work I do as part of our the diversity business resource networks, we have put in place, we did a survey recently with the group, to get a baseline measurement. So not just the baseline across inclusion index, and at a broader level but within this specific initiative, so within the focus on our DBRNs. What's our baseline measurement? And getting those groups to understand that what gets measured, gets done and you can't really tell a complete story if you don't have the metrics to back that up. And we've rolled out a global diversity council and as part of those councils really measuring what are the groups doing and, and tying that all together, so that there is a complete picture around measurement and metrics. So it's interesting about the DBRN-‐in the past many organizations will say, you know, you put together an event, how many people you had? And that was the way of measuring, the impacts of an ERG. That doesn't matter any more. First of all, people cannot leave their offices, and in many cases you have them remotely. So, being present is not, but what do you do with that information? So, part of what the DBRNs are looking, is, what are the impacts in the community, in the culture, in the, what are the other ones? In the business. In the business. How are they connecting to the business, and although we are still saying, we do want those baselines of your membership, because then we can't really track one of the initiatives. One of the things we've said to them is that we want to see their membership grow. And we want to see them really have an impact and engage the enterprise and we're not going to know that if we don't know some of the basic things, but we want them thinking broader. But it was interesting for our LGBT DBRN. Part of their rethinking or refocusing was how do we engage our allies? So most of the change in the membership at this point is around the allies that now have something to share with the rest of the DBRN, that they didn't know about. And we were not including them in the past. So there are many ways that we're using metrics that really align to what is our impact and what is that we want out of that specific initiative, and then we create the metric that allow us to do that. In the space of diversity, like anything else, we try to look at are we making progress? How effective are these things? So we have a number of things we look at. Around the workforce demographics, we'll look at, are we hiring? Who are we hiring? We'll look at the conversion of applicants within hiring, so if we go out and interview, and there are 20 women in the pool, and 30 men, what percentage of those women do we bring in, and what percentage of men? We'll look at the extent to which we are bringing people in from what we call our target schools, the



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universities that we more commonly go to, versus partnerships or organizations we recruit from. So, where are we getting, our brand is being built, where are we bringing people in? Once individuals are at Citi, we'll look at, promotion. We'll look at the velocity of promotion. We'll look at retention. We'll look at the percentage of individuals that attend leadership programs. What does that mix look like? Is it proportional to the individuals who are represented in that group. So for example, if there's a program that's targeted to director levels, or how many women, if there are 20 percent females in that group, are 20 percent going to our part of the training mix? Or is it two percent, or is it 50 percent. So we want to make sure, it's really looking at equity, and is there an equitable consideration of individuals as they go through the organization. We look at culture. So we have an annual opinion survey that we look at. We cut that across different levels. We cut it by gender. We also cut it by race and ethnicity in the US. And we also look at it across sexual orientation. So whether someone is gay, lesbian, straight, Bisexual and transgender. We also look at military veterans and more recently people with disabilities. And we look at various strands, segments of diversity. And then we have in our voice of the employees survey, which is our employee survey, a diversity index. So we're able to look at diversity as one of the indices. The others we look at are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction. So, I bring that out because it's a core metric within this annual opinion survey. And it's one of things that we can then do a longitudinal trend analysis on. We also look at benchmarks are very important, so how are we trending against other organizations. That's a little harder to get because you don't always have transparency around the industry of what groups aare what percentage of particular populations are within particular groups, and then we have as a U.S. federal contractor, we have affirmative action programs, so we look at our achievement against goals every year. The other aspect is how effective are these measures. I think that we have the measures including within the CEO score card is important because there's accountability. Individuals know it's something we're tracking on that we report it. We report it to the board of directors. A challenge is they're often lagging indicators, so. you know, once someone's been hired, we may not see that for a month. We won't see a monthly hiring report, you know, 30 days after someone's come in. And then, there's maybe less opportunity to impact so, among the things we've done, for example, is this voice of the employee. diversity index, because that's something where we can look at how is that trending? We can look at, there's a question that says your intent to stay. So we can look at, has that shifted, are suddenly people who are diverse more likely to leave the company? And then we can really start to look at what geography is that coming from, what level and be more proactive. And then lastly, we look across the effectiveness of our efforts, so we ask for example, our employee network groups, our ERGs to provide us with semi-‐annual reports and annual reports. So we can see the impact of those efforts. There's a perspective that some of the measures we use in across organizations aren't, what are they really measuring? Are they measuring inclusion? Are they measuring something else?



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And I think to some extent, it's not so much that they're not measuring inclusion. so for example, many companies including ours have within their employee climate survey questions around. Is someone respected and valued? Are diverse perspectives valued? Does your manager treat you fairly? I mean those are very specific questions around how someone's day-‐to-‐day experiences within a company? And we're able to look at that across various segments. I think that's a good inclusion index, because it does tell you, what is that person's experience like, coming to this organization? What I would be interested in seeing, and it's something that we're going to be working, now, with groups in our company that can do more sophisticated analytics, is to look at predictive analytics. So, for example, if I am a woman who works for a manager and then that manager changes, what happens, you know, if I leave, what was causing that. Was it that the manager? Was a, you know, poor performer, or maybe their manager effectiveness had been rated low. I'm a high flyer. And then, that's a really bad mix, and therefore I leave the company. So, I've seen some really interesting analytics that the group that at our organization has run around products. How they can, you know, they can even tell you when someone will buy a minivan. They know the day. That's the kind of sophisticated analytics they run. So we're looking at moving that into the workforce analytics, and some of the early pilots I have seen are really interesting. So that's, I think, the type of work we'd like to get more involved in because it's very aligned to the business model and it also can help us get in front of issues and be more proactive.

Transcript: Course Wrap-Up In this course, we've talked a lot about what it takes to promote inclusion in organizations. First and foremost, it requires a consistent integration and attention to inclusion issues in all that the organization does, beginning with a carefully constructed mission statement about inclusion, and also attention to inclusion issues in all communications coming from the CEO. And also extending to the inclusion of items in the employee survey that help an organization to both signal the value that it places on inclusion, but also helps the organization to track its progress against inclusion goals. Ideally, managers at all levels of the organization should be held accountable for inclusion-‐related results from the employee survey. But, it requires more than this. It also requires thinking about inclusion through all phases of the talent management process. I want to talk briefly about some of these steps in the talent management process. So, beginning with hiring, inclusion requires that the organization pays attention to accessibility, right, for all different kinds of applicants that might be interested in working for the organization. But also efforts to reach a wide audience in order to enhance diversity, and once people are hired attending very closely to on-‐boarding practices, or socialization practices to ensure that non-‐traditional new hires receive similar care and attention during on-‐boarding. Then moving on to training. We talked about moving beyond thinking about kind of traditional diversity training, and to thinking about the importance of focusing training on team processes,



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on group processes. There are quite a number of group processes that can inhibit inclusion, and it's important to ensure that managers understand what inclusion looks like, what it feels like, and for them to know how to cultivate it in their work groups. As we discussed, managers play a really critical role in shaping climate. They need to know how to assess the climate. So ideally they can rely on results from an employee survey. But in the absence of such results, or maybe in addition to them, managers also need to know how to attend to clues or cues in their work environment in order to assess how their employees are experiencing inclusion. They also need to role model expected behaviors related to inclusion. They need to be able to clearly articulate expectations for employees. And then they need to enforce, or reinforce those expectations by redirecting inappropriate behavior, and rewarding exemplary behavior when it comes to inclusion. These behaviors, when a manager engages in them, help to align work-‐group expectations around inclusion so that everybody is focused on a common vision for inclusion. When we think about performance management, it's important for organizations to articulate very clearly what inclusive behaviors look like, and to reinforce them through transparent and consistent system of rewards and punishments. Although we've focused in this course on the importance of inclusive leadership behaviors, right, on the part of managers, it's important to keep in mind that employees are not just passive recipients of inclusive climates. They're also co-‐creators and so they need to be aware of the behaviors that are expected of them. When an organization does a good job of embedding these inclusion principles in all aspects of its talent management process, then they end up being able to ensure that the inclusiveness, right, ensure the inclusiveness of work group climates, and also ensure that managers engage in their inclusive leadership behaviors. And hence we end up with this kind of three-‐pronged approach to the drivers of inclusion being set in motion. We also talked in this course about the definition of inclusion, what it feels like to experience inclusion. In particular, we referred to the two dimensions of belongingness and uniqueness. I hope that it's clear to you now that just because one person experiences inclusion in an organization, does not mean that other people will. And in fact it's not uncommon for some people to experience inclusion but for other people to not experience inclusion based on differences in their backgrounds. We also talked a lot about group dynamics and how it's important to attend to these group dynamics and to engage in proactive behaviors, or proactive steps to try to mitigate some of the negative processes that can emerge as a result of diversity. It's important to be attentive to assumptions based on stereotypes, and how to counteract them, and it's important to take proactive steps to facilitate and protect psychological safety within groups. Finally, I hope that it's clear to you that there are numerous benefits to inclusion. At the individual level, research has shown that people who work in inclusive climates, and who experience inclusion, are more engaged in their jobs. They're also higher-‐performing, and much less likely to leave their organization. At the group level, research shows that groups that are characterized by inclusion engaged in more group learning. They are characterized by higher levels of cohesion and communication. And they tend to be better able to innovate and this



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also translates into higher levels of financial performance. At the organizational level, when we have all these levers of inclusion in place, organizations benefit from an enhanced kind of external reputation related to diversity and inclusion. And in turn this enables them to recruit, attract, and retain higher quality talent.

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