Why corporate diversity programs fail what to do instead

[Music]

in 2018

two black men went to a starbucks

to wait for a business associate but

when they asked to use the bathroom

the manager ordered them to leave they

refused

he called the police and the video went

viral

amidst an avalanche of bad publicity

starbucks closed all stores across the

country for four

hours of diversity training and so

baristas were handed workbooks with

prompts like

what makes me me and you you

and understanding our bias from

colorblind to color brave

this made newspapers across the country

and

arguably that was the goal look everyone

we’re solving our diversity problem

the assumption though was that you could

address

structural racism with a an

earnest conversation about our feelings

my take give me a break

to address structural racism you need to

change

structures so in the aftermath

of george floyd’s death my sense is that

many companies are feeling pressure to

actually

deliver on their diversity goals but

they haven’t a

clue what to do and that’s because

we spent probably close to a billion

dollars

on diversity but the basic tools

of the diversity industrial complex they

just don’t work

a one-shot bias training it doesn’t work

for a really simple reason

doing anything once won’t change a

company’s culture and the other basic

tools things like an employee resource

group or a woman’s initiative

they’re fine if the problem is with the

women

and the people of color but it’s it’s

not

if a company faces challenges

surrounding diversity

typically it’s because subtle and not so

subtle

forms of bias are constantly being

transmitted through their basic business

systems

through hiring through performance

evaluations

through access to opportunities so

we need to stop trying to fix the women

and the people of color

we need to fix the business systems

and if you think about it this makes

sense

because if a company was facing

challenges with sales

it wouldn’t respond by holding a series

of

sincere conversations about how much we

all

value sales and put on programming

for national celebrate sales month and

expect

sales to improve but that’s a lot of

what we’re doing

in the diversity context if we really

want to tackle

diversity effectively we need to use

the same tools businesses use to tackle

any business problem evidence

and metrics and you know i suspect this

will come as a relief

to a lot of ceos who feel far more

comfortable

using those tools than they do with

trying to lead a deep conversation

about the inner workings of social

inequality

you know the first step is for us to

understand what bias looks like on the

ground

and i and my team at work life law

we have been studying how bias plays out

in

everyday workplace interactions for well

over a decade

and what we find is that

the same patterns of bias the same

five patterns they emerge over and over

again

so here’s what the evidence looks like

the first pattern

we call prove it again some groups

have to prove themselves more than

others

this is triggered by lots of different

things it’s triggered by

race and gender age

disability lgtbq status

even social class so one study

for example looked at callbacks offered

to white men

with identical qualifications but

different hobbies

one resume listed things like sailing

and polo and the other resume

listed things like counseling first

generation

college students and country music and

if you can believe it

mr polo he got 12 times the number of

callbacks

as mr country music too often when we

talk about privilege

we forget about class

the second pattern is called the

tightrope and it reflects

the fact that a certain in-group of

white men

just need to be authoritative and

ambitious

in order to succeed but women

walk a tightrope where they may be seen

as abrasive if they’re authoritative

but unqualified if they’re not and

people of color who behave assertively

often are written off as angry

if they’re black even hot-headed

if they’re latinx and sometimes as

untrustworthy

if they’re asian-american

the next pattern we call the tug of war

and it reflects the fact that sometimes

bias against a group feels conflict

within the group so for example

if there’s room for only one woman or

person of color it’s entirely

predictable

women are going to be super competitive

with other women

and people of color competitive with

other people of color

the fourth pattern of bias is actually

the strongest form of gender bias called

the maternal wall

and it reflects assumptions that mothers

aren’t committed probably shouldn’t be

and aren’t competent think pregnancy

brain

so mothers often find they have to prove

themselves yet again

when they return from maternity leave

and if they do

they may be seen as bad mothers and so

as bad

people and disliked

the final pattern consists of racial

stereotypes

so asian americans again and again

report that they’re seen as a great

match

for technical skills but lacking in

leadership potential

and our studies show that black

professionals

oh again and again report really high

levels

of isolation and often startling forms

of disrespect

and an asian-american professional

may be seen as too emotional in a

discussion

where you know what a white man behaving

exactly the same way

would be seen as having a career

enhancing passion for the business

and so what we find is that white women

report

four patterns of bias men of color

also report for women of color

report all five in very substantial

proportions and among women of color

black women report the most bias as a

group

but the bottom line really is that the

experience of white men

as a group differs from that of every

other group

if a white man is a first generation

professional or lgtbq

he may encounter bias but but most

aren’t

these biases can have really serious

negative effects

you know there’s a ton of research but

here’s a story that really says it all

we were working with one company and we

spoke to a woman engineer

who had found a mistake in one of the

calculations

of a male colleague and she pointed it

out

when she pointed it out she was

violating

an unwritten rule the good woman is seen

as

modest self-effacing and nice

not a mission-driven expert that’s why

male experts in meetings exert more

influence but you know what

female experts they actually exert

less influence than female non-experts

do

and so when this engineer pointed out

the mistaken calculation

she told us their response of her

department was so

massively negative that she said now i’m

just

smiling a lot and bringing in cupcakes

this company by allowing gender bias to

go

unchecked was literally jeopardizing

their mission

[Music]

so what’s the solution the solution

is to use bias interrupters new

tools my team has developed that are

evidence-based and metrics driven and

i’ve just told you about

a lot of the evidence metrics are also

super important because they help you

pinpoint where things are going wrong so

if a company has

challenges with hiring they should be

keeping track of

who is in the original pool of

candidates

and who survives resume review

and who gets called to interview and who

survives the interview

and the reason that’s important is

because the fix

if you have a non-diverse original pool

it’s totally different than the fix if

no woman

ever survives the interview because

every woman

is either too witchy or

too meek

metrics are also super important for

another reason

to establish baselines and measure

progress if you use

evidence and metrics what we have found

is that small tweaks can have really big

effects

so we’ve worked with one company for

example

who asked us to look at their

performance evaluations

and when we did we found that

only 9.5 percent of the people of color

had leadership mentioned in their

performance

evaluations that was 70 points lower

than white women and that was super

important because

as you can imagine mentions of

leadership

predicted advancement and so

we worked with them to do two simple

things

first we redesigned the performance

evaluations

form and second we

help them develop a simple one-hour

workshop

that among other things projected actual

comments from the prior year’s

performance evaluations

and ask people a simple question

which of the five patterns of bias does

this represent

or is it no bias just doing that

we found in year two one hundred percent

of the people of color

had leadership mentioned in their

performance evaluations

you know at this company white women

they had a different

problem almost 20 percent had comments

in their performance evaluations

that they didn’t really want to make

partner this was a partnership

and we suspected you know the women

hadn’t actually said that

it was just assumptions and so in that

one hour workshop we told people hey

don’t say this unless you’ve actually

had a conversation

and then someone has told you they don’t

want to make a partner

in year two only one woman got that

comment

one woman in the entire company

and so what we find is that

we have helped over a hundred companies

actually make progress towards their

diversity goals

and there’s growing evidence that these

bias

interrupters work and the best thing

about them

is that they help every single group

so in this company i’ve been talking

about

um in year two people of color they got

wildly more

constructive feedback it was like a 30

percent jump

but white women they got more

constructive feedback too

and so did white men if you design your

systems

based on evidence it’s going to help

every single group

so the bottom line if you think about it

your systems and your culture they

reflect the people you’ve already hired

so if you want to replicate that

workforce

into the future definitely keep on doing

exactly what you’re doing but if you

don’t

if you actually want to make progress on

diversity

equity and inclusion what we call dei

my message to ceos is reassuring

you already know what to do use standard

business tools

start from the evidence gather metrics

to establish

baselines and measure progress and keep

at it

until you achieve your goals that’s

the new dei playbook

and it works thank you

you