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