Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Q&A
A compilation of questions and answers on the psychology and science of diversity, equity, exclusion, and inclusion, from past workshop attendees.
Q: What are ways to recruit and screen for diverse candidates without only focusing on race or gender?
A: I recommend diving into some of the hiring articles on my resources page to understand how new hiring systems lead to more representational diversity, simply by being more fair to all candidates :) Our brains, whether we mean to or not, focus on the race, gender, age, etc of candidates anyway, so the idea is to create hiring systems that intercept these biases, so in fact all candidates are treated equally throughout the hiring process. Without bias interventions in hiring, even when we think we’re not focusing on race, gender, and such, our limbic brains absolutely are treating candidates differently based on these demographics. .
Q: How do you combat the minimization of equity, or the desensitization of various needs within a possible hostile, or highly political environment?
A: With patience, which is understandable to not what to have sometimes. However, if your goal is to have your workplace truly priority equity and inclusion, then you’ll want to dive into the realm of influence, persuasion and change management — to understand the psychology of how to help others change the way they see a problem or issue. Some great books about this are Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard and the book Nudge. Both have full great examples and tools for this, but it’s also important to gear up on the science of equity and inclusion so you can leverage the right arguments.
Q: Do you have data regarding how these trainings affect revenue in participating companies?
A: Yes! Research shows that these trainings alone don’t impact revenue. At all. However, EDI trainings can help normalize EDI conversations, and this in turn is a critical first step towards implementing EDI changes and experiments at work, and these things are what increase equity, inclusion and/or diversity in the workplace. The actual increase of racial and gender diversity, and the increase in equitable practices, these both are positively correlated with increase in revenue and success metrics :) Read more on the “ROI of equity” here. This is a long way of saying, trainings don’t make magic happen, trainings set the right tone for actual changes to be made.
Q: Why do folks in the dominant culture try to connect with those in the non-dominant culture by saying random weird things like “Oh, my friend's Mom's cousin’s brother is Native too!”?
A: This is called values signaling, which is both frustrating but evolutionarily is important. Values signaling is when humans find ways to “signal” to other humans what they’re about (what matters to them, what they’re into, etc) and we are all wired to do this. This helps us form bonds faster and easily “find our people” -- ie create belonging.
Values signaling can include how we dress, what words we use, what pop culture references we drop, and yes -- who we try to align ourselves with. In this case, the dominant-group person is likely unconsciously trying to signal that they’re not racist, that they’re down with equality, that they’re inclusive to Native peoples, that kind of thing.
Unfortunately, this kind of “woke” values-signaling back-fires, because it highlights that the dominant-group person doesn’t understand the difference between true inclusion and random statements. Meaning, if I’m the only Black employee, what good is it to me when you randomly tell me your mom’s new husband is Black?
What all humans care about is actual support, actually allyship, towards true equity. We don’t want someone to tell us they love Thai food because we’re Thai, we just want to be treated with equal respect as if we were White, or whoever else might be the dominant group. So, if you truly want to make non-dominant folks feel supported and included, do not try to get “woke-points” by talking at them about who know, what food you eat, where you went on vacation, what you watch or what music you listen to.
Instead, try noticing when they’re left out of conversations, when they’re interrupted, when they’re not invited out to casual lunch with other coworkers, when they’re not selected for the good projects or to speak at department meetings. Don’t overly single them out, simply notice and advocate that they get the same chances, respect, and accolades as everyone else does. And, know that this list is a fraction of what equity work can be — which is why I teach multiple workshops on this topic :)
Q: How can we influence our subconscious so that the receiver of our question/message does not feel like an outgroup but rather an ingroup?
A: Lovely question! The receiver of your question/message will always feel like an outgroup member if your limbic brain is treating them as such, so you are right to assume that the change to make is in your own brain. Check out cognitive exercises such as Individualization (included in your Next Steps email if you took my workshops and a little more under Unconscious Bias Interventions), but also take into account that your rational brain might have to intercept the stupid/old school thoughts and actions your limbic brain wants to think and do. Again, these rational actions are way to much to cover in a Q&A and are what I teach in workshops, but you can also learn more about some of them right now on Project Include.
Q: Why when we are in the outgroup do we seem to want to find a way to be in the ingroup?
A: Because belonging and inclusion are hard-wired core needs for 88%ish of humans. Why? Because the cave people that cared for these core needs (and thus protected them) were the ones who survived and whose DNA we all walk around with. Turns out, social inclusion has always been a shortcut to all the good things in life: better food (more diverse and higher quality nutrition when you hunt, gather and farm as a group), better shelter (ditto on quality), better choice of sex and life partners (a$$holes don’t get better mates), and in our modern life, better jobs, less stress, etc. So when we’re rejected by any group, but especially the “in-group”, our brains see it as an issue of survival and quality-of-life to figure out how to get included or to seek refuge in a small but tighter outgroup where we stand a better chance of getting included.
I add more Q&As all the time after workshops - check back often!
