Chapter 4: 3B’s from ‘The 99 Day Diversity Challenge’

How many of you have friends and colleagues from all over the world? In today’s super connected world, this question might seem rhetorical or even stupid to some extent. Let me ask it differently- How many of you socialize and connect offline with these friends who belong to different nationalities and religious beliefs? In April 2019, I talked about my experience of living with 20 different roommates coming from different parts of India with the aim to share the benefits of embracing multicultural perspective. Surprisingly, in the same time duration, I was disclosed of suffering from my bias towards other strands and aspects of diversity such as generations, linguistic, cognitive etc. One night, I specifically remember getting distressed over my husband’s revelation who had found her otherwise chatty wife to be silent and almost judging when in the company of people from above categories. Until then I had considered myself to have overcome my homophilic attitude, to be conversant with diversity (mistaken as women empowerment activity by most of us) and inculcating of inclusive values. Six months later, with consistent soul-searching efforts, I understood Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) to be a work in progress activity and the skill which once acquired requires continuous sharpening. The pointers on- how did I get to the position where one can identify their bias in any dimension of diversity and how can one work towards fixing it are few different talk topics for another conference. So, stay tuned for them! True to my blog's intention, today I will be focusing on sharing my top three lessons from the book titled “The 99 Day Diversity Challenge: Creating an Inclusive Workplace” by an award-winning social entrepreneur Saundarya Rajesh.

 I have had the honor of meeting and listening to the author Dr. Saundarya who is an epitome of “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. Having undergone the hardships and struggle of starting a second-career post maternity, she founded her own recruitment firm Avtar Career Creators in 2000 which continues to provide the platform and opportunities for women with the career break to get back into the mainstream. Even with forte and interest in this segment, within the book she uncovers the varied diversity strands- gender, generations, LGBTQIA, religion, and many more. For me “The 99 Days...” is one of the most complete books I have read in the near past consisting of gripping plot, 85+ anecdotes, fun-filled mind games such as word finder, crosswords, etc. A lot of the times, I have heard people mentioning that D&I is HR’s work or that it should be an effort led and governed by the company’s head. But, if this concept does not trickle down from organization’s top to bottom or continues to stay within its HR function or up-to few people, then the cultural transformation will be superficial and its business success just a facade. To bolster this the author quoted “No ‘Organizations’ can become inclusive- only individuals can. It is only when the ‘inclusion thought’ permeates the organization from top to bottom, across levels, across functions and allows barriers to be broken that diversity gets a chance”.

1.      Bring self-awareness- In the book, protagonist Bharat, the CEO of ‘Accelever India’ underwent a tumultuous self-journey of D&I exploration. To cope with his helplessness, Bharat got a D&I book from his intern with the title same as the original one - “The 99 days…”. At every juncture in the next three months, the book continued to play the role of Bhagavad Gita for him detailing out the know-how of D&I, questioning him, his behavior and past decisions. One such decision was regarding Evita, Mrs. Bharat and an ex-Accelever employee. When Evita shared her ambition of returning to work after 5 years of career break, Bharat reacted with mixed feelings of anxiety and care for her wife and children. He expressed his topmost concern over a topic i.e. if Evita chose to go back to work, their two daughters would remain devoid of motherly love just like he did when he lost his mother to the cancer. However, Bharat’s father was supportive of Evita’s decision and made his son understand that to become truly inclusive in today’s changing times he would have to let go off his past fears and old beliefs.

The author points out that we get too attached and comfortable with our own beliefs and values which has been built over the years using our varied experiences, upbringing, advices and failures. Thus, when faced with few challenging scenarios, we fail to understand the limitations of its application. For instance, two weeks back I attended an amazing workshop on Thinking Traps by Smitha, the facilitator from The Painted Sky wherein I was asked to share one of my beliefs about the world. I proudly shared my belief on the law of karma i.e. ‘Everything is connected’. The trainer asked me and fellow trainees to reflect on situations wherein this belief can become limiting and/or hurt someone. After looking at my confused face, she shared – “Imagine a time when you wait for the universe to get back to a mean person and do not stand up for yourself in the name of karma. During such a scenario, your otherwise empowering belief has the potential to negatively impact you”. Thus, I have decided to bring the self-awareness of both my good and bad beliefs within me. I have few questions for you to reflect on- How well do you know yourself? Are you willing to know more about your identity i.e. your diversity biodata as the author calls it?

2.      Burn your bias- Kyle Hill famously quoted “We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at”

We are all guilty of being biased in our perspective towards others, aren’t we? To explain it, the author has shared a realistic story of a lady assistant manager (AM) hailing from Tier III city in India. The scene started with an angry lady ready to take on a fight with her boss over an unequal pay. Recently, she had come to understand from her colleague that the major reason for her lesser pay compared to other less experienced colleagues is a common belief “she is yet to prove herself”. To which she justified that the business numbers speak of her performance. With the grief in her mind and angst in her heart, she went on to self-reflect on few hard-hitting perceptions laid out by people such as her unpolished English, her slightly conservative clothes and her birth in a tier III city were harbingers of her slow progress. In the end, she made a firm decision to confront her manager with the suggestion to find a replacement in case they can’t accept her for who she was.

As per a recent survey on biases at work places in India, almost 50% of the engineers reported bias in their companies’ hiring systems while 44% of men and 30% of women engineers reported bias against their native state or region. These are few of the very alarming figures! As per another survey, during downfall of a company, women CEO have 80% chances of being blamed for the cause of downward spiral versus only 31% male CEOs. What does gender, religion or state one belongs to have anything to do with their performance? With conformational bias, we welcome exclusiveness in our communities, organizations and nations at large. How about we all start to assess our beliefs and biases regularly and burn the ones which are irrelevant and/ or unhealthy? Because as Mahatma Gandhi pointed out “Civilization is the encouragement of differences.”

3.      Be equitable: Rick Riordan once said “Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need”. This quote aptly describes the difference between equality and equity. The author has shared multiple stories and an article where equity and its importance were described.

 One that stood out for me from the book happens to be a revised version of a classic short story for kids i.e. of a quarrel between the crane and the fox. The story revolved around these two friends turned foes whose quarrel was affecting the peace at the lower valley. It all started with the fact that one night when crane was invited to Fox’s place for the dinner he was served food in a flat dish just like his host’s. In the spirit of equality, Fox had unintentionally caused discomfort to his guest. The crane took this personally and was insulted by the whole incident. He invited the Fox to his place the next day and served him the food in a long jar thus, causing inconvenience to the Fox. Both these friends had forgotten the fact that the principle of equality does not always serve good. The author suggests that while it important to provide equal access to resources to all diverse groups, it might be more important to recognize the ‘means’ to utilize these resources differently, to get to the same destination.

In the past, I was asked by my male colleagues - the reason for participating in/ leading women empowerment activities. During such debates, major point used to be the need of having separate conferences, meetups, sensitization trainings, and more such events dedicated to women. Surprisingly, when I dug further on the sentiment behind these questions- I understood it to be driven by myriad of emotions and processes- curiosity, exclusion, and insecurity. To address these negative emotions, my women colleagues and I had tried to involve men in these conversations and not leave them outside the closed-door events. But, when called upon, the turn-up numbers were staggering low. Based on the feedback of men who did turn-up, it was clear that the sensitization of men towards day-to-day issues faced by women at work serves as a stepping stone towards solving gender bias and discrimination. Thankfully, over the years I have seen slow but steady growth in numbers of men supporting women e.g. systems leader Alan Harding champions for 'equity i.e. equality of opportunity for women'. My genuine hope for the coming generations is to have an equitable workplace wherein every diverse group thrives.

In her recent video, motivational speaker Priya Kumar advised to speak to one new person every day for next 365 days. Her message was clear that if you talk to a new person every day, you come to realize that people are harmless and that they bring with them a message, solution, and happiness for you. I would like to extend her thoughts and put out a weekly challenge for you- find a new person with unique diversity biodata, interact with them without preconceived notions and help them reach their potential through equity. Are you up for this challenge? Because beyond the discomfort of talking to new and diverse people, lies the beauty of warmth, knowledge and cohesive communities. I would love to hear from you on your opportunities and challenges of working with diverse groups.

Tell me about Riya

Riya is an avid reader, life-long learner and lively person. She gets a great joy in sharing her knowledge and developing others. Her interest lies in automotive safety, women empowerment and environmental issues. She lives by the quote of “Take risks in life. If you win, you will lead. If you lose, you will guide”

Tell me about Series 3X’s from Riya’s Reads

This series is targeted to cover 3X* powerful lessons/ characteristics that Riya has learnt from the books she reads. Where, X={A-Z}. Let us hear what Riya thinks about the series in her own words.

Since childhood, I have always loved reading books. However, in recent years I noticed a big change in me. Let us take an example - If my friend asks me to pick a choice between binge watching movies or doing a readathon. The chances are 7 out of 10 times I would pick up books. Don’t get me wrong here. I do like watching movies but, my intrinsic choice will be books over movies. Also, I am a strong believer of the theory that you attract the books that you need at any point of time in your life. One quick example on same- In early-2015, I was flying from Kerala to Mumbai and in the flight noticed a person in adjacent seat reading the book titled ‘Inner Engineering’. Looking at the book, one quick thought crossed my mind- “How nice would it be if I could read this book?”. And guess what? I was gifted this same book within a month and the cherry on the top was that the person did not know that I wanted it or that I would need it near future. During the same month, I was also gifted a book called ‘The Book of Joy’. With fortunate accident, I had received two books which would prove to be my pillar of strengths in near tumultuous times. I have always appreciated the books I was gifted more than the one I purchased. Because it brings with it not only the well wishes of the giver but, more importantly hidden messages such as “You can do it!”, “This shall pass too”, “If they can, so can you” and so on. In every chapter of the series, I will cover three well-worthy lessons I have learnt from all these books. The aim of each chapter would be to give out the hidden messages of optimism, hope, and strength through model, simple text and/or equations.