Coaching: catalyst for inclusion or exacerbator of privilege?

The collection of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (D&I, I&D, DEI or DEIB depending on who's talking) is a common topic for discussion among people professionals. It can feel like a bit of a thorny issue.

The typical person - the typical leader, for that matter - doesn't have deep subject matter expertise and therefore feels ill-equipped to engage in a dialogue about it. There's a risk in some quarters that the message is over-simplified, suggesting that disagreeing with a particular approach is to be "on the wrong side of history". Take an example person who's read that there's evidence to suggest that unconscious bias training doesn't change behaviour and at times can even make the problem worse. Suggesting their organisation should therefore stop it, risks them painting themselves as being tolerant of sexism, racism, or any other negative -ism.

In a recent letter published in The Economist, Scott Simmons pointed out the underlying issue with training-led initiatives:

As practised today, DEI promotes a mistaken belief that setting noble expectations, creating awareness, making conscious behavioural decisions and rebuking those who don't change can flip a switch to produce unbiased brains. DEI thinks bias is a matter of will, which runs counter to the past 50 years of social-science research.

This sort of insight isn't controversial. I expect very few, if any, truly think that initiatives intended to foster inclusive organisations eliminate humans' innate tendencies to gravitate towards what feels familiar. I also expect that most don't feel that the work is done once an initiative has been introduced into an organisation.

The challenge lies in our brains. People want to spend less time on social media, or want to spend more time exercising, and yet they still don't do it a lot of the time. Training isn't enough!

If training isn't enough, is coaching?

Naturally, this is the cue for me to mention coaching, which (understandably) might get a bad rap on this topic. A lot of online content about coaching can feel focussed on helping those people that already have enough get even more. Professor Peter Hawkins tells a story about being challenged by someone describing coaching as "expensive personal development for the already highly privileged".

Let's not be naive; there is coaching out there that absolutely does that. But we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Coaching focused on increasing inclusion is inherently different from running a training programme on diversity.

• Coaching is non-judgemental by design, and confidential. Coaching clients feel more able to express their thoughts aloud, enabling them to wrestle with their perspectives and assumptions using critical thinking.
• It's also non-directive and personalised by its nature. Rather than being told what or how to think and behave, an individual coaching client can discover what that means for themselves.

Facilitated by a skillful coach (more on this below) this combines to create an environment in which even the most sceptical of coaching clients can express their emotions and thoughts, reflect on them, interrogate their unconscious assumptions and intentionally choose what and how to change.

The challenge for coaches

In a recent conversation with Simon Fanshawe he shared that diversity is inherent in every organisation - it's present in the coaching room whether we admit it or not - and yet it seems to come in very few coaching conversations until coaches design it in.

For many coaches, for the reasons discussed above, raising the topic can feel intimidating. Isn't it exciting that we could make such a massive, systemic difference just by being brave and then holding ourselves firmly to good practice coaching principles?

Perhaps it's impossible to "flip a switch to produce unbiased brains", but a coaching relationship should be expected to generate tools for coachees that enable them to understand their own blind spots and then self-correct.