Diversity & Inclusion 3.0

This short LinkedIn article has been the basis for my AC Perspectives January 2022 article on this topic, which is available here.

Promoting Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is increasingly perceived as a societal imperative and many organizations are putting in place D&I policies and practices.

An important difficulty with the concept of diversity is that various things exist under this headline (Meyer, 2017; Harrison & Klein, 2007). Likewise, D&I can be understood at different levels. When most organizations talk about D&I, they are really referring to what I would label D&I 1.0, missing out on opportunities to promote creativity, unity and impact.??

Diversity & Inclusion 1.0 – External (or visible) diversity

Combatting prejudice and discrimination against certain groups of people, and promoting equal opportunity constitute the primary goal of D&I 1.0.

Social psychology is particularly helpful to understand how the social context shapes individual attitudes and behaviors, and can give rise to phenomena such as polarization, exclusion and racism.

Social categories turn out to be much blurrier than we think (Plous, 2020). What is a black person? Someone with 1/8th percent black ancestry? 1/16th? Any black ancestry? All black ancestry? There is not a unique answer. Still, the ambiguity does not prevent people from thinking in terms of “us” versus “them”.?

Henri Tajfel showed that it is easy to trigger “Ingroup bias” (or “Ingroup favoritism”) even when the groups are constituted randomly (those in our group constitute the “ingroup” and those outside are the “outgroup”).?

Stereotyping is a common tendency, which is about minimizing differences in the outgroup (i.e., “outgroup homogeneity bias”) and exaggerating differences between the outgroup and our ingroup.?

As Gordon Alport showed, there is a slippery slope: this categorical thinking gives rise to prejudice, which is a “preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members”. While prejudice is a negative attitude, it often leads to discrimination, which is an “unjustified negative behavior toward a group of people” (Myers & Twenge, 2019).

Racism typically involves prejudice and discrimination vis-à-vis certain people, viewed as belonging to a different “race”: African Americans, Jews, etc.?Racist acts can be characterized not only by their severity but also by the authors’ drives:?rage and hatred, blind obedience (i.e., following orders), bystander effect/diffusion of responsibility (i.e., not intervening). Social psychology research (e.g., Milgram, Latané and Darley) has revealed that we are more prone to blind obedience and diffusion of responsibility than we think.

Once we become aware of these dynamics, we don’t need to fall prey to the detrimental phenomena and can learn instead to act responsibly and humanely. We can promote inclusion, which amounts to making our ingroup larger, possibly to embrace all humanity.

What is more, Mahzarin Banaji has shown with her Implicit Association Test that our biases may be unconscious, operating like “blindspots in our minds” (Plous, 2020). We may be unconsciously prejudiced against certain people without being consciously aware of it. Raising awareness is key again and it is also a matter “feeding our brain the right stuff”, i.e., information and images of what reality is like in all its nuances beyond limiting stereotypes.???

Anthropology and traditional interculturalism are also very helpful here to describe cultural differences among nationalities and other groups. Geert Hofstede among others has compared cultural characteristics between various countries (e.g., the Chinese are like this, the French are like that). Other researchers have contrasted different generations (e.g., Generation X, Generation Y, Baby Boomers). The intention is to become mindful of differences, to avoid judging people solely by our standards but strive instead to understand their worldview. We promote inclusion by welcoming and integrating people from different cultures.

D&I 1.0 is concerned with hiring/gathering people from various groups (e.g., avoiding leaving out minorities) as well as with promoting mutual understanding and respect. This is notably done by facilitating genuine human encounters between people from diverse backgrounds.

D&I 1.0 is still much needed and constitutes the majority of D&I initiatives.

Diversity & Inclusion 2.0 – Internal (or cognitive) diversity

At this stage, the categorical thinking that potentially gives rise to stereotyping and discrimination is avoided. Beyond demographics, D&I 2.0 focuses on diverse mental models.?

Cass Sunstein has shown that diversity (“in terms of ideas and perspectives, not necessarily along demographic lines”, i.e., cognitive diversity) allows to promote creativity and innovation (2015).

Intercultural coaching is meant to do this in practice, by unleashing the power that resides in cultural diversity, regardless of its demographic origin. The Cultural Orientations Framework (COF) assessment facilitates the understanding of salient cultural characteristics (such as time management approaches, organizational arrangements, communication patterns, modes of thinking, etc.) for individuals, teams and organizations. It also offers a concrete way to leverage cultural differences.

Inclusion at this level is about the synthesis of cultural differences (“and” versus “or”) to promote unity in diversity. People don’t only feel welcomed and respected. They have the sense that their different viewpoints are seen as an opportunity rather than as a threat. They feel they belong and can thrive, in the interest of all parties and stakeholders.

Diversity & Inclusion 3.0 – Implicit (or hidden) diversity

Cultural diversity may be external (i.e., visible differences such as ethnicity, gender, or age) and internal (i.e., cultural preferences regarding time management, communication, thinking, organizing, etc.). This dichotomy is related to the known surface-level/deep-level diversity distinction (Meyer, 2017) and to the associated D&I 1.0 and D&I 2.0 approaches described above.?

This distinction is useful in that it allows us to describe and then enlarge our inner territory. By expanding our worldview, we have access to new external choices and become more effective. However, the separation is apparently an illusion and reality is not that simple. It is more interconnected and complex than we think. In line with the holographic/complexity/organic paradigm (Rosinski, 2010) that transcends the still-prevalent mechanistic worldview without excluding it, I have proposed a complementary dichotomy (2019): cultural diversity is explicit (i.e., manifested) or implicit (i.e., hidden but nevertheless potentially available). In other words, for example, a team might come across as relatively homogeneous and would not be considered diverse under the usual definitions (referring to visible characteristics or to internal/cognitive diversity). However, from a holographic standpoint, which accounts for notions such as Carl Jung’s collective unconscious as well as coaches’ belief in the vast – yet largely untapped – human potential, this apparent homogeneous team would be still considered diverse and heterogeneous, albeit in an implicit, enfolded sense.

In “Delivering value through cross-cultural team coaching” (Rosinski, 2019), I have shown how this concept can be put into practice when coaching teams by removing cultural blindspots (i.e., cultural orientations overlooked by team members and that could be beneficial ) and accessing its hidden cultural potential.???

Inclusion at this level is about tapping into our unconscious diversity potential and leveraging it, individually and collectivity.????

Importantly, successive levels of D&I go together with increased complexity. Mastering D&I at the previous level is needed to effectively work at the next level. For example, if prejudice and discrimination still exist, it is unlikely that different viewpoints will be accepted, let alone celebrated. Combatting prejudice and discrimination (D&I 1.0) will pave the way for this acceptation but will usually be insufficient to promote creativity and innovation. The reverse is not true though: in my experience, D&I 2.0 and D&I 3.0 interventions also have a positive impact at the D&I 1.0 level. It is not by chance that a transgender participant chose one of our sessions to do his coming out. Even though we had not explicitly addressed the theme of sexual orientation, we had promoted a safe climate of deep inclusion. However, this was possible because we were working from a foundation of existing implicit acceptation of diversity and readiness to be inclusive.

Intercultural coaching applies to all forms of diversity. Systematically weaving a cultural perspective into coaching represents a formidable opportunity to deploy the human potential in its rich cultural diversity, even when these cultural differences are still latent rather than unfolded.

In practice, intercultural coaching for D&I combines D&I 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 levels as appropriate and necessary in the situation. Our interventions draw from a range of disciplines and are tailored to our clients’ unique contexts. Our interdisciplinary approach allows to be more ambitious in what we can all expect from D&I programs.?????

References

Klein, K. (2017). Does Gender Diversity on Boards Really Boost Company Performance? Knowledge@Wharton, 18 May.

Meyer, B. (2017). Team Diversity - A Review of the Literature. In E. Salas, R. Rico, & J. Passmore, The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Team Working and Collaborative Processes (pp. 151-175). John Wiley & Sons.

Myers, D., & Twenge, J. (2019). Social Psychology 13th ed. New York: Mc Graw Hill.

Plous, S. (2020). Social Psychology. Coursera.

Rosinski, P. (2003). Coaching Across Cultures. London and Yarmouth, ME: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Rosinski, P. (2010). Global Coaching. London - Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Rosinski, P. (2019). Delivering value through cross-cultural team coaching. In J. Passmore , B. Underhill, & M. Goldsmith, Mastering Executive Coaching (pp. 130-159). Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge.

Sunstein, C., & Hastie, R. (2015). Wiser - Getting beyond groupthink to make groups smarter. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.

https://philrosinski.com/

https://www.cofassessment.com/

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