Why your DEI programs aren’t working

One of the common threads I hear from many of my clients is that their diversity, equity, belonging and inclusion initiatives could be better but they’re not sure of the how. How to get more people involved in the programming. How to create programming that is effective. How to inspire more of their workforce to truly care about these initiatives.

Before we go any further, I want to highlight some positives. If these questions are currently being floated around your team when it comes to implementing more DEI strategies, you are already on the right track. You care about the experience of everyone around you and you already have some programming in place that reflects your concerns. These are both great starting points for success.

So you’re probably thinking that you’re trying so hard and you are genuinely interested in making real change. Why isn’t any of it working?

There is one major reason above all why your DEI initiatives aren’t as successful as you’d like them to be: it isn’t clear what you mean when you use key terms.

Define everything. Yes, everything.

Something I learned very early on as a keynote speaker is to eliminate the assumption of knowledge. The client is bringing me or any speaker in to speak to the organization for one of two reasons: to teach a concept that is brand new to their audience or to reframe a common idea in a new, fresh way that will change their audience’s perspective.

Both of these paths require the speaker to lay the foundation, and we do that by defining and explaining basic concepts in a way that’s going to best help you as the listener grasp these ideas. I do this with empathy; I compare empathy to both being in love and being in various stages of romantic relationships so my audience can be in the correct mindset to learn the new concepts I’ll introduce later on in the talk.

Human resources professionals, managers and leaders should be taking this same approach when creating and growing DEI programming. If you want your teams to truly grasp these change initiatives, you must be explicit in your definitions of what the result of those change initiatives looks like.

Now you probably think you’ve already done this. But many managers and change agents fall into the trap of just saying they want more. They want a more diverse team; a workforce that feels more engaged; individuals to feel more comfortable speaking up in different situations. Though these are well intentioned, they are ineffective. The reason being is that these are not goals that can be measured; they are abstract objectives.

How do you define these terms?

Get away from conceptualism. Saying you want more diversity and inclusion in your organization is very “hand wavy” and ineffective. To change course, you must first decide what terms you want to define. A great place to start is with your core values. Look at what your company holds in high esteem and weave those into your definitions related to your DEI goals.

Let’s say your company highly values trust, ownership and accountability. Trust directly correlates having an environment on your team where everyone feels comfortable and confident more often than not; trust is a direct line to inclusion. Ownership means that each individual has a stake in what’s happening at multiple levels; ownership and equity are synonyms. Accountability encourages people to say something when they see something that needs to be changed; accountability can easily be tied to making teams more diverse.

Be explicit in your definitions

To take this a step further, be ruthlessly specific when defining your chosen terms. When going after certain diversity goals, step away blanket terms like “people of color” and really target who you are looking for. If you want to hire more black and hispanic women or immigrants, say that.

Also instead of looking at diversity as demographics, view it as perspectives. What perspectives are missing? Do you need more engagement with these different perspectives in order to increase your knowledge in these gaps? Are there any perspectives that are intentionally suppressed?

The biggest takeaway is this: managers and leaders need to be precise in defining terms like diversity, equity, belonging and inclusion so that everyone is on the same page. If people know what the definitions of these terms are for the company, everyone will be able to better participate. Everyone will know the tangible goals that the team and company are going for which results in knowing the path forward and the actions required to be successful.