How Business Leaders Can Support Equity...Right Now
This post is prompted by discussions on my business school and coaching program alumni lists over the past week. In both places, I’ve seen a lot of genuine concern for colleagues, support for Black Lives Matter, and dismay at the state of our communities.
However, most of the calls to action were squarely in the “hearts and minds” category—pushes to examine our own beliefs and actions and hope that things get better.
What was seemingly missing: actions leaders have control over and can take today to make a difference. This post is about some of those steps.
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It’s complex, but we’re not powerless
While racism and inequality are certainly large and complex issues, they are not problems we can only stare at from afar.
As business leaders, we can actually make a difference right now.
One analogy is climate change. Sure, it’s a global issue that feels way bigger than any of us. But there are specific ways that we can individually contribute—things like:
Reducing our home’s energy footprint with efficient appliances
Reducing our transportation footprint by using public transit or efficient cars (or walking!)
Recycling
Voting and supporting political leaders that want to do something about the problem
None of those individual actions will solve the issue, but they’re what I can do right now to make a difference. In this moment of great challenge, I believe that business leaders can take a similar approach to creating greater equity. And like with climate change, it starts by taking actions within our own spheres of influence.
Some ideas:
1. Commit yourself to increasing inclusion on your own team.
The first thing all leaders can do is foster inclusion within their own teams. That starts with building strong, trust-based relationships with everyone.
In my conversations with leaders over the past week, trust has been a common theme. If a leader has already done the hard work of creating strong relationships and trust, there is lots of room for genuine human-to-human conversations (as opposed to “manager-to-subordinate” conversation) about race and what people on the team are experiencing.
In contrast, if it feels awkward to have these conversations, it may be a sign that you have not invested enough in relationship-building.
But here’s the larger point: this moment brings into full relief the fact that racial minorities live in a world that is often hostile to their existence. When they come to work—for you, on your team—do you want it to be a place where they feel valued, comfortable, and welcomed or another place in which there is indifference?
That’s the role of inclusion. And it’s the role of leaders to create it.
2. Commit yourself to giving universally better feedback.
Beyond making everyone feel welcome, good leadership helps employees say This is a place that helps me progress my career and improve my life.
Unfortunately, in too many organizations, minorities and women don’t get the kind of quality, development-oriented feedback that will help them make progress. And where there is feedback, it’s often exclusively backwards-focused.
Here’s the difference.
Backward-focused feedback: “John, here are 2 good things and 2 not-so-good things you did during that presentation.”
Future-focused feedback: “John, given your goal to be promoted at the end of the year, here are 2 things that show you’re meeting the bar and here 2 things you could do to improve for next time.”
It’s a small difference in language, but there’s a larger difference in impact.
Backwards-focused can feel like an evaluation, a judgment. And the lens with which the feedback is given typically uses a performance framework built only around what’s valuable for the organization.
Future-focused feedback, by leveraging the employee’s goals and looking ahead, says something different. I care about your success. I am taking the time to show how you can improve because I believe you can do so.
By the way, this is good leadership practice for all of your team members, regardless of background. Being able to give future-focused feedback requires having explicit conversations with team members about their goals and aspirations, tailoring feedback to what they care most about, and thinking concretely about each of their development trajectories. In other words:, things we should be doing as leaders anyway.
But here’s why the suggestion is phrased as “commit to giving universally better feedback”: we often apply this future-focused approach and our best leadership behaviors to some employees, but not others. And by being selective, we can introduce bias.
We may be more attracted to those like us. We may get along better with those who share similar interests or backgrounds. We see ourselves in them and want them to succeed.
The only way to mitigate these potential biases is to commit to applying our best leadership to every. single. one. of our team members. Every leader can do this, and every leader can start today.
If you’re a manager of managers, you can also communicate your expectation that all managers make this same commitment. You can review formal performance memos before they’re completed to ensure that they are high-quality.
And you can follow up on this intention by asking your team whether they’re actually experiencing the feedback (e.g., “Have you received quality development-oriented feedback in the last two weeks?”).
3. Commit yourself to equitable distribution of development opportunities.
Some companies have formal processes that review whether underrepresented groups are getting access to the right opportunities. A major law firm, for example, found that while it had diversity at the Associate level, an unequal distribution of opportunities held back the development of minorities and women were not getting the experiences they needed to prove their readiness for advancement. And this hindered meeting goals for great diversity at the Partner level.
Such processes can take time to implement, however. As an individual leader, you can make an impact now by asking a simpler question:
Does everyone on my team have a role that stretches their skills?
You can find this out by asking them.
Like with the previous recommendation, by making a commitment that everyone is in a position to grow, you reduce the chance that decisions about who gets what opportunities are affected by bias.
4. Start asking pointed questions and signaling your interest in diversity.
While it may take time to develop a robust strategy to improve diversity in hiring or suppliers over time, there are steps you can take now.
You can ask of your recruiting team: What are we doing to increase the diversity of our networks so that we see more diverse candidates over time?
You might also tell them: “I won’t make a hiring decision until I’ve seen a diverse slate of candidates for this role.”
With suppliers, you can ask: What are you doing on diversity? What’s your plan to make sure your work with us is staffed by a high-quality and diverse team?
5. Make sure all of your jobs are good jobs.
In a prior professional life, I did research about the challenges of people with fragile household finances. Or put another way: the half of all U.S. households who have little to no resources to withstand a financial shock.
A key insight: many of these people are employed full-time. And the data would suggest that many may be working directly or indirectly for your company right now.
They’re likely to be support staff—the cleaning and maintenance teams, security, admins, food service staff. And my guess is that if you look at your company, you’d find that many of them (in some areas, most of them) are people of color.
These workers are often left out of the conversation about diversity and inclusion because they have relatively low power in organizations. But if you’re looking for a place to have an immediate impact, this may be a good starting place.
Ask HR: For those who are talented, motivated, and want to progress their career here, what’s the path?
Ask the employees themselves: Do you feel included and part of the team?
If you’re outsourcing these roles, you can ask the supplier: Are you paying a living wage? What benefits do you offer? What are your scheduling policies? (When companies shift scheduling frequently, it can lead to variation in earnings for individual employees and make it more difficult for those taking care of kids or others to make coverage arrangements.)
These are just a few ideas—not nearly exhaustive. My hope is that they inspire thought about what each of us can do as leaders to make an impact. Racism and structural inequality are huge issues, and we can’t solve them alone. But there are actions in our control right now that will make a difference.
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Corporate citizenship will be a part of creating structural reforms needed to address inequity
Finally, a macro perspective: while there’s surely a role for greater awareness and empathy in solving these challenges, we won’t be able to achieve true equality without deeper structural reforms that generate equality across health, wealth, space, and education.
For example, if there were more equal health care access, there'd be less of a disparity in coronavirus death rates between racial groups.
If there were more economic equality, we’d see fewer deadly police interactions that start with (alleged) petty economic crimes—e.g., George Floyd using a counterfeit $20 bill, Eric Garner selling loose cigarettes.
If there were greater geographic integration, there would be fewer areas of concentrated poverty and heavy-handed policing of those areas.
Those are concrete examples of how Black lives are affected by the big choices we make as a country, and unless and until those inequities—and others—are addressed, positive sentiments from corporate leaders are likely to prove insufficient.
In my conversations with people of color at various companies, it's been striking how many have told me a version of “Yes, my company says good things about diversity, but my personal experience is that they aren't actually doing anything about it.” These professionals haven’t personally felt supported and haven’t seen action against corporate declarations in the past.
It is great that companies have proclaimed their support in recent days for Black Lives Matter. But the next question is likely to be: what are you actually doing about it?
The ultimate test won’t be what the CEO says, but whether the ways in which the company actually operates is consistent with a support for Black lives.
Does the company’s choices around political activity and policy advocacy amplify or undermine its support for Black lives? Does its tax payment (or avoidance) policies support investment in potential solutions to structural inequality? Does its operations lead to environmental or health issues in poor communities?
These are the measures by which we should determine whether companies are truly committed to the cause. My hope is that leaders follow their sentiments with real action. They can make a difference.
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I'm happy to talk more about this.
I'm really passionate about the power of great leadership to close the gap in organizations, so I'm happy to talk more about this if helpful. You can schedule time or just email me.
Additional Resources
Synthesis of diversity and inclusion research
Blog Post: Leading Inclusively