The 3 Legs of Practicing Diversity
A few years ago I learned a brilliant saying:
Diversity is inviting people to the dance.
Inclusion is then asking them to dance.
All of us have seen, over the past years, months, and weeks people talk more and more and more about diversity (and rightly so). And while we’re each on our own individual learning curve of this process, at some point, we’ll each have to reckon with not only learning but practicing diversity and inclusion, in deliberate and action-oriented ways.
A few weeks ago, I called my long-time friend, career sponsor, and life/work advisor Ivy Kusinga because I needed her help turning an idea I had into words on a page. I promised her that I just needed five minutes for an outside view. Thirty-seven minutes later, I was taking notes and sketching a stool in my journal, as she outlined for me the three legs of practicing diversity.
1. Actively seek out people with differences.
Differences in this case, mean different things too. Differences are external: skin color, age, sex, sexual orientation, nationality. And they’re internal: perspective, personality type, upbringing, expertise. And we need both types. External attributes create internal experiences.
Alongside it being the right thing to do, it makes business sense. Companies who have a diverse set of advisors outperform their peers in profitability by 30%.
2. Incorporate individuals’ differences into your process.
Operationalizing is the key to any business change. It’s the difference between “We did something!” and “This is the way we now do things.” If you’re a business owner, it’s the shift and work that gives a business value and makes it sell-able at some point.
Said another way: it’s not enough to make some diverse hires; make a one-off charitable donation; or feature some minority-owned businesses on social media once in a while. The question instead is: how do we include these actions and people into our quotidien process, in a repeating, sustainable way? (Some examples from our business are here).
3. Look at the world through an equitable lens.
We talked about this last week a bit too (if you haven’t yet, really do check out this infographic on the racial wealth gap). In my privileged and humble opinion, this is really the hardest one to see and do something about, when you’re someone – or a business – who has been sitting on the three-legged stool for so long.
This step requires us to pull away from our comfort zone and rise above the day to day, looking for opportunities to create equity. Find people and businesses who have been disadvantaged not in spite of, but because of, the system.
Seek ways to get them equity. Not just equality. Equity.
