Voice At The Table

Over the past seven years that I have been running Voice At The Table, I’ve heard all kinds of objections to the implementation of impactful Diversity and Inclusion initiatives.  And it’s true, Diversity and Inclusion may not be for everyone.  If you’re still thinking whether it’s something your organisation ought to get behind, here are my top three reasons not to bother with EDI :

1. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

If, like many successful organisations, you’re cautious about change because you think your business delivery is near perfect, then perhaps EDI is not for you.  After all, if there are no problems with your products or services, if you have a loyal market following and your colleagues appear happy, then there’s nothing to gain from introducing EDI.  Why should you introduce change into something that’s working so well?

I only have one question: is the way you’re currently doing business going to serve you well in the next two, five and ten years from now as well?

Our marketplace is changing.  Talent pools are shrinking and graduates today don’t want to work for organisations that don’t invest in Diversity.  Is your company appealing to the talent of tomorrow?

Product solutions and services are changing.  They are becoming more complex and nuanced.  Technology has made it possible for buyers to choose and to insist on what they want and how they want it.  Are the people designing your products and services tuned into those complexities and nuances?

What about innovation?  Entire industries have been wiped out and others are under threat by Artificial Intelligence.  Are you able to harness the requisite creativity and innovation to withstand this type of disruption?

Maybe your organisation ain’t broke today but what about the imminent tomorrow?

2. We don’t want to lower the bar

Companies that have achieved the highest of standards worry that allowing for greater diversity means relaxing their standards.  Some leaders believe that changing the process by which they promote into positions of leadership means accepting a lower quality of leaders.

These leaders are right in that standards shouldn’t be compromised.

I question, however, the assumption that more diversity would compromise quality.

There is no evidence to support that women, ethnic minorities or any other person who differs in identity and experience from the current leadership mould would perform any worse as a leader – in fact there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.  So if a process leads someone to conclude that a certain group of society finds that process more difficult, I suggest that the problem may lie with the process, not the group of people.

There is ample research to show that diverse teams and leaders improve financial performance.  There is also much written about the able performance of leaders of different identities, backgrounds and experiences.

‘Lowering the bar’ therefore is more likely to be an unsubstantiated worry based on an unfounded assumption that deserves to be debunked.

3.  Changing culture is too difficult

This much is true.  Changing the way we behave and the way we think of things is more difficult than we know.

But do we have a choice?  I propose we don’t.

The way we have been running organisations is no longer fit for purpose.  Our stakeholders are no longer solely the shareholders of those organisations.  Governments, employees, business partners and suppliers are equally as vested in the success of an organisation.

Even shareholders and other investors are no longer interested in financial return alone – they want to see impact on society, the environment and ethics.

And those stakeholders who do care mostly about financial return also stand to gain from diversity given that diversity leads to improved financial performance.

The world is changing, whether we like it or not.  The pace of change is so fast that none of us can keep up without help from others – others who are different from us and can offer a different approach to what we already know and do.  So while I agree that changing culture is difficult, the question before us is not whether we want to change but whether we can afford to be left behind.

There are many other reasons for not embracing Diversity and Inclusion – but none of them stand up. For every one of your objections I can give you a valid, evidence-based argument to counter it.  Go on. Test me.

If you liked this post, try reading this one.

I was recently asked this question in a workshop on Inclusive Leadership I was delivering to a Senior Leadership Team.  We were talking about the importance of trying to understand a different perspective even if we disagree with it.  I challenged participants to broaden their perspectives by inviting difference into their lives – by reading papers they usually wouldn’t, by listening to radio stations and podcasts that would not typically appear on their ‘saved channels’ list, by talking to people with starkly different viewpoints.

As I was explaining, I noticed a doubtful face.  Immediately, I enquired.  What seemed disagreeable?

The participant said “I understand expanding horizons, listening to different music and reading from different sources.  But I struggle with having to entertain and appear to agree with a view that defies everything I stand for.  For instance, how can we tolerate some of the views that are espoused today which incite violence and hatred?”

I confess, this is something that I had struggled with for years.  But now, I find it relatively easy to deal with.  I apply 3 rules:

1. Establish Boundries

I’d like to think of myself (don’t we all?) as an open-minded, tolerant person.  I entertain divergent views and opinions, I’m curious about how people form their opinions and I’m eager to learn when I don’t know something.

But when it comes to certain views and behaviours, I have to draw a line.  There are certain things – like bigotry, misogyny and duplicity, for instance – that I don’t tolerate. These behaviours are on the other side of my boundary line and I deal with them accordingly.

In my personal life, I simply don’t associate with people on the other side of my boundary lines.  In my professional life, I remind myself (and my clients) that we don’t need everyone to agree with us.  I know that, in any change management process, 20% of the population doesn’t come along.  So instead of trying to persuade those 20%, I choose to focus on the 80% that are within my circle of tolerance.

2. Give them the Benefit of a Doubt

 People have different backgrounds and experiences.  While you may think that a certain view is a sign of ignorance, I prefer to believe that there is a reason for that vie sand the reason isn’t always clear – sometimes not even to them.  If you think of ‘Toxic Masculinity’, for instance.  While the behaviour itself is unpalatable, I often wonder what drives a man to behave in such way – is it something within himself that he doesn’t like or fears and therefore rejects?  Is it that he was brought up in an environment where more tolerant views were squashed or even prohibited? Were the man’s personal circumstances such that he had no other role models around him?

I don’t believe it’s an excuse – we all have a responsibility to others – but by trying to understand their circumstances, I feel that I might be able to address the root of the cause instead of lashing out against the symptom.

3. Agree to Disagree

My wonderful friend and Voice Associate Jayne Constantinis has a great methodology to deal with situations where someone puts you on a spot, perhaps by openly disagreeing with or riling you (an acronym called RATIO – ask me later what it stands for).  Jayne taught me that everyone is entitled to have a perspective.   They can’t be wrong or right – it’s just their opinion.  It is us then who may choose to agree or disagree with it, but we cannot take issue with the fact that the person holds a different view – it is in fact their prerogative.

So when I ask  leaders to invite difference into their lives, I ask them to consider an alternative perspective that might improve their knowledge, expand their data set and show them the value of diversity.  In that sense, I ask them to be more tolerant of opposing stances than they might otherwise be.  But I don’t ask them to change their mind – that’s entirely their, and your,  decision.

I recently attended the virtual book launch of Dr. Suzanne Doyle-Morris: I was eager to support one of Voice At The Table’s first adherents. The book homes in on the subject of confidence – yes, that old chestnut! I assumed I had already heard everything there Is to say about confidence – or the belief that most women in the workplace (and beyond) lack it. I know it’s one of the most commonly cited reasons for not promoting women. So, what else, I thought, would Suzanne have to say about this? Well, It turns out, plenty!

Confidence Is mistaken for competence

One of the main observations in Suzanne’s book – The Con Job: Getting Ahead for Competence in a World Obsessed with Confidence – is that confidence is often mistaken for competence.  Someone who appears to know what they’re saying is perceived to in fact know what they’re saying.  And we would tend to believe them.  In all actuality, however, the correlation between confidence and competence is inverted!  Suzanne shows through her research that people become less competent as they become more confident.

I thought about this and confess, it does resonate with me.

Think about it: when we lack confidence in something, we put in extra effort to ensure we have done everything we can to get it right.  In fact, it’s a common observation about over-achievers.  When we want to be 100% certain that we’re doing something well, we put more effort into it than might be required.

Conversely, the more confident we get about something we do, the less effort we feel we need to dedicate to it because – well, we’ve got it!  And if not, we’ll just “blag” our way through it.

I’m sure we can all think of a person or two who appear highly confident who, in reality, aren’t particularly good at their job.   I can think of a particular outgoing President as one such example.

The same will be true of a number of people who are exquisitely good at their jobs but seem to lack confidence.

So, what’s the con?

The problem, of course, with all of this is that confidence appears to trump competence (pun intended!) when it comes to our professional lives.  Confidence is the measure against which we are all assessed.   That – Suzanne puts to us – is the con!  The world of business puts too much emphasis on the one criterion that is the least reliable indicator of competence.

What, then, should we do?

The first thing we can all do is read Suzanne’s book.  It is full of interviews and research with senior leaders who vividly support these points.

Then it’s a matter of debunking the myth at work.  Once we understand that confidence is not the criteria against which our potential and future performance should be measured, we can tackle this point.  We can use evidence to support our claim for progression and poke holes in the underlying assumption that we must be confident to do well and achieve success.

We can then look Imposter Syndrome in the eye and welcome it instead of trying to overcome it.  After all, being a little unsure of oneself at every step of our career progression ensures we stay on our toes, always willing to learn and improve.

What will Voice At The Table do about this?

I have ordered Suzanne’s book and will read it when it arrives this weekend.  I will then incorporate elements of this into our existing Inclusive Leadership modules, to ensure that when leaders assess others’ capabilities, they are not conned by that old chestnut – confidence.

And what will you do? 

We are living in a world of uncertainty. It’s almost inescapable; be it fears about job security; whether we’ll be able to spend Christmas with our loved ones; scepticism about our children sitting exams next summer or concerns about Brexit. Intractable change can cause the best of us to feel stressed, worried and out-of-control. Dealing effectively with uncertainty is an essential psychological skill and one that everyone can benefit from mastering. We show you how with these 6 tips:

1. Don’t Resist. There is real truth to the aphorism that what we resist persists. There is an alternative. Instead of resisting, we can practise acceptance. A big part of this is accepting how we feel about difficult circumstances (and difficult people) in our lives. For example, if we have a challenging work situation, acknowledging our feelings about it puts us in a better position to move forward. To be clear, acceptance is not the same as resignation. Accepting a situation doesn’t mean that it will never get better. We don’t accept that things will stay the same forever; we only accept whatever is actually happening at the moment.
2. Let go of the need to control outcomes.  Feeling out of control can feel scary. Instead of worrying about the things we can’t control, a better strategy is to focus on the things we can control including, for example, how we are going to respond to the event that concerns us – we need to work out what we are going to do and then do it. Being more flexible is another strategy, this means keeping a number of possibilities in mind and not just planning for one, specific outcome. The more flexibility we have – the more adaptable we are and the better we will be at dealing with change and uncertainty. We can’t insist that we will always get what we want but what we can say is that whatever happens we know we’ll be able to cope.
3. Understand ‘hindsight bias’: We have a tendency to assume that our past was stable, certain and constantly under our control. This is an illusion psychologists call “hindsight bias”. In reality, we’ve all experienced a great deal of uncertainty in our lives up until now and we’ve survived. We need to reflect on how successful we’ve been in the past in dealing with adversity and tell ourselves if we did it once we can do it again.
4. Don’t believe everything you think: We have a tendency to back the worst-case scenario when faced with uncertain times. If we start to believe these scenarios, we tend to react emotionally as though the worst case is already happening in real life, rather than just in our heads. This makes us feel threatened, afraid, and unsafe when we are simply alone with our thoughts. Instead of buying into every stressful thought, we can actively imagine the best possible scenario. We can find silver linings to replace fears. This counters our natural tendency to overestimate risks and negative consequences.
5.  Stop looking for someone to rescue you: When we act as though we are powerless, we get trapped in narratives that leave us feeling angry, helpless, and trapped. And we start hoping other people will save us from our misery. However, these rescuers are not necessarily our “best friend”. They tend to give us permission to avoid taking responsibility for our own lives. On the other hand, emotionally supportive friends (or therapists) see us as capable of solving our own problems. They ask questions that help us focus on what we do want instead of what we don’t.
6.  Seize the day: Facing the unknown can be daunting but it also presents us with endless possibilities for continuous growth and development. So, try to take the bull by the horns, turn fear on its head and use it in a positive way to see opportunities, begin to think empowering thoughts, beliefs, and healthy emotions that will enable us to take the bold, constructive action needed to flourish and thrive even in times of uncertainty.

If you liked this post, try reading this one.

By Melissa Jackson

It’s safe to say that Donald Trump suffers, nonchalantly, from “Foot in Mouth Syndrome” but, during the election campaign, when he uttered the words, “We’re getting your husbands back to work,” at a rally in Michigan, it made me think two things. Firstly, this man is not fit to govern with that draconian mindset and secondly, and more depressingly, how can anyone still retain this attitude in the 21^st century?

I, optimistically, believe that Trump’s views are not representative of the generic American male population. I also believe that a perfect storm arose to funnel the women’s vote away from Trump.

Not only did he lose the female vote by adopting a misogynistic attitude and denigrating women in employment, he failed to grasp a serious consequence of Coronavirus: that company closures, associated with the epidemic, have hurt working women more than working men.

“The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to roll back gains in women’s economic opportunities, widening gender gaps that persist despite 30 years of progress,” warned the International Monetary Fund experts, in July.

Research by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org revealed that 25% of women claimed they were considering slowing down their career or stepping away completely due to the demand the pandemic has placed on working mothers.

Late in the day, Trump’s campaign recognised the importance of the white, suburban, American, working woman’s might in the battle for the White House (a smart move in the quarter that marked the 100^th anniversary of US women’s enfranchisement). Some went as far as saying that they held the key to the outcome of the election. But this cohort had lost faith in the Republican party. It’s hardly surprising, when you listened to Trump’s rhetoric… expressing opinions that were not only offensive, but out of touch with the very people he wanted to woo.

Polls revealed that Biden consistently led Trump among white suburban women by 51% to 44%, and 84% of black women reported viewing Biden favourably. By late October, Biden led Trump by 25% among all women – the largest lead in modern political history. Some have gone as far as claiming that Biden owed his victory to women.

When the 2020 election statistics are assessed and dissected, they could reveal the biggest gender gap – the difference between how many women support the winning candidate compared to the losing candidate – in modern history, according to data compiled by the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University. The previous record was set in 1996 and again in 2016, when it was 11 percentage points.

Whatever conclusions are drawn from the election, we can safely say that the result has liberated US women from the subjective, chauvinistic and sexist views that Trump contended and upheld. A new era is in sight, especially with Kamala Harris becoming the United States’ first female vice-president, and expectations are running high.

Guest Blog By Lucy Watts MBE

Lucy Watts lives with a debilitating, life-shortening illness, but far from holding her back, it’s nurtured a determination to become a powerful voice for those who are often forgotten or ignored by society. Lucy has taken on their causes with extraordinary success. This is the story of a woman who refuses to take “no” for an answer and is embracing every precious minute of every day.

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There are people in society whose voices still go largely unheard. We are either invisible or targeted with negative rhetoric in the media. We rarely have a seat at the table. I’m referring to people with disabilities, health needs, learning needs, neurodiversity and/or mental health needs, as well as family/unpaid carers.

I am one of those people. I live with a life-shortening illness, now being 10 years beyond my original prognosis, as well as extremely complex medical needs requiring 24/7 care. However, I’ve been able to turn my lived experience into an asset to be utilised for the benefit of others. I’ve been able to have my voice heard.

I completely lost my focus in my teenage years when my illness really took hold. Too ill for school and bed-bound, tech became my window to the world. I completed 10 GCSEs with 6 hours per week home tuition and then tried to do AS levels but soon had to give those up. Then, in 2011, my palliative care nurse asked me “So what do you want to do now?” – the first professional to ask me what I wanted – and I blurted out “I want to make a difference”. Soon, I was working with various charities, collaborating with the NHS, appearing in the media and I had regained a sense of purpose.

However, I recognised there was still so much to be done. I was educated, articulate and – though I had not always been this way – very able to speak up. I was speaking at receptions in both Houses of Parliament, meeting with the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (at his request), training health and palliative care professionals, participating in and co-leading research, heading up conferences delivering the keynote speech, advising high-level professionals, sitting on committees and more. I had power – I had claimed it for myself, and for my peers, and others respected that power. For my work, I received an MBE at the age of 22, I was named 9^th most influential disabled person in Britain in 2019, and most recently, 2020 Digital Leader of the Year.

I began to develop ways for the other unheard voices to be included. I set up the pioneering international palliative care patient and carer advocacy network, Palliative Care Voices, based virtually in a Facebook Group, giving these direct stakeholders a voice internationally for the first time; I set up a young people’s advisory group for the Open University Sexuality Alliance, in which the young people could get involved via Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Zoom and email; I developed a co-production method for a research project based out of a WhatsApp group, which was a group of young disabled women feeding into research, and we conducted our data gathering using video calling software, Messenger, WhatsApp and other tools; and recently for another project I pioneered a five-day, Facebook-based virtual focus group to allow data collection in a way that also build community. I also work as an Independent Advocate and Support Broker, helping people fight for care and support and to build complex care packages for individuals and commissioners, in which tech is a key part of facilitating that work. I also mentor other disabled and chronically ill individuals, helping them find their voice and to get involved.

I am now setting up a new business which will develop a lived experience-led e-learning platform, with courses educating professionals on the lived experience perspective and also providing courses to benefit people with lived experience.

My life is devoted to making a difference. I was truly honoured to become Digital Leader of the Year 2020, since tech has been a key enabler in my life and a pivotal enabler for my work, not only allowing my engagement with the world and with others, but equally, their engagement with me. I’ve then utilised the tech and tools available to give a platform to the unheard, as best I can to redress the balance and give people the ability to be seen, heard and their experience valued. Lived experience is an asset – we all have it, and it informs all of our values, beliefs, actions and behaviours – and we must use that to benefit the world. When my time comes, I can hand on heart say I contributed something to the world; for me, that’s what makes my life worth living. Awards are wonderful, but it’s the doing of the work that gives me the enjoyment and feeling of achievement. I feel privileged to live the life I do – it may be different from the life I had planned, but if anything it’s more impactful than the life I would’ve lived otherwise.