Creating transformative cultures
Diversity and inclusion doesn’t go deep enough to examine the root causes behind why employee experience differs so greatly due to characteristics not connected to colleague potential and performance.
We’ve accepted that inclusivity is celebrating cultural days or months, marching for Pride, having ‘weeks’ to raise awareness for issues, highlighting the different nationalities of employees, or ensuring our corporate literature shows people of all ethnicities happy, joyful and working together: even if that doesn’t reflect what happens internally.
The real work to unpack why we struggle so hard to embrace difference eludes us.
To create racially just workplaces takes work, bravery, boldness and a new type of courage leadership. But it will also take a different type of culture. One that isn’t so fixed but instead flexes according to the changing needs of its employees. This type of culture is always adapting, led by leaders who put their anti-racism stake in the ground, irrespective of how it may be perceived by others.
The three tenets of transformative culture
Learning how to adapt together – To feel safe enough to talk about lived experiences, to feel brave enough to listen, learn and amplify the voices who are marginalised because of their difference.
Sharing and leverage power – To move away from autocratic structures that give power and influence to the most senior of individuals, and instead think about how we can devolve that power. So we are not inherently implying value to an organisation is synonymous with seniority, job title and expertise.
Taking inspiration from transformative justice –
Rather than punishing people for surface level behaviour, we need to find the roots of the harm together and make it impossible to resurface itself in the future.
Beyond transformative cultures to transformative leadership
A transformative culture is one that:
Enables all of these cards to be explored.
Recognises your workplace has to be progressive. Where there is a consciousness in decision-making ensuring that the way you do business has a positive impact on the planet and people.
Admits political neutrality seeks only to preserve the status quo and that action is more important than sitting in comfortable silence.
A transformative leader is one that enables action so we step out of repeating the same cycle of reacting to societal events:
A transformative leader is someone, you I hope, who acknowledges there might not be a smooth risk-free path ahead, but there is an opportunity to ensure your culture allows for colleagues who are most oppressed to be in an environment where they feel seen, heard, safe and treated fairly.
We need to ask ourselves
As individuals –
How can we make it easier for colleagues to do the right thing?
To speak truth to power?
How can we make it difficult to be a bystander?
How can we create the right conditions that stop people from retreating into the safety of silence and looking the other way, because our environment values individualism over collectivism?
Is it possible to have a culture where people have deeply opposing views about how to treat people who are different?
Are we brave enough to reestablish our values according to the world we want to live in versus the world we currently inhabit?
How can we reduce the othering which occurs in environments where a homogenous group of employees come together?
Are we still referring to people who aren’t white, cisgendered, heterosexual as ‘diverse’?
As an organisation –
Do we understand the root causes of inequities?
What do we really know about racism as a system? About whiteness as a social construct?
Do we shy away from such conversations to focus on surface level inclusion and belonging?
How far have we embraced discomfort, or are we spending most of our time trying to ease it?
Does it matter that we’re only conscious of bringing other ‘diverse’ people because we’re worried about how it looks?
Are you still thinking that you can hire your way into anti-racism and social justice that a few more Black people is enough to signal you are doing the work?
Are we focused on creating tools to tap into curiosity and self-discovery, or are we forcing behaviour change through policy and compliance?
Does our culture truly value collaboration, or are we rewarding individualism and competition?
Where are the misalignments with what we say versus what we do, and how we are holding each other, even senior directors, to account?