Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

For many patients battling disease, working with their doctors to find the most effective treatment can be a painful exercise of trial and error. What if you could more precisely choose medications and customize treatment based on people’s genes, environment, and lifestyle?

Too often, the world sees mega-threats: violent events that target marginalized identity groups and see with massive media coverage. These events arise from racism, bias and systemic oppression. How can one be a supportive ally if one is not part of the identity group that’s been attacked?

You’ve stepped into a leadership position, and leading diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) efforts is a priority. Where do you begin? How do you set yourself up for success? How do you effect positive change and tackle DEIB challenges?

Human beings are inherently biased. Our biases come from certain heuristics — shortcuts we take that help us distill information and make fast judgements. To combat this, organizations can implement standardized procedures that minimize the discretion that managers use in evaluating people. How?

“Positive weird” needs to be another focus as we seek to understand how to create better organizations and communities that bring out the best in both marginal and dominant members.

Getting diversity, equity and inclusion right in any organization is a function of change, which is hard. Here Darden experts provide practical insights on leveraging deviance in ways that empower individuals, the benefits of unconscious-bias training, mentorship and sponsorship, and how to have constructive (if potentially tense) conversations.

Getting diversity and inclusion right in any organization is a function of change. It’s about overcoming barriers, getting people out of dominant paradigms about diversity, and empowering people to understand diversity and inclusion as part of the overall livelihood of their organizations. That means providing models and templates that get results.

The argument in favor of diversity and inclusion is robust. The benefits are clear. As our populations change, diverse groups of talent are emerging, and they are emerging fast. However, corporations and businesses are still lagging hard behind the pace of this change. So what’s holding us back?

Research shows that, compared to men, positive feedback for women often conforms to gender stereotypes and is more generic. Without the same constructive encouragement, women may not only fail to see their contributions as equal in value, but also miss out on the opportunity to learn. How can we redress the praise deficit?

Positive deviance is about how we can deviate from the norm in ways that are honorable and generative, authentic, and that have positive impact and open the door to others to do the same. Leveraging difference — mobilizing gender identity and minority status in this way — can activate a slew of personal, organizational and societal benefits.