Creating a Culture of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging in Tech

One of the challenges for people in leadership positions in tech who want to increase inclusion and diversity in our orgs, is that first we need to first recognize our own privilege before knowing what conscious actions to take in our orgs & company-wide.

When I talk about this subject, I personally like to use the following definitions as seen in this image. Diversity is having a seat at the table; Inclusion is having a voice, and Belonging is having that voice be heard.

Our goals as leaders should be to increase all 3 across our org. When everyone feels like they truly belong with you at your company, great things are possible!

Plus when I look at the future of the global workforce, companies that embrace and prioritize this are the ones I believe are poised to win, because they’ll attract and retain the best talent.

Before I go on, credit to my colleague Brigid Johnson. Her post on how to be a better ally for women in tech emphasized the mechanism of #recognition (e.g. crediting women for their ideas in public spaces). The goal of better ally-ship inspired this post, and 100% the advice in her article applies to me (nobody’s perfect in this practice).

In the sphere of political debate about various kinds of privilege, you’ll often hear people arguing they don’t have privilege and don’t get special treatment. “Everything’s a meritocracy!” or “Nobody ‘gave’ me anything!” — Basically it amounts to “Nothing to see here, move along!” When I think about why, I think lot of the reason is because recognition is like the air we breathe to those of us in power. We don’t think about it, but hoo boy do we notice if it decreases, even a little bit (hence some of the backlash to debates about privilege’s impact, but that’s for another post).

Sometimes powerful people will say “I get criticized a lot and am not the CEO, so I can’t possibly be privileged!” When you do this, you’re “defining privilege down” so it only means “is the top person/life is perfect” as opposed to the more relative comparison that’s the point — where privilege is a systemic series of benefits that on the macro-level impact both you and the broader groups in the population, leading to generally unequal (disproportionate) outcomes.

So, back to those of us in positions of “relative” power (e.g. middle to upper-management, senior individual contributors) and not just starting out our careers. We do indeed get special treatment, recognition and so on — It’s just so endemic we’ve stopped noticing. It can be little (being invited to events, having your boss reference your name, getting asked your opinion in a big meeting) or big (asked to take on strategic challenges, stretch promo). If you observed it from outside, you’d realize how prevalent your recognition really is.

Conversely I see leaders (again, often, but not universally, men) in tech getting bent out of shape when their directs bring up issues of feeling under appreciated, or when employees drop hints on how they’d like to be recognized, or when there’s some sort of employee protest or or press coverage about their company’s relative lack of representation.

And just like with the political debates about privilege, leaders will say “I don’t get special treatment” or “The big bosses can’t possibly know everyone, don’t worry about it! You’ll shine through your work.”

If you want to create an inclusive, diverse, high-performing team filled with all kinds of people that instinctively know they belong in your org/company — you have at least 4 reasons to STOP doing dismissing this privilege concern, now:

1. It’s just false (did you read this article?)
2. Being a leader is not about you (did you read my last article? shameless plug)
3. It dismisses the person & everyone else who’s feeling the same who’s too nervous about impacts to their job to bring it up. I can promise you if you’re hearing about it directly, it’s 10x as bad as you think (and if you’re not hearing it, 100x bubbling below surface).
4. Assuming you’re like me, you believe the highest-performance teams are ones with the most diverse perspectives & backgrounds, who can connect with/represent any and all of your prospective customers, you’d be CRAZY not to listen and act on this feedback. You’re not crazy, right? “Looking a gift horse in the mouth” because it makes you uncomfortable or is “hard” to deal with, is just dumb. You’re not dumb, you got this far in the article without wanting to throw your phone into the lake, right?

So while I’ve probably lost a bunch of you by veering into the “political” I think the analogy makes a lot of sense and that privilege is important for us in tech leadership positions to fully grok. But assuming you’re still here, what do I think we/you do about this?

Make recognition and amplification a priority for women, people of color and other underrepresented minorities in big & little ways: Name them, amplify their voices & celebrate their accomplishments. Not just via all-hands “awards” that only a few get — but in everyday emails, or meetings with your boss when your employees are present. BTW — people can fit into more than one of these “categories”

I want to especially encourage that you do this amplification when it’s just you and your fellow bosses. If you’re setting a new standard for the culture, it requires that you do this even when the people you’re helping are “not around to see it.” Remember, if women, PoC, and underrepresented minorities could solve this problem themselves, they already would have. They need us in power to do our part to change the system for the better. If you’re not yet sold, here are two special bonuses to doing this:

• You’re filling your day with positivity. Doing good feels good.
• If you do this in a way that’s situationally appropriate & relevant, you’ll stand out to your bosses in a positive way (win-win) as a leader in this space.

Hope this resonated with you, if you’re looking to do more, here are some practical resources to help you that have helped me:

• Shine Theory — A practice of mutual investment with the simple premise that “I don’t shine if you don’t shine.” (credit: Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman)
• Amplification — “The amazing tool that women in the White House used to fight gender bias”

Thanks for reading! If you liked this and somehow made it to the end, follow me on twitter @joshuaseattle — all opinions are mine unless otherwise stated.

PS. I realize those most in need of reading this, aren’t. But Diversity & Inclusion can’t be solely the work of women & people of color. If they could fix this on their own, they would! So hopefully this makes a difference, even a little — like the woman in the “Starfish Story” below (yes it’s corny, but work with me here)

PPS. This article adapted from my original thread on twitter here: https://twitter.com/joshuaseattle/status/1177212197035892737