Doing things: At work

My last post about my efforts to better use my privilege generated an unexpected (and welcome!) number of people emailing me with suggestions for additional reading (including one excellent comic) and/or interest in reading and learning along with me. I'm really happy that others are interested in doing this work with me - but now I also have a lot of reading to do! While I'm working on that, I'm going to also focus on doing things besides reading. Today's theme is doing things at work - not necessarily the actual work that I do, but the way I do that work. I share the below not to pat myself on the back for being such a great person, but because it’s been a difficult, multi-year process for me to get to where I currently am – with lots of people pushing me to get better, and lots of mistakes on my part – so I want to share what I’ve learned, as well as what I’m doing to get better.

What I have done so far:

• When I had the opportunity to hire someone for the first time a few years ago, I did what most hiring managers do and started asking around in my networks for candidate recommendations. I got a lot of suggestions, but I noticed that they were all very similar to me - young, straight, cis, white women from middle class backgrounds who attended great schools and whose strengths were primarily in analytics and operations. I already had one of me on my team, so I didn't want to hire another one. I started reaching out to a broader swath of people and groups for recommendations - e.g. I asked the African American Managers affinity group, and I asked teacher coaches about their teachers about to finish their two-year commitment (since the role was entry level and so someone could be competitive for it straight out of the classroom). I ended up being able to build a very diverse applicant pool, so when I found the person I wanted to hire I felt confident she really was the best person for the role, not just the best person in my immediate network. Hiring in this way is important both because it makes it more likely that you get the strongest talent, and because hiring only within your networks is one of the ways that privilege is consolidated and protected. In the words of that study's author, "most white Americans engage, at least a few times per year, in the activities that foster inequality. While they may not deliberately discriminate against black and other non-white job seekers, they take actions that make it more likely that white people will be employed -- without thinking that what they're doing amounts to discrimination."
• Creating a diverse team is not a useful end goal, though, because numeric diversity is worthless if your workplace isn't also inclusive (everyone feels safe, welcome, able to be themselves, etc...) and equitable (people have equal access to knowledge and power, input into decisions that affect them, etc...). When I hired someone who had a different background from me in so many ways, and who had a completely different set of skills and growth areas, I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to manage her in a way that allowed her to really thrive. I only knew how to manage someone who worked the same way I do, and I was afraid that in trying to manage her to work like me I would quash her ability to work like herself, and in turn stifle her ability to really contribute to the team. I asked a white colleague who manages a diverse team, and has really high staff satisfaction and engagement, for recommendations, and she suggested I read The Inclusion Paradox. It can be a little self-help-y at times, but it was really helpful in terms of being very concrete about what to do to foster an inclusive work environment.
• The most helpful thing I learned was "the seven dimensions of culture." The basic idea is that there are seven big cultural ways people often vary in how they approach their work and their lives, and problems arise when one way is taken to be the only right way. For example, one of the dimensions is how people manage time - there is a spectrum from synchronous (very flexible with regards to timing and deadlines) to sequential (very focused on punctuality and having deadlines for everything). I am undoubtedly way at the sequential end at the spectrum, but until that was called out for me, I didn't even realize it was a cultural preference - I just thought it was inherently The One Correct Way Of Operating At Work. The person I hired is much more on the synchronous side of things. When she first started, we actually went through all seven dimensions and diagnosed ourselves, then talked about where there were discrepancies and how we would handle them - without automatically assuming that either way of operating was right or better. It was really helpful to have a common language and shared framework to guide our early conversations about how we work most effectively. Now we work really well together - we align on when something does have a non-negotiable timing/deadline component for a specific reason, and when something can be more flexible. Of course, there are still occasional bumps along the way that make one of us wonder what the heck the other one is thinking/doing, so we sometimes have to revisit our earlier conversations to figure out what is/isn’t working and how we can adjust moving forward. In general, I've found that operating in this way with everyone I work with, not just people I directly manage, has led to a lot of benefits - for example, I have been in many meetings that reached the scheduled end time but the conversation wasn't finished. Before I would have just ended them because the time was up, but now I ask if folks don't mind staying a few extra minutes to wrap up. We often are able to land in a much better place as a result, and we avoid having to schedule an entire follow-up meeting to resolve something that only took a few more minutes. Being inclusive makes work better for everyone!

What I'm committing to do next:

• My biggest growth area is in making sure my team is not just inclusive, but actually equitable. Do the people who are most affected by my decisions have a seat at the table while I'm making them? I recently discovered Chris Crass's Tools for White Guys who are Working for Social Change… and other people socialized in a society based on domination, which is a very concrete checklist for just this task. I have printed it out at my desk and am trying to be much more conscious of dynamics at work, particularly when I am in a position of power (due to my title, my race, my education, my class, or any combination of the above). It's really hard, and it can be painful to realize that I have been dominating discussions or hoarding power in ways that I didn't even realize. But at the same time I can already feel it making me better as a person and helping me to operate in a more equitable way. It's definitely something I will need to continue to be conscientious about so long as I am alive, it's not a list to check off once and then be done, but I'm hoping to get to the point where I've internalized it and it's much more automatic for me to operate in this more equitable way. And just like a more inclusive culture is better for everyone, a more equitable culture makes work better both in terms of how it feels, and the actual quality of work that gets done.