The Elephant and the Mouse

Moving Beyond the Illusion of Inclusion to Create a Truly Diverse and Equitable Workplace

Laura A. Liswood

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781119836261
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Workplace Culture
• Index: Business

Explore diversity, equity, and inclusion that goes beyond unconscious bias and explores the ideas and tools needed to achieve these goals

In The Elephant and the Mouse, award-winning speaker and diversity and inclusion expert Laura Liswood delivers a thought-provoking and insightful new business guide that explores workplace diversity and offers new ideas for gaining the real benefits from your diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The Elephant and the Mouse refers to the dynamic in organizations that are roadblocks to consciously inclusive success. The Elephant, often dominant group leadership, knows little about the experiences of the Mouse, the non-dominant groups, while the Mouse knows so much more about the Elephant. In diverse workplaces, these two groups live in different worlds. Success will come only if everyone works in a true meritocracy. You learn what may be easy for some to do in their career is much harder for others to do.

In this book, which builds upon Liswood's groundbreaking book, The Loudest Duck, you'll explore the powerful case for diversity, equity, and inclusion and the often-overlooked risks posed by a homogeneous workforce. You will learn the hard truths about why many DE&I efforts fail, millions of dollars are wasted, and why organizations confuse efforts with outcomes. You'll consider new ways of leading others, with a strong emphasis on tactics and strategies employed by successful Elephant and Mouse leaders, including women leaders. The book also includes:

• Realistic explanations for the slow progress in diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice in society and organizations
• Examinations of the concept and myths of meritocracy and how to conduct a Meritocracy Stress Test on your firm
• How organizations often have an illusion of inclusion but find their efforts not creating the inclusive, equitable teams they say they want
• How safety efforts can provide a roadmap for diversity missions
• An exploration of both the human interventions and non-human roles of technology in DE&I initiatives, including the use of people analytics to de-bias organizations
• What tools are needed to go beyond awareness of unconscious bias to de-bias processes and what traits the new Elephant and Mouse leader has

An indispensable resource for managers, executives, and other business leaders who seek to recreate truly diverse, inclusive, and equitable organizations, The Elephant and the Mouse is also a must-read for human resources professionals, individuals who want successful careers in diverse teams, and anyone involved in the hiring, retaining, and promoting processes. This book offers a way to move beyond traditional diversity efforts towards more modern practices that embrace—and profit from—the differences between people.

Chapter 1
Hard Truths

WHAT ARE THE HARD TRUTHS ABOUT DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION?

Let's be realistic as we think about both the successes and failures of the efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Some say that the whole push toward diversity began at least 20 years ago; others date it to the 1960s. Historians might suggest anti‐slavery movements or suffrage efforts were the origins of the impetus for diversity. In any case, it could be argued that this effort has been a long time incubating. We need to acknowledge that although there has been progress, perhaps efforts are not going as well as we would have hoped. Billions of dollars in training, millions of people‐hours taking trainings, uncountable numbers of words spoken and written have advanced this desired goal of embracing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace and society. Annual reports, declarations, lawsuits, committees, meetings, articles, and reporters' efforts have helped contribute to the goal of moving the needle.

So what can we show for all of this human energy and lost trees? I would like to stipulate that progress has occurred. But the stipulation is limited. We can look at emerging laws, admissions to military academies or law schools, jobs that women are now in, awareness of issues that face people of color—these all show telltale signs of progress over the past decades.

The evolution of the Barbie doll is as good a metric as any for measuring progress for women. Barbie, the doll, emerged in the late 1950s through the creative imagination of Ruth Handler, who founded Mattel Inc. Ruth wanted girls to imagine futures for themselves. Initially that future looked like a White, thin model, maybe a flight attendant, with feet permanently in the high‐heel position. It was a vision of perfection that matched almost no one but certainly created a false sense of beauty. And she had her opposite in the Ken doll, quaffed, White, and (to me, at least) always looking slightly gay, though I doubt Ruth wanted that image at the time. Barbie has now evolved into the doctor, the scientist, the Olympiad. She is Hispanic, Latinx, Black, slightly more zaftig, but not yet Asian. Over 60 years, Barbie has adapted to the times.

Yet milestones continue to weigh down our imagination; canards of beliefs remain prevalent, but they can be changed with effort. For example, in the early 1900s women couldn't easily become doctors and it was believed they didn't want to be; now 50% of doctors are women. Today we continue to have old ways of thinking about who people are and what they are capable of. DEI can help us expand our imaginations even further.

We do need to acknowledge some hard truths as we scan the horizon of change and progress for diversity. We are definitely not there yet, and the rate of progress is not comforting. The World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report keeps pushing back the number of years until true equality will be seen between men and women globally. It used to be 75 years, then it went to about 135 years.¹ Progress has certainly been made, according to the report, particularly in health and education gaps. But political and economic gaps remain stubbornly high.

In the largest 500 global companies, the number of women CEOs went from 14 women, or 2.8%, in 2020 to what was applauded when the numbers “roared,” according to Fortune, to 23 women, or 4.6% in 2021 (with 1 and 6 women of color, respectively).² To me the notion that a 1.8% increase was roaring forward seems slightly hyperbolic. The push to get women into the C‐suite has been around for a long time. Noting the progress seems reasonable, but to celebrate at this point seems overly dramatic.

BUILDING AWARENESS

It turns out that the building awareness phase of implementing DEI is just that: awareness but less focus on actual behavior change. Unconscious bias trainings have had mixed results, with a growing realization that the training may not accomplish the goals that were deemed possible. Some who got the training became less amenable to supporting the notions of diversity as a good thing. One could—and many did—walk away thinking that if all this was unconscious, how were they to actually stop negative reactions to others from happening. If my unconscious rejects the “other,” how is my conscious supposed to override that intuitive reaction?

Others came away understanding that there are beliefs and archetypes but they did not know how to override them, and the trainings did not provide real solutions to everyday interactions.

Bottom line, the Hard Truth is that these unconscious bias trainings did not move the cause of DEI forward in proportion to the effort, the people‐hours dedicated to them, and the money paid for them.

In my 2021 Zoom interview with Kendall Wright, CEO of Entelechy and author of the book Leadership Soul, he spoke to this Hard Truth brilliantly when discussing with me unconscious bias. “I don't know that we are ready, even capable of getting past the unconscious bias hurdle. I think that the more we learn, as far as the neuroscience is concerned regarding how bias works, how it operates, and what it safeguards—that sense of threat and loss, I think is a hurdle that had yet to be overcome. And yes, there are a lot of people talking about unconscious bias. But they're talking about it in a way that doesn't necessarily encourage the learner to take ownership for their bias and to be proactive in wanting to identify the bias and then work to manage it.”

I can see that the bias will never go away; it's part of how we are hardwired. But that doesn't mean that we have to become prisoners to that hardwiring. All of this frontal cortex that we've been blessed with is there for a reason. And we get to make choices. So the challenge is to understand the unconscious bias and how it manifests in practically every decision that we make, because wherever there is an opportunity for a subjective assessment or analysis you will also find the opportunity for unconscious bias to influence that decision. Too many leaders believe that because they have deemed themselves to have good hearts, they are free of the consequences of the unconscious bias.

FEELINGS OF TAKE AWAY

Some people have a fixed idea that only the best make it and if you try hard enough, you too can succeed. They believe that laziness, lack of will, and poor education are the gatekeepers to making it in the world. Tinker with that basic premise and you disrupt the way the world works and should work. According to this belief system, an individual's success is based on an individual's efforts, so what they earned is now being taken away from them. Individuals experience the world on the individual level; rarely are we able to comprehend that some face extra hurdles that others do not encounter.

I always thought the 1983 Eddie Murphy comedy Trading Places, directed by John Landis, was as good a representation of what happens when we are put in situations that disadvantage or advantage, having nothing to do with our own efforts. Dan Ackroyd's character was a White, wealthy broker with a girlfriend, manservant, and mansion. Eddie Murphy's character was a poor, Black street hustler. On a bet by others, they ended up trading places with each other. The story line focused on how they fared, and the ways each ended up adapting to his new and arbitrary assignment of advantage/disadvantage showed how random our likelihood for success in life can be. The Hard Truth is that this presupposes that in fact the world is fair and the ingredients for success are available to all and handed out in a deserving and meritocratic manner rather, than through random bursts of fate.

Change will not occur naturally. It is hard to imagine any change that was not caused by something, whether human effort or forces of nature. Little in life remains static; everything has forces pushing or pulling. The Hard Truth is that as, Frederick Douglass said in 1857, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”³ To wait and let some mysterious outside force make the societal change with little sacrifice or act of intention is the path to low expectation and even less result. Unlike safety, where everyone benefits in obvious ways, unless organizations make the value of diversity clear, obvious, and unquestioning, the lack of diversity hurts the least powerful the most and requires change from those who are least likely to want to change.

Programs and more programs lead to fatigue and annoyance. The Hard Truth is that the rule of unintended consequences comes into play when organizations have programs but lack strategy and measurable actions. I worked with a company that had embraced an encyclopedia of diversity efforts, from donating money to a Black dance troupe, to funding scholarships for young diverse engineers, to paying large sums to support the employee resource groups.

Training was ubiquitous and mandatory and yet, for all the efforts, there was little closing of gaps amongst the minority and women employees' perception of the company and the dominant group's beliefs. For some, the drumbeat of programs implies that more is being done for minority groups than for those historically in power. This leads to disillusion, fatigue, and annoyance. A good example of annoyance is when a man now says to a woman, “I'd like to compliment you on your suit, but I'm afraid yo...