#422 Why Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are relevant for everyone - article written by Niels Brabandt
Why Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are relevant for everyone
article written by Niels Brabandt
This topic is relevant for everyone.
Most people deny this fact. It is described as a special topic, target group-specific, and 'nice to have'. There are currently heated discussions on the subject of DEI, or more precisely, on the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion. The mainly ideologically driven exchanges ignore the clear scientific evidence that speaks unreservedly in favour of DEI, usually completely. However, the topic is relevant to everyone.
Why does DEI concern everyone?
DEI in practice
First of all, the terms need to be broken down. Diversity means that there cannot be just one type of person you are looking for for a specific job. It is well known that some organisations use personality tests excessively, and it is also well known that the vast majority of these personality tests do not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Equity refers to the tailored access and tailored assistance each person receives. A simple example would be a travel allowance. Any allowance provided is of little help if you live near the company's building but cannot leave your home due to physical limitations. Assistance must be personalised and tailored to the individual; a 'one size fits all' approach is not helpful here. Inclusion means that no one is excluded based on factors beyond their control. You need to understand these terms; otherwise, you cannot participate in discussions.
Relevance
A frequently non-informed criticism is that today's Pride demonstrations, often called 'Christopher Street Day' in German-speaking countries, no longer resemble earlier forms. Brief background information: back then, trans woman Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick in resistance to arbitrary police assaults against the former Stonewall Inn in New York City. If someone demands that Pride should be 'like it used to be,' that would mean days of necessary violent riots and street battles against an abusive and corrupt police force. Surely, no one wants that.
Pride Month, which takes place in June, commemorates these times and the struggle for equal rights. These equal rights do not take anything away from any other group; they demonstrate equal rights for all people. Anyone who opposes this demand completely disqualifies themselves as a leader.
Furthermore, the Pride movement demonstrates that all people are equal and have human rights. You don't want to be fired because of a health issue? You don't want to be disadvantaged because of who you are? You don't want to be disadvantaged because of your social background? These are just three examples of what Pride stands for. Equal rights are human rights. They concern everyone; no one is exempt. Anyone who opposes these principles is actively promoting injustice and inequality. In doing so, you are causing massive and deliberate harm to yourself and the organisation.
Implementation
The foundation always lies in creating awareness of this critical issue. Professional training and further education measures are essential for this. No, the cheap £49 online course will not help. Professional services can be of enormous assistance here. You then check whether the professional measures have also led to real implementation. Figures help you to clearly and unambiguously identify where good and sustainable work is already being done and where there is still a need for action in specific organisational units.
A general distinction is made here between so-called allies and advocates. Allies support the cause but do not usually act at the forefront. These people are essential for building critical mass support within the organisation and thus highlighting its relevance. On the other hand, advocates are those who, even if they are not affected or would not benefit from an improvement in the situation, speak out in favour of a significant movement and its principles. These people actively campaign for improvement, primarily out of altruistic motives.
In case anyone immediately throws around the term 'woke' concerning this topic, they are not suitable for any leadership positions unless they show a significant improvement regarding their insights on that matter and change their minds regarding recognising facts and scientific evidence that clearly and unequivocally support DEI. Nothing intelligent has ever been said when the term 'woke' is used as a pejorative.
In summary, when it comes to this topic, which is relevant to everyone, what counts most are the aspects that are lived by in the reality of the organisation. People quickly notice when you act opportunistically, marketing-oriented and dishonestly. Some organisations engaged in so-called 'pinkwashing' and are now bowing down to Donald Trump. The negative consequences for these organisations were implemented immediately, and receiving them is well-deserved. Act better, be sustainable, and work in a fact-oriented manner. The topic will enrich people and your entire organisation.
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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.
Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
It's Pride Month, and I'm just back from Washington. In New York City, there was World Pride in Washington, another week of Pride events in New York City. And of course, we need to talk about pride and what's going on at the moment. At the moment, especially in recruiting, when you're looking for talent, when you want to have an organization that sustainably works, dei, diversity, equity and inclusion, not only crucial, it affects and is relevant for and to absolutely anyone. And the question is, why is that the case? Because often people say, look, this whole, this whole pride thing, it's, it's for the gay, lesbian and, you know, some. Something other.
Do we have anything else than gays and lesbians? I think we have like, you know, these, these other people. How are they called? Again, if you have any kind of that talk going on, you need some update on your knowledge and also why it is relevant to you as well. So when we talk about why is diversity, equity and inclusion relevant for and absolutely to not everyone, but anyone also, first, of course, we have to break down what it means when you hear about dei. Many people already kick off when they only hear the term, which is strange enough. So first, of course, it's about diversity.
Diversity means there's not just one type. But people love to tell me there are types that work and that don't work with their organization. Back in the days when we go really far back, remember when people said, look, leadership jobs are for men. Women are just too emotional for that. Women are too. Men are more logical.
Welcome to the 1950s. And of course, we found out by signs that absolute, utter nonsense. Who could have thought for a long time women could only make career when they copied the toxic behavior that Min showed. And we still see this happening in today's times, which is, of course, an absolute catastrophe and shows that some organizations do not have any kind of diversity sense. They only do it for box ticking. And we get to that at the very end of this episode this week. So diversity simply means open to anyone, not just one type.
And when I still hear that, people tell me, oh, we have this personality test we do in recruiting, and then we put people into categories. You are either pq, F or R, or you are red, green, yellow and turquoise and maybe with purple. And then we can say if you're a leader or not. Absolute, utter nonsense. None of these kind of tests stand up to public scrutiny. None of these tests stand up to scientific scrutiny. And if it gets even worse when you see categories, oh, are you a hunter or are you a farmer?
This is just a mentality thing. It's just in your personality.
You can't be changed. You are either one or the other. No, again, completely wrong. Or when people say, oh, we just categorize people by animals. So are you more an elephant or a monkey or a dolphin? Or maybe you're a bit of a dog? All of that is a waste of money, of corporate and organizations money.
None of these tests will help you. Diversity means you're open to absolutely anyone. Equity. Many people know from an Internet meme. There was an Internet meme a couple of years ago, which is still around. You see a fence and then there are three children. And then they give wooden boxes to children.
And now you can say, hey, every child gets a box. And then they can look over the fence to watch the game that's happening behind the fence. And now you might say, well, but maybe they need different heights because not all children have the same height. Exactly. And that's what the meme then says. One child gets two boxes because it needs two boxes to look over the fence. One only gets one box and one doesn't need any box at all.
Equity means that everything that is delivered is tailored to your needs. It doesn't really help when you give someone a kind of help that they do not need in their situation. So that's equity. And inclusion, of course, means there are no barriers for participation just because of who you are. And when you now say, well, we have, you know, we have a ramp for wheelchairs, yeah, that's one part of inclusion, but that's not all of it. Are all of your rooms barrier free access to anyone? And by the way, barriers can also be there without being written down or being physical barriers.
When you, for example, have a leadership board that is only made out of min, that is also an inclusion issue because obviously there is a certain exclusion of certain individuals based on gender or gender identity or both in this case, most likely. And when you now say, yeah, okay, maybe there is something, but it's not relevant to me, I can tell you why it is relevant for you. So first, of course, we need to know about history. How does this whole diversity, equity, inclusion thing, how did Pride Month actually happen? And it happened due to a very simple reason. Back in the days, there was something which was called Stonewall Inn, a bar in New York City. And that bar in New York City catered to the LGBTQIA community, which wasn't even named that way back then.
It catered to gays, lesbians, people inside or outside that spectrum, people who are not in the, just in, in, in the straight spectrum. And back in the days, it was very common that when people who publicly said they were gay that they were denied service at bars, that was very common in many bars. So the most important thing here is that this, this bar was run by the Mafia. So the, the, it was a Mafia owned venue and the Mafia clearly didn't care where the money came from. So back in the days, it was even illegal to be gay. So they took the money. And quite frequently these venues were raided by the police and then solutions were found in one way or the other.
Bribery was often part of these solutions. Anyone knew that's a Mafia place. Anyone knew what's going on there. And then with money, the problem was solved. And then there was this one day where, where the community fought back and there, there was a street riot. Street riot going on. So, by the way, when people tell you when they see a pride parade today, and they tell you, yeah, this is not what pride is about.
You know, pride is political. This is just a party. This is not like the pride back in the days. If you want to have the pride back in the days, we're going to have street riots. You prefer street riots over a parade? I don't think so. So be sure that you know about the history when you say, make pride as you did back in the days, it's going to be a street ride from start to finish, and it's not going to end well for you because in this case, the LGBTQIA community won that riot and things got slightly and slowly better from that.
The very first real Pride movement was a protest which was called the Christopher Street Liberation Day movement. Today it's often in Germany called Christopher Street Day. In most other countries, you now call it Pride. And the history was the first stone was thrown by Marsha P. Johnson, a black transgender individual, black trans woman. And that woman made everything happen that we have as equal and human rights today. I was at the Stonewall Inn eight times in the last two weeks in New York City.
It's still there. Greetings to Chuck, who's my barkeeper there. So when I go there, you see the memorabilia. It is really a historic place. Also protected now was declared a historic site by Barack Obama, obviously for the right reason. And why it is relevant to you is now what you probably now realize in the last couple of years especially, you realize there's something called Pride Month. Pride Month is where suddenly you see rainbow flags all over the media, all over the place.
Since Donald Trump is In place. Some companies step back from their Pride initiatives. No worries. We're going to remember that for a very long time. And we see that some corporations aren't as reliable as allies as they were before, or probably some people never truly can, which is sad enough. Pride Month is simply there to remind people that equal and human rights are still not there on a global level. So we have, for example, Black Month, Black History Month, to be precise, which is in October.
And as soon as someone is now yelling, when is the straight pride? When. When can I have my heterosexual parade? There's already a heterosexual parade.
It's called World Cup. So, just, just kidding. So when you think that you need straight pride, please send me a list of. Send me a list of countries where you can get arrested because of being straight. I'm looking forward to seeing that list, which, by the way, contains zero countries. Pride Month is there not only. When you go to Pride in New York City, you are obviously in a reasonably safe space with Donald Trump in place.
Not as much as it was before, but of course, this also shows not only sympathy, but that also shows support for countries where progress still has to be made towards equal and human rights. Because pride and diversity, equity, inclusion is pretty much common sense. What you're demanding is equal and human rights. And when you still now say, no, that doesn't affect me. No, can't be for me. I really don't support this. I give you very simple examples why it is relevant for you.
Let's say you are in the unlucky situation, which I never hope you will be, but you get cancer and you get cancer. And of course you have to tell your employer because you will call in sick for quite a long time, obviously for the treatment. And your employer would say, look, we have lots of work to do and there are people out there who don't have cancer. I mean, I'm very sorry for you. Good luck for the recovery. You have all my support. Meaning of course, not financial support or with time off, just words.
So moral support with five and a half one liners and maybe a text or a WhatsApp message, but nothing real. And then the employer goes back and says, look, because you have cancer, I'm going to fire you because we need people who work. But maybe you can come back when you're healthy, but not sure, maybe the job's gone, I can't keep it free for you.
That's just one case. And when you think there's another case where someone would say, look, we are just, it's a Tough business out there. We are working as a trade here and not really an area where women are appreciated. There are lots of tough talk and, you know, boys will be boys and men talk the way they do. And we don't hire a woman, you know? No, we don't do that. And by the way, that can of course, affect also, for example, one of your female friends or maybe your daughter, where they say, or you want to get your daughter hired here. No, no.
I know we pay well and that probably secure her family's future, but, you know, hiring women is not for us. No, no. Probably with a son, I could have offered him a job. But not your daughter. Or just the worst of it all, when someone says, oh, you look, I see you worked your way up. I just see your CV here. But you don't really have a network, right?
You need to have a network. When all the people who work here come from academ. We have an academic network. You don't have one. We, we, we don't do all this working the way up.
I don't believe in that. No, we, we simply don't hire workingclass people. Even with your degree. Sorry, good luck from here. And when you now say that, that all of that, all of that is completely unacceptable, first. It is. And the injustice, the injustice could affect you.
It has nothing to do with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, which, by the way, is lgbt, being queer, the Q I intersex, or a asexual or plus anything in between or outside of that spectrum. The LGBTQIA community, if you didn't know, you know now. Health, human rights, equal rights, social upbringing, any kind of discrimination is addressed with diversity, equity and inclusion. And it can happen to absolutely anyone we saw. Just just to give you two examples, one person which went viral on social media said, my daughter is not a DEI hire. She's just a female ranger for the national parks. Yeah, but women's rights were also part of the diversity movement, and they just fired female people to put men in place.
There you are. Diversity immediately is an example here. Or for me, one of the most stupid examples. A man tried to burn down a gay flag and film himself while doing so. That happened in Iowa and the US probably not too surprising. And while he tried to burn the flag, which didn't work, he burned down his house by coincidence.
Happy pride, right? So diversity, equity and inclusion is not only about gay people or lesbian people or the equal rights for the gay and lesbian community. It goes way beyond that. The only category that is protected by birthright privilege are people who are white, male, straight and cisgender. And when you now say, oh, I can't talk down on them, I don't talk down on them. There are people, colleagues of mine, who are white, male, state and cisgender, who care about the LGBTQIA community, who care about equal and human rights, and they don't have to. For example, Torsten Jaeckel, one of the leading AI experts that we have in Europe.
Or, or Stefan. Stefan is one of my colleagues who works in. Stefan Ritter, who works in the insurance industry. He could simply say, look, I have my privileges and I keep my privileges and good luck for you. You get some warm words and off I go. No, they step up, they talk about it and they address it. They don't have to, but they do, because absolutely anyone can be affected.
There's only one category that has so many birthright privileges that it's pretty much safe, but every other, every other category is not part of that. And by the way, usually white male statistics comes with wealthy family, academic family, well qualified family, and the massive inheritance coming. So you're already safe before you enter the working world. So you have your money already by being born in the, in that family. That is the highest level of privilege. You're pretty much safe. Then anyone else needs dei, diversity, equity and inclusion.
The question is, how do you get it into an organization? And that, of course, can be tricky. When you, of course, start with awareness training, you have to talk about very important here, qualified awareness training. No, it's not the $49 online class you take during your lunch break. That will probably change nothing at all. You need qualified individuals. Some of them come from the LGBTQIA community, some of them don't.
It's all about the qualification, the experience, all about knowing what you're talking about. Science leads the way. Not opinions, but science. After the awareness training, however, you also have to see, do you actually, as an organization, live up to your promises? So first look at metrics. Do really, does it, does anything really change when you still say, look, we only have white men applying, I can't help it. Well, maybe there's a reason for that, and most likely there is.
Or maybe there are many people applying, but only white men get hired, then you have even more of a problem because someone in there puts a filter in there and says, look, we're only hiring white men. And that is of course not acceptable. And when you have people speaking up in favor of disadvantaged communities, people who need the support, we distinguish between allies and advocates. Allies are the ones who Support the matter. They are up for human equal rights. However, they are more or less silent. They are there when something pops up, but they are not there.
And speak up when they are not asked. Sometimes you need people who speak up without being asked, and these are advocates. When someone steps up and says, look, what happens here is injustice, it's wrong and we need to change it. These are the people who are real advocates, people who put their own career, their own personal advantage behind, including all the risks, and speak up for people who are less lucky being born in a situation, having less birthright privileges. And that's why we need allies and advocates both, not just one of them. And when you want to know how real shameful action looks like, just look at Germany at the moment. Julia Klockner, who is the president of the German Bundestag, the German parliament, for whatever reason, and she now decided that there will be no rainbow flag on the German parliamentary building during Pride Month.
And she refers to neutrality. So first, the last three years, it was up there and not an issue, zero issues. Suddenly it is an issue without any scientific backing for that. She just made up the issue and she says it's about neutrality. Okay, let's just Write this down, Mrs. Kluckner here, German politics, peak German politics. It's about human and equal rights and you stay neutral. Okay then.
So the German parliamentary president, the German president of the Bundestag is neutral on human and equal rights. Congratulations. To add that to your name in history, by the way, as a female person, when now someone turns up and says, we shouldn't have women as presidents of the German Bundestag. Well, you can't claim diversity because you're neutral on that. Right? So stay neutral and take the disadvantage and swallow it. Take the disadvantage and leave.
That will probably be the best. So very important here is you can't stay neutral on human and equal rights. Not as a reasonable human being. No reasonable human being is neutral on human and equal rights because it can affect absolutely anyone. So what you have to check is, does your organization really live what it claims, or is it just box ticking? Bit of marketing here, bit of LinkedIn posting there, maybe a rainbow flag on Instagram. And yeah, let's get this rainbow flag out of the.
Out of the drawer somewhere. Yeah, put this out of the window here, somewhere there.
Just, you know. And now get back to work. So reality means you live the values you talk about. And box ticking is you use values for marketing called pink washing. And then, of course, you need to be called out quite a number of organizations to be appeasing to Donald Trump now didn't do Pride Month this year or stop their diversity initiatives. By the way, there is strong scientific backing that diversity, equity and inclusion is beneficial for your organization. There's an unambiguously strong backing.
So you go against science, you go against common sense, you go against human and equal rights. And by the way, your name will be remembered for that. So don't show up in the next years and say, oh, it was all just to appease Donald Trump. No, no, no, no, no. We have your names and we will deal with you accordingly for a very good reason. So when you are not able to put values into reality and live the values you claim you live by, then of course people will make you lose your social legitimation and they will not follow you in the future. No one is going to listen to you.
People just do their thing. Whatever you say, they will ignore you for a good reason. Box ticking is nothing else than marketing. And this time, because anyone who's listening for this podcast and videocast for longer knows usually after this last point, I'm finished. There's a bonus point for this topic, and the bonus point is woke. As soon as anything shows up with diversity, equity and inclusion, a certain group of people said woke, woke, woke goes too far. That's one of the utterances you usually put in the category of IQ points.
Let's 70 IQ points or less. So woke means pretty much anything which is progressive and grants equal and human rights to anyone. They seem to have a problem with that. And it's quite interesting that these people say, oh, you know, the whole woke community. They are just offended by everything that is said by the people who completely kick off when they see a rainbow flag, when they see pronouns in someone's email signature, or when they see that someone else says could I please have equal rights? So when there's someone who's offended at everything, then it's these people. That's number one.
Number two, nothing smart has ever been said when the word woke. When the term woke has been used as a pejorative, nothing smart has ever been said. And third, when you use the term woke as pejorative, that starts that woke stands for empathy, sympathy, feeling with others, helping others, equal and human rights. When you use woke as a pejorative, you are unsuitable for any leadership position for the foreseeable future. Anyone has the right to Better I met someone in the US who sat at the side of the street in New York and held up a poster and said recovering Bigot and I thought that's an interesting take. So I said what did you do? Yeah, he was hating.
He was hating equal and human rights and he was stopping to hate equal and human rights when he realized that after he got diagnosed with a certain leg disease which make him lose his lower limb, he realized that diversity was about absolutely anyone because suddenly people took care of him. He was nice to in the first place. And of course it shouldn't be that that you are suddenly affected and then you see how much you need diversity. But as soon as someone just yells around woke as a negative term, these people are not suitable for leadership. And I have to be straightforward here. It really is a lack of intellectual capacity when you say that. That's why I say screaming woke woke at anything where you see a rainbow flag is really an utterance which is for the fan club I.Q.
70 points or less. That is the category you put yourself into, not anyone else puts you there, you put yourself in there. So stay away from yelling woke at anything because it's first, not a good look. Second, it harms yourself, your personal branding, your organization, anyone, including yourself massively. And third, you are unsuitable for any position when you do that. So be sure not to do that. So when you now say what to do, it's important that you start with awareness training.
Feel free to contact me or others about that. Then look, if anything is actually transferred into real practice, did anything change for the better? And as soon as that happens, you will have a better organization, better recruiting, lower costs, higher motivation, lower employee turnover, and by the way, including scientific backing, you have more profits when you are a diverse organization. Which is why some organizations officially ended their DEI training to appease Donald Trump and then renamed it as awareness training. So they continue to do exactly the same and just relabeled it, which is not great, but still better than doing nothing at all.
So very important here. The reality needs to be that you deliver on the promises you make as a leader and then you will have an organization which performs a lot better on all counts, including the human beings inside of it. And I wish you all the best doing so. And when you now say that's complex, I need to have a chat. So first, of course, thank you very much for your time here. If you're now listening on YouTube or watching me on YouTube, feel free to put a like here. Subscribe to the channel, Put the little bell in there so you don't miss future videos.
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