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Fast-forward to three years later. In the summer of 2020, in the wake of George Floyd's murder, corporate statements of solidarity flooded LinkedIn feeds. CEOs publicly renewed their pledges of commitment to racial justice, to equity, to inclusion. The Black Lives Matter movement had gained unstoppable momentum, and business leaders felt the pressure to vocally reaffirm their support of Black communities.
I was living in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood at the time, three blocks from the East Precinct that had become the movement's infamous ground zero. I think the zone's temporary residents in tents and makeshift shelters were still deciding whether they were occupying the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) or the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). Clickbait-seeking helicopters had become my round-the-clock white noise reality. From my apartment balcony on the third floor, Seattle's downtown peaks floated above Puget Sound. The corporate trapezoids of the financial district cut the skyline in business-casual shades of blue and silver.
Down on the street, at metropolitan basecamp, Black lives mattered. “I'd rather repaint gray buildings than bury my Black friends!” a leader of the movement shouted across the street through a bullhorn. In the afternoons, teenagers marched—hundreds of middle school and high school students under my window together, singing, making sure everyone knew the words to the songs that drowned out the helicopters. I felt hopeful, knowing that this time, their voices hadn't just reached my windows and faded out. They had traveled beyond, to those downtown windows, to the top floors.
Employees and consumers were demanding a new level of accountability, and national publications held CEOs to account, to ensure that they were walking their talk. For the first time in years, business leaders were forced to revisit their diversity data.
An email showed up in my inbox from a colleague who had attended the CEO panel with me three years earlier. Subject line: “Lead with Love.” He had forwarded me an article calling out executives who had made very public statements over the previous few years that they valued diversity, that it was “baked in” to their companies' cultures. The feature was a two-page spread. On the left side, dossiers of the self-proclaimed Good Guys and their solidarity statements. On the right, diversity reports from the companies they oversaw. A decade of diversity data showed little to no progress, year after year, with some companies regressing. The CEO who proclaimed “I lead with love” as his guiding DEI philosophy had the largest photo. The caption below: “Leadership or Lip Service?”
Good Intentions, Few Results
These individual companies and leaders are not anomalies. While some strides have been made toward workplace equality over the last 50 years, over the last two decades progress has stalled. Looking beyond the wage gap, women and minorities are still underrepresented in leadership,1 receive less access to senior leaders,2 and are leaving the fastest-growing sectors, such as tech, at higher rates than white men,3 citing “culture” as the primary reason. Women—especially women of color—are more likely to have been laid off during the COVID-19 crisis,4 and experts estimate that decades of progress toward workplace equality have been erased by the pandemic.5
Despite the rise of MeToo and Black Lives Matter, many workplaces have taken a step backward: Men are less likely now to want to mentor women than they were before the MeToo movement.6 Managers are less likely to advocate for employees of color than they are for white employees,7 and employees are more receptive to constructive criticism from a male manager than from a female manager.8
In short, we're still stuck.
Despite this sobering snapshot of the status quo, when it comes to equity and inclusion, there is good news:
We've been doing it all wrong.
The DEI Overwhelm
I was asked during a recent interview to pick one word to describe how business leaders feel about DEI. I think they were looking for “committed” or “optimistic.”
I chose “overwhelmed.”
This feeling isn't limited to business leaders. I spend my days listening to employees across all levels of organizations talk about what diversity and inclusion mean to them. In these conversations, I hear a lot of recurring themes:
White employees want to support their peers of color but don't know where to start.
Employees of color are told over and over again, “We need to hear voices like yours. We need more people of color to speak up.” Then, they do speak up and they hear, “You're making your peers uncomfortable. You should just focus on leading your team. You're pulling the race card.” Some find, after speaking up, that they're suddenly left out of meetings and important projects.
Men want to be allies, but they're worried they're going to say the wrong thing.
Women take advice to “Lean In” and stand up for themselves or negotiate for a raise, only to be told they're too aggressive or arrogant. Other women see these consequences and avoid speaking up, and then are told it's their own fault that their careers aren't progressing.
Managers and executives start to explore DEI strategies and become paralyzed by an ever-changing DEI vocabulary, contradictory messages, and seemingly endless nuance. If they do implement new inclusive policies, they find a new segment of their employee base is angry at them.
Employees who feel their neurodivergent status, age, or caretaking responsibilities impact how they're treated at work aren't sure they have a “right” to speak up, because what they're experiencing doesn't seem as bad as overt racism or sexism.
This is just the beginning. Whatever the particular mix of overwhelm looks like in each organization, I see the same repeated outcomes: Underestimated employees eventually realize their only choices are to assimilate or leave, and the businesses and employees both miss out. (Arlan Hamilton coined the term “underestimated” to refer to groups that have historically experienced bias.) Even if businesses manage to hold on to these employees, employers won't get the benefits of their unique insights, since they will never feel comfortable showing up authentically.
Employees who do choose to leave find they don't know how to determine if another employer will be better. Many “Most Inclusive Workplaces” lists are sponsored, or their criteria are unclear or unsubstantiated. Large organizations that appear more diverse than others don't show their attrition numbers. They may just be in a continuous cycle of losing and rehiring employees to keep their diversity numbers up. Alternatively, they may have diverse overall numbers, but zooming in could reveal that none of that diversity shows up in leadership.
Employees don't know where to look. Employers don't know what to do. In general, there's a lack of clarity about what works—what behaviors, processes, and practices should be tracked to catalyze progress toward equity at work.
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