Why Words Matter: Dump "Diversity," Paint a Mosaic - Building Gender Balanced Business

The corporate read on diversity reflects the tension between the two definitions of the word diversity: the first meaning being difference, the second meaning variety.

For the moment, most progressive companies have created Diversity Departments. This starts from a well-meaning urge to make a range of differences and minorities feel comfortable within the walls of an organisation. This approach has not proven its efficacy. Especially not as relates to gender, given the startling lack of balance in the senior ranks of most companies.

Ironically, the diversity movement has proven to be quite good at alienating the “un-diverse”, the guys who are the backbone of past successes, and who often pack their bags once they think that their next promotion is likely to go to someone ‘more diverse.’ Yet these are precisely the people you need to be pushing the change.

Recently, these departments, usually a sub-set of HR, have been re-baptised Diversity & Inclusion. This is meant to be a whole new opening on a more progressive approach to diversity. I think it makes the whole thing even worse. The words underline the presumption that the “diverse” folk need to be included … in what? The dominant norm? It seems to me that the corporate read on diversity reflects the tension between the two definitions of the word diversity: the first meaning being difference, the second meaning variety.

One of my favourite quotes is from Tom Becker, President of the Chautauqua Institution, who says that “tolerance is a tepid response to diversity.” He points to the unacceptable hierarchy between those being tolerant and those being tolerated. I think the same comment can be made of those who are considered “not diverse” calling certain others “diverse“… or those being inclusive and those being included. Tom goes on:

“Life is diverse in all its expressions. … We know this from the biology of life. We know that all of life seems to relate to core expressions of DNA and yet all of life is different. This lesson that we are one within our differences finds its expression in the discoveries of science and in the basic tenets of religion. And yet we continue to define family by the small and familiar rather than the large and enfolding. We talk about the necessity of having our walls and windows for safety and comfort, and the large-heartedness of our willingness to open those doors and windows, on occasion, and with care and within limits. We live in an interracial, interreligious, intergenerational, inter-partisan and interdependent world.”

We need to make the understanding and appreciation of the magnificent variations of human existence an integral part of 21st century management.

Diversity & Inclusion smacks of walls and windows. We need to rebrand the concept, and use new language. I grew up in a country, Canada, that aspired to be a cultural mosaic, in contrast with our formidable neighbor to the South that imagined itself a melting pot. As the world yearns to balance local or national identities, roots and cultures with global openness, inter-connectedness and cooperation, the mosaic seems ever more relevant.

Actually, I think we have come farther than we think. When I look at the multinational companies that operate all over the globe, with managers familiar and fluent with airports and videoconferencing with other cultures, accents and business practices, I question the need for Diversity Departments. Creating a Diversity Department, with a Head of Diversity, is a great way to get managers to think that diversity is someone else’s business, and not the most basic part of their own job. Instead, we need to make the understanding and appreciation of the magnificent variations of human existence an integral part of 21st century management – for every manager. It’s not about magnanimously including others in your picture. It’s about humbly understanding that you are only a fragment in a much larger tapestry.

Finally, as the gender expert that I am, I am regularly offended by the term “gender diversity.” What in the world does that mean? Men and women make up almost exactly equal parts of humanity. Women now outnumber men among university graduates and among consumers. Can companies consider the majority of the talent and the majority of their customers a “diversity”? That isn’t the best approach to harnessing the opportunities this new world offers us.

I propose renaming Diversity & Inclusion. How about referring to Mosaic Management? That puts the responsibility on all managers to have a global, inter-cultural mindset, and 21st century leadership competencies. This would of course include “gender bilingualism,” fluency in the differences, styles and preferences of men and women. Then you are uniting behind a common aspiration for connection, not unwittingly separating the in’s from the out’s.

Sometimes, in breaking new ground and new centuries, you need to update the vocabulary to fit the times. “Diversity” is one of the words whose time has come … and gone. As the Olympics are under way in Vancouver this week, let’s hand it to the beautiful celebration of the heterogeneous, multi-cultural, Canadian mosaic. When walls become art, people become human.