FENCES THE OTHER SIDE

These reflection questions will help you contemplate and analyze feelings of belonging.

1. When was a time you felt outside of “the fence” or not a part of a group and someone brought you “inside”?

2. How did that act of inclusion make you feel?

3. How do you think that act of inclusion made the person who brought you “inside” feel? Do you think they struggled with that decision? Did they have anything to lose?

4. Have you ever made an effort to include someone who may not have “fit in” to an environment that was comfortable for you?

5. What did it feel like to be inclusive toward someone else?

6. When was a time that you felt excluded because of something you couldn’t control?

7. How did that exclusion make you feel?

8. Identify an instance in which you excluded someone.

9. Was that exclusion intentional?

10. Have you ever excluded someone for reasons they couldn’t control?

11. How do you think your active role in someone else’s exclusion made them feel?

12. If you could go back and act differently, would you?

13. Have you ever reflected on that experience since?

Regardless of the experience, we have all been in situations where we have been left out or have left other people out. We have been the recipient of the coveted invitation or the one left waiting for it, never to come. We have experienced knowingly and unknowingly what it feels like to be included and not to be included. The more that leaders are aware of their power to invite people in, the more effective they become. They need to understand that it is not about removing existing barriers but about clever ways to work with them and make them work for you. The picket fence must become a power statement of how you understand and creatively approach the very structures that mean to exclude you and others you can get inside of it. No one has the right to keep you out—no matter the power structures in play.

The Letters that Became Belonging

There is no question that power structures within organizations, and those used by boards, include “lettered” initiatives and mandates, including DEI, ESG, and others. Leaders often advance them as the initiatives of the moment—and work to address them in whatever ways they can, either through a compliant or committed application within the company.

Regardless of how organizations attempt to implement them, these initiatives can create belonging and cause displacement at the same time. Depending on numerous factors, people conceive and adopt a logic around the programs’ place and fit within the organization. Some initiatives intended to provide access and opportunity often rely too heavily on compliance over regard for longer-term change—which most of these programs are attempting to support, even if not in the stated or originally intended way.

Many initiatives that have led to today’s understanding of belonging were often misunderstood from the very beginning, as leaders simply announced what they were going to do, instead of explaining why they were doing it and what they hoped to accomplish. Today, the “why” is too often hijacked by political extremes, making the origin story muddied, inconsistent, and misunderstood. This is true in society as well as in our own companies— and in families, too. Leaders have given too little context for the initiatives’ importance, how they will serve the organization as a whole, and ultimately how they have performed, even as they may have increased marginalized employees’ sense of belonging. When leaders realize that they can leverage these initiatives for financial gain and, more importantly, to increase any number of critical factors that support employee happiness and retention, they will begin to find more effective ways to not only implement them but also to nurture them more effectively within their companies’ stated culture.

The challenge is when these programs become mandates and mustdos, or when political views are inserted into corporate initiatives that have nothing to do with politics. They do not last. Neither does the leader. Weaving them into the cultural fabric that is the company’s DNA, makes them more authentically accepted and experienced. But the crucial first step is that they must be understood to serve everyone, not just any one group.

Many of these initiatives have a deep historical perspective that the modern workforce either is unaware, unsure of, or simply does not care about. Yet, understanding that many of today’s DEI or ESG efforts, while more evolved, are connected to prior historical iterations of an attempt to make progress, especially in areas of DEI or DEIAB (diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging).

It is easy to assume that DEI is a relatively new concept, but the letters and the concepts have been represented for decades in many critical and visible initiatives. Most of what we are working through has familial roots in earlier programs and concepts, with a modern twist that addresses the needs of today.

We can look at concepts current and past and see how they are misunderstood, mis-utilized, or simply missing the mark for today’s needs. Regulations and beliefs such as political correctness, affirmative action, Title IX, and cancel culture are each steeped in history, with origins going back anywhere from four decades to more than a century. In other words, they may be an active part of today’s vernacular, effort, and even frustration, but they are not new—even if concepts around how organizations approach them can be presented as such.

Each of these directives, phrases, words, and efforts was well intentioned, helpful, insightful, and sometimes necessary, but over time people’s energy for following them has become stale and rote—or, if lacking support and enthusiasm, forced and mandated.

To add a current perspective, let’s consider the predecessors and precedents to many of the initiatives of today, whose roots are rarely discussed and often misunderstood. Each of the following concepts was an attempt to make inroads into and address systemic power struggles of their day. They were innovative and purposeful when they debuted, but they may have outlived their usefulness, no longer serving the complexities that organizations and individuals face in today’s different world.

Political Correctness

This term refers to our use of language with the intentions of avoiding offending others, particularly when describing demographically diverse and traditionally marginalized groups (people with historically disadvantaged racial, gender, physical, or mental characteristics, or stigmatized cultural or sexual identities).

The history of the term is fascinating, originating in the Marxist–Leninist vocabulary that emerged following the Russian Revolution in 1917. Back then, being politically correct meant you abided by the doctrine of the Communist Party within the Soviet Union—the ultimate in compliance, where you went with the party line or else. Liberals and conservatives in the United States have volleyed this term between them, co-opting it in their chosen usage for decades.

In the workplace, political correctness has led to important equity shifts and inclusive norms; however, overreliance on political correctness also leads to failures in expressing 100% of the truth. People feel inhibited, afraid to address issues head-on or nervous about communicating a problem at all, and instead draw their own conclusions without questioning one another. These conclusions can burrow in, leading to resentment, avoidance, and declining performance. Companies are paying a price for the lack of authentic and often necessary dialogue—and so are their shareholders.

I have included political correctness as one of the great masqueraders, mainly because it is based on falsely making people comfortable. We’ve all been led in this dance and carefully taught the steps of acceptable behavior and tolerant language to such a point that it defers the uncomfortable conversations, often involving a flash point that adds the volatility of built-up resentment and deep hurt. According to a 2006 Harvard Business Review article, political correctness is a “double-edged sword,” one that has enabled many historically disadvantaged group members to navigate their workplace environments with greater ease and more favorable perceptions of inclusion, but that has also reduced the capability of employees—including leaders—to build meaningful relationships that span potentially divisive group differences.

Affirmative Action

Affirmative action was enacted during President Lyndon Johnson’s administration as a strategy to grant access to and expand opportunities for African Americans. Federal affirmative action policies debuted with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and an executive order in 1965. The government forbade organizations receiving federal funding from using selection criteria that excluded or discriminated against African Americans.

Eventually, affirmative action was expanded to include women, Native Americans, Hispanic people, and other minority groups. It also broadened beyond private companies, including universities as well as state and federal government agencies. Since the 1970s and 1980s, the Supreme Court has gone back and forth on decisions regarding race-based affirmative action. The debate over whether to retain these policies continuing today.

Harvard argues that more than 40% of universities rely on race as a factor in their admissions processes, and they have not found a race-neutral way to increase diversity in their student bodies. The question of how to foster diversity on college campuses without affirmative action in place is nuanced and challenging, but it is the heart of the debate. Doing so would require universities to publicly and continuously reinforce their commitment to diversity by developing and testing the effectiveness of race-neutral procedures that would effectively address the structural inequities that affirmative action was intended to fix.

Title IX

President Nixon’s enactment of Title IX in 1972 was an early attempt at DEI, prohibiting any educational institution receiving federal funding from discriminating “on the basis of sex.” The effects for women’s access to educational opportunity were immediate and positive. To put this into context, in the early 1970s, 43% of college students were female, and men earned eight times the number of PhDs as women. Those numbers have now flipped, with women comprising the majority of college students and doctorate recipients. These patterns extend to physicians, dentists, and lawyers—women are achieving greater parity across the spectrum of industries.