Exclusion

At the same time, I always believe that one's career development is a two-way street. The employer has to create opportunities but you yourself also have to make sure that you're harnessing opportunities in the workplace, or even creating your own opportunities. So the employee also can gather strategies from the book as to how do you knock down these barriers when you see them.

We can only control our own behaviors and so, therefore, if you're much more equipped to identify these barriers, create strategies around them, you may also be able to create a script to help remove and eradicate these barriers when you see them.

Rachel Salaman: And you point out in the book that we are all biased. And you talk about the idea of in-group and out-group. Could you explain that concept for us please?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: So, there's a lot of really great research that has taken place in the neuropsychology world, where they're looking at just how the mind works and how the mind responds to stimuli. And one of the great areas of research has looked at how do we treat others who create comfort for us and they're in our group and therefore they're familiar to us, versus those who we consider to be outsiders, people who are outside of our group.

So, with these two different dynamics, we find that, when individuals share more characteristics with us, they're in our in-group and therefore we are much more capable of identifying with them and therefore understanding how to relate to them. However, when a person feels different, when they're not a part of our familiar environment, that's when we're not exactly sure how to negotiate our space around them, we're not sure how to communicate with them, we're not sure how to even treat them at times. And it's also something that can be on a very blatant level, also a very subtle level.

Rachel Salaman: If we're calling that bias, and if that's natural and beyond our control, what chances do we have of eliminating bias in the workplace?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: So, there are two really great theories of how do we approach bias, and it's whether or not bias is really malleable. We look at whether or not someone is an entity theorist or an incremental theorist.

So the person who feels that they are always going to be awkward around people in the out-group, they're only going to be familiar with the people in the in-group, the person who's afraid to take the chance to get to know the person in the out-group, that's what we call an entity theorist. That's the person who really tries to avoid encounters with people who are not familiar to their experiences and their backgrounds, for a number of different reasons. So therefore, with them, it's very difficult to overcome those biases because through more experiences, through more exposure, that's when we're able to actually create new and different thoughts and ideas about those who are in our out-group.

However, the incremental theorist is someone who is curious and understands that bias is something that can be eradicated. It's something that can be lessened over time with more exposure, more experiences, and with more touch points. So that would seem different to them.

So, with these two different schools of thought, I always encourage employers, and I also encourage employees, to become that incremental theorist, to become that person who is curious and is not afraid of making mistakes and learning from those mistakes. We're all going to make mistakes when we're dealing with people who are in out-groups. As someone who studies in this area and works in this area, I've also made mistakes in this area. I've said things that didn't exactly land the way I wanted them to. However, it's a question of how do you learn from that experience and how do you recover and, more importantly, how do you ensure that you don't make the same mistake again in the future.

Rachel Salaman: Well, as you mentioned, you work in this area on a day-to-day basis. In your experience, do people tend to be aware of their biases?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: I find that today, when we're talking about the subtle biases, we're talking about unconscious biases. The nature of an unconscious bias is that we're not aware of them.

A few years ago I became very curious about this, because, as an employment lawyer, I found that many of the cases that were coming before me were not about blatant discrimination or harassment, but the instances were very subtle and very passive but still equally as deleterious as your overt discrimination or harassment. So I embarked on this study where I wanted to find out what are the common barriers that people will encounter, that people are encountering, in 21st century American workplaces – and I wouldn't even say just American workplaces, I'd say in global workplaces – and I found that, after interviewing a range of different people, hundreds of hours of interviews, I found that there were these 10 common barriers that people will encounter, and I looked at them and realized that these were 10 common micro-inequities.

My feeling was if I could identify these micro-inequities, it would be that much easier to develop ways around working in these micro-inequities, developing strategies for overcoming these micro-inequities, and, more importantly, not even engaging in these micro-inequities.

That's how I found that it's been helpful in working with groups and where, half the time, people don't even realize that these micro-inequities do occur, and sometimes people do realize that they occur but they don't realize that they occur on a wide-scale basis. Oftentimes, people feel like they're the only ones who have been encountering lack of informal mentoring, they're the only ones who have been unable to recover from a mistake, or they're the only one who feels isolated.

However, through this exposure of these various micro-inequities that many people do encounter, there's a sense of, "Now it's not just me, and how have other people overcome this?" So people are no longer creating the path by walking but rather harnessing the opportunities that others have used to create their scripts for overcoming these barriers.

Rachel Salaman: Well, we're going to talk about the micro-inequities in a little bit more detail in a moment but, first of all, I just wanted to ask you, what about if you just don't like someone, not because of any particular characteristic but because you just don't warm to them as a person. Would you say that was also bias?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: That's a really great question. When you find that you really aren't liking a person, find out why. Like, what is it about this person that you don't like? What have they done to you? Are you making assumptions about them that they haven't proven wrong or right? Why don't you like this person? And, if you don't like the person, how are you impacting their career development?

I might not want to go out to have drinks with you but you still have a responsibility to include me in meetings, to make sure that I understand what is needed to get the job done. If I'm talented, if I am capable of doing the work, give it to me, but don't deny me the same opportunities as others just because you might have a personal bias against me.

Rachel Salaman: In your book you say that the nature of bias is changing. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: As I mentioned, years ago when I was practicing labor employment law, I found that many of the cases were no longer a matter of people being called epithets in the workplace, derogatory names in the workplace, or even being told that their race, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation were the reasons why they were not being included in groups, why they weren't being included in getting promotions, and why they weren't a part of the more favored group in the workplace. That it was very subtle; that, instead, people were finding that someone who they had trained for a particular job was now being promoted instead of them; that other people were being fast tracked for greater opportunities in their environment, in their work environment; that different people were being tapped for leadership.

So there was no explanation for this other than just looking at the demographics of the groups who were being promoted, looking at whether or not we have the sticky floor syndrome, where people who come into the entry-level opportunities were the people who were historically unrepresented in a particular industry. These were the people who came in at entry levels and stayed at entry levels, and were not advanced into more senior levels of the organization.

Rachel Salaman: So this brings us to the micro-inequities that you mentioned earlier, and you've identified 10 of these. If we could just talk about a few of them now. The first one you discuss in your book is the power of informal mentoring. What are your main points with this?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: Well, many of us have been acquainted with the whole notion of mentoring, and particularly formal mentoring, in many organizations. Some organizations have been wonderful at creating opportunities for senior-level employees to coach and mentor, and provide guidance to, more junior-level, potentially high-potential, employees, so with junior-level high-potential employees.

The results have been mixed. Where we all know that the ability for us to connect with the next person and really create that level of intimacy with them, where we're willing to share with them our mistakes, our triumphs, our highs and our lows, it really comes down to whether I really connect with you, whether there's something about you that resonates with me. So if the formal mentoring relationship, which is something that the organization, which is the company, has put together, if there's not that resonance between the mentor and mentee, it really is not a powerful relationship. The mentee is not going to get the full benefit and value of that mentor's knowledge and skill base.

However, we find that, when people are actually obsessed with their career development, it makes a huge difference. Many times throughout the interviews that I conducted, I found that there were people who were tapped for different opportunities because someone became obsessed with their career development. Someone would pull them aside and give them that "beyond the brochure" look of their environment. They would tell them how they were doing well and, even better yet, they would tell them how they were not doing well. The people who were being informally mentored were not getting feedback at the semi- and annual review, they were getting very frequent feedback that they were able to use to their advantage in a real time basis.

So that's where we're finding that true mentoring takes place, when people actually feel that they trust you and they want to bring you into their circle. And we're now even talking about sponsorship, where it really is a matter of someone else really pitching for you, someone really promoting you when you're not in the room, and making sure that you are seen for the great employee that you are.

You know, I think I spoke to someone who said that they had determined that 99 percent of the decisions that are made about our careers are made when we're not in the room.

Rachel Salaman: That's sobering, isn't it. But what can someone do if they are from a minority group and they're working in an environment where nobody takes that special interest in them? What can they do and what can the leaders of that organization do to make sure that there's equal opportunities for these mentoring relationships?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: I want to be very careful about how we're using the word "minority." The word "minority" in the United States has a very specific meaning, where it's been tagged as a word that we use to describe women and people of color. However, my book is not about only women and people of color, it's about people who find themselves in the minority.

So there are a number of different ways in which we can find ourselves in the minority. We might be someone who did not go to boarding school or have the whole private school or parochial experience growing up. That could make us someone who was in the minority in our work environment. I spoke to a young man who works for a law firm and his minority experience was that he came from a farming environment, he didn't grow up in an urban environment. So now, living in New York City and working in a major law firm was a different experience for him because he was in the minority.

So I just want to be very careful as we talk about minorities. I prefer to refer to individuals as historically underrepresented groups in the workplace. So when we're talking about these groups, the question, I think you're asking a wonderful question here, how do employers and how do employees tackle this really difficult conundrum, because, once again, it's a question of trust and it's a question of personal like and dislike that once again might be driving my ability to relate to you because you remind me of myself when I was younger, you remind me of my daughter.

For the employee, some of the strategies that people shared with me were you've got to take your own career development into your own hands. If you're finding that you're being left out of opportunities or if you're finding that you're not getting the informal mentoring that you see other people getting in your environment, don't be afraid to ask, don't be afraid to knock on someone's door and ask them about who they are. Most times, people enjoy talking about themselves and so, when a senior leader sees that you're curious about them, they might be much more inclined to talk to you about their background, their experiences, and to provide you with that informal mentoring. You might have to go seek it out, but there's nothing wrong with that.

On the flip side, as the employer, I often question employers, "Look at your close cadre of mentees. Who are the people who you often do give informal mentoring to? And if there's a similar demographic, I challenge you to change that demographic. I challenge you to knock on someone else's door and invite them in to have coffee. I challenge you to invite someone different to lunch."

Rachel Salaman: So, it's just about opening your view a lot of the time, it sounds like?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: Exactly, and I think that's a good way of putting it. So opening your view, and it's also about being courageous enough to move beyond the status quo. It's very easy to continue doing the same thing that we've always done and which is always comfortable to us but, remember, that's the entity theorist. They don't take chances when it comes to learning about different people and different groups and cultures. They play it safe. If you're really committed to diversity, you have to not play it safe and you've got to be courageous.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk about another micro-inequity now, that you talk about in your book: recovering from mistakes. What can you tell us about that?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: So, I was finding that, over and over again, people who found themselves to be in the minority or in the out-group, for whatever characteristic made them in the out-group, whether they had a disability, whether they were from a different geographical region than everyone in their workspace, whether they're a working mom when everybody else was single and didn't have children, I found that individuals who made mistakes, and we all make mistakes in the workplace, these individuals had a much harder time proving that their mistake may have been something that was an innocent oversight and could be resolved.

Once again, when we find that it's a lot easier to relate to someone because of our familiarity with who they are, who we think they are, it's a lot easier for us to put ourselves in their shoes and say, "You know, I made that mistake a few years ago when I first started out in my career," and it's easier for us to, I wouldn't say overlook it but for us to forgive.

However, when we don't resonate, when we don't feel that someone is a part of our in-group, it's much harder for us to trust that they won't make that mistake again because we're so unfamiliar with them.

So, over and over, I was finding that people found that, after making a mistake, they would never be trusted again to handle a project like that, that they had to prove themselves over and over again that that mistake was not necessarily who they were but just who they were in that time.

Rachel Salaman: So leaders need to recognize that they're perhaps not treating everyone equally in this respect and make sure they do. Is that the main message?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: It's not creating that awareness, that this is something that does occur. When you do find that you are disciplining or chastising an employee, look very closely at whether or not the discipline is consistent. You know, are you disciplining all of your employees who are similarly situated the same way, for the same infractions? Are you providing more coaching to some than others when they do make these mistakes? That's often where we do see that these micro-inequities do come up.

Rachel Salaman: You include a chapter on bullying in the workplace, another micro-inequity, and you say that managers need to create an environment where bullies can't hide. So what does that environment look like exactly?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: Well, the employer who has the workplace that allows a bully to fester, and we all know what bullies look like. You know, one of the individuals I interviewed for the book was a governor, the Governor of the State of Connecticut, and he explained that, when you have a bully in the workplace, they can tear away at the productivity of your employees, they create a toxic environment for your employees and, if a manager is not watching the dynamics of their workplace, they can allow a bully to fester.

You've got to be cognizant, and you've got to be an engaged manager and know what's happening in your environment.

Rachel Salaman: Now, perceived underperformance is another micro-inequity that you cover. Could you tell us exactly what you mean by that and what are some ways to prevent it?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: What I was also finding was that individuals who were in out-groups, the assumption was made that they were not as talented as others, that there may have been different programs or different processes that got them to the workplace that may not have been fair, may not have been equitable, that may have been preferential. So there's this perception in that they're not as smart as everybody else.

It's wonderful to recruit these underrepresented people into your organization but, once they're there, if they're not getting the opportunities to show that they're qualified, that they're wonderful performers, if there's a perception that they are not going to achieve on a project, it becomes a snowball in effect, where eventually no one will trust them with work projects and, eventually, they're going to leave for greater opportunities.

So you have this revolving door syndrome going on where you recruit these wonderful people but, because there's a perception that they're not going to succeed, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and they don't.

Rachel Salaman: So what can people do about that, then?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: So there is wonderful advice that was given by the Commissioner from the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission here in the States. And her advice, which is sprinkled throughout the book, really looked at being very objective about how you're assessing, if you're an employer, being very objective about how you're assessing your workforce. It's really challenging yourself to say, as the employer, "Did this person do a great job? If the answer is yes, I need to trust them with more work."

The difficulty is that many of us are not risk takers in the workplace. We don't want to have egg on our face for having someone make us look bad, but that's a part of the risk taking of, once again, creating this more diversified workplace. You've got to take the chance that someone who is sitting in your office can and will do a great job and you've got to let that person prove themselves.

On the plus side, as the employee, if you're finding that you're not getting really quality work assignments, there might be this perception that you're not doing well and it's your opportunity to start asking the questions, "How and why am I not getting access to projects?" To actually sit down with a supervisor and talk about a former project that you may have handled and get feedback on that, because it's possible that you may have made mistakes but no one's willing to talk to you about those mistakes.

So sometimes, once again, you've got to harness the opportunity to get feedback for yourself because sometimes people are not going to come to you with the feedback.

Rachel Salaman: Sometimes, of course, a person will have a higher opinion of their own ability than their manager does, and either one of them could be right. Bias might not enter into it at all – it's just an opinion. So how can the employee or the manager know when bias or discrimination is a factor in a lack of advancement in the company?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: You're right, there are some times when our perceptions are not meeting the reality. And that's where, as the employee, we all know when there's writing on the wall that we might not be getting the plum assignments, we're seeing other people being assigned to do the more sexy assignments in our organization. At those moments you want to start asking why. Don't just sit back and wonder, "Oh, am I not getting these opportunities because of whatever characteristic makes me a part of the out-group in my workplace?" Or do you want to be able to be the master of your own destiny and speak to someone and find out, "Where am I not performing well?"

It's being able to take charge of your own career in a way that says you care about your career such that other people will care about it as well.

Rachel Salaman: In the book, you give an example of someone who is offended by a male colleague asking her how she washed her braided hair. Now, it struck me that not everyone would be offended by a question like that, and some people might even relish the opportunity to talk about braiding or washing their hair. So how can a manager judge whether people are being over sensitive about any of the micro-inequities?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: So that example came from the chapter on the micro-inequity around insensitivity and the importance of being sensitive to others.

I agree that curiosity about how we look, the things that we do, the things that we eat, that kind of curiosity is good but, in the book, it's not so much that the gentleman asked the woman about her braids. The setup was that this was a work environment where this woman was talking to a secretary and one of her peers came out of his office, saw her hair, and said, "What is that? How do you even wash that?" Having your hair referred to as "that" and having someone question your hygiene in a public environment is somewhat embarrassing.

So what the gentleman could have, and should have, asked instead was, "Oh, your hair is very nice," or, "Your hair, I've never seen your hair like this. With my hair, because I can actually put my fingers through it, I actually wash it on a daily basis. I'm curious, how do you wash yours, if you don't mind me asking?" It's a question of are you putting someone in a zoo cage and making them a spectacle, or are you really genuinely interested in finding out about them and creating a conversation of understanding?

I feel like you can ask someone anything you want. It's a question of how you phrase it and how you frame it.

Rachel Salaman: So, to what extent do you think people from the out-groups should be expected to rise above annoyances and slights? I mean, how can they know when they're being over sensitive to a tone of voice or a way someone phrases a question?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: I think it's always good to have a "board of directors" who can help you bounce these ideas off their heads. So when I say a board of directors, I mean like your own personal board of directors – a group of four or five people who you trust, people who you admire, and people who you know exercise good judgment.

Sometimes they do happen, where we might be over sensitive to them, and sometimes we might be completely spot on, that this may be indicative, someone's behavior might be indicative, of more insidious bias that's coming to the surface or manifesting in a certain way. And so, by talking to your board of directors, your friends, your colleagues, your family members who might be a part of this board of directors, and asking them, "What do you think about this?"

That's a really good way of balancing our own emotional slights and feelings of being offended versus what objectively occurred.

Rachel Salaman: What's your own view of affirmative action programs?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: I think that affirmative action definitely has yielded many benefits to our workplaces. It's a question of how affirmative action programs and plans are put together: are they carefully tapered to make sure that they're achieving the goals that they're intended to achieve? I think that there's still a place for affirmative action, given that, when you look at the demographics and you look at the statistics in many of our organizations, there still is a need for, once again, advancing gender equality as well as racial equality in many of our workplaces.

The goal of affirmative action was to make a deliberate move in the direction of ensuring that there is the equality that we're seeking to achieve by creating the accountability that sometimes doesn't exist within certain systems. So within certain recruiting systems, there might not be that accountability for an employer to make sure that they are hiring people from various different backgrounds. But affirmative action does create that accountability and that requirement to do so.

Rachel Salaman: So, what are your three main takeaways from our discussion then as it relates to inclusion, engagement and retention for organizations?

Natalie Holder-Winfield: So, three takeaways are: number one, understanding that this is not a sprint but a marathon. Many organizations do experience what I call diversity fatigue, where they feel that they've been talking about this for so many years and nothing's happening. You've got to continue going through the fire, you've got to continue believing that it's possible to achieve the diversity that you're looking for, and to continue looking for new and different ways of achieving those goals.

Number two, I'd like people really looking into whether or not they're entity or incremental theorists, and to not be afraid of admitting that you might be an entity theorist and taking the steps to become that incremental theorist who, once again, has the courage to understand that they don't know it all but are willing to learn.

Then, lastly, it's just overall awareness of the 10 different micro-inequities that people in out-groups often encounter in today's workplaces, becoming familiar with them, and reading some of the strategies that many of the people I interviewed. I mean, I interviewed some wonderful individuals who had great ideas; there was a vice provost from New York University, I mentioned the Governor of the State of Connecticut, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner, a number of other great television personalities who I also interviewed, professors and business leaders. They all provided great ideas for how they've scripted their ways of overcoming these barriers.

Rachel Salaman: Natalie Holder-Winfield, thanks very much for joining us.

Natalie Holder-Winfield: No, thank you so much, Rachel. It's been my pleasure.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Natalie's book again is "Exclusion: Strategies for Improving Diversity in Recruitment, Retention and Promotion," and you can find out more about her and her work at www.questdiversity.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.