To take on the deeper diversity, organizations and their leaders need both courage and honesty.  

It requires courage to step beyond what feels comfortable and what you know to encounter the unknown. To confront the “What-You-Don’t-Know-You-Don’t Know.”   This is entirely a real challenge for both organizations and the people who run them.

We all have preferred ways to operate and think.

True diversity demands that we step beyond habitual boundaries and thought-forms. We need to recognize and act upon the reality that MOST of the world does not think and operate the way “WE” do – whatever your “WE” might mean. Moreover, the best ideas may not come from “US.”  To step boldly into the future we are creating together, we will have to relinquish the pieces of our framework that no longer serve us. We will have to repurpose our ideas and truly embrace change. Deep change. The kind that shifts institutional goals and reverses time-honored priorities. It is transformational.

Beyond courage, why does honesty even matter?

Honesty matters mostly because it creates clarity. It clears away the debris of old ideas and obsolete processes. It unmasks traditions that have masked intolerant, exclusive, and damaging behavior and reveal their limitations. It invites us all to step up and to step differently. 

By honesty, I refer to the painful process of identifying truthfully our hidden class, caste, gender, religious and personal values that undergird even decisions we would like to think are unconscious. Until we are willing to move beyond ego-driven fragility, to recover our capacity for awareness and empathy, we will lack the tools needed to transform our thinking and our organizations. Honesty peels away the subterfuge and leaves us with what is real.   What is real – even if it is ugly – can provide us with a foundation for progress. We can set a clear path moving forward once we have acknowledged where we really are. 

With clarity, we can see the worth/value/benefit of taking on new approaches. We will not want to bury them, discount, and eliminate them — before they can really affect our important decisions. I say important decisions because we have all participated in organizations that practice “diversity and inclusion,” except in the finance department. Many faith-based organizations unconsciously adopt this model. You will notice, in such organizations, truly diverse talent in every arm of the organization, except the money management departments. These seem to remain homogenous in perpetuity. 

Often the reason cited for this is the fact that institutions change slowly and, until very recently, black and brown people were not numbered among the truly wealthy. But, this seems to be a partial reason. A more complete explanation might be psychological. Although we are willing to experiment and try on new ideas in terms of mission, vision, and outreach when it comes to money we tend to fall back on very traditional ideas and models of success. Thence the tendency to hire and promote staff that represents the historical configurations. Many otherwise progressive organizations have incredibly homogenous finance departments. What is going on there? 

Perhaps they lack the courage to confront their systematic reliance on a very small group to dictate their operating norms. They probably also lack clarity around how a “progressive” fiscally sound program would operate. No organization can reach its true potential, though, if it is not willing to explore territories that lie outside of the ordinary-everyday scope of business. In fact, treading the same ground over and over will probably lead to extinction – not renewal. 

Karen Alphonse is a senior search solutions leader, resume writer, online profile auditor, and career coach. Learn more about our career coaching, job applications preparation, and interview readiness services, or write to Karen at contact@execsearches.com.