No one wants to think they got to the top through an unfair advantage. You want to feel that you’ve earned it — that your hard work and carefully honed skills have paid off.
But the evidence on diversity in the workplace is conclusive: There are lots of people held back by bias. And that means that some of the people at the top have advanced partly through privilege.
Our research finds the idea of being advantaged to be uncomfortable for many senior leaders. We interviewed David, a senior executive who recognizes both having benefited from unfair advantages and the injustice of bias. He’s tall, middle-aged, well-educated, heterosexual, able-bodied, white, and male — and these provide David with unearned advantages that he intellectually knows he has, but that in practice he barely notices. He tells us he feels an underlying sense of guilt. He wants to feel that his successes in life are down to his abilities and hard work, not unfair advantage. “I feel like a child who discovers that people have been letting him win a game all along,” he says. “How can I feel good about myself succeeding if the game was never fair?”
In speaking with leaders about their built-in advantages, we have seen that David’s experience is widely shared. Acknowledging these advantages can challenge their very identities and sense of worth. If you find yourself in this situation, how should you process it? And what should you do about it?
Our research on speaking truth to power shows there is often a blind spot among the powerful, preventing them from seeing their impact on the less powerful. We call this advantage blindness. When you have advantage blindness, you don’t feel privileged. You don’t notice a life of special treatment; it’s just normal. You don’t think about your physical safety most of the time; you don’t worry about holding hands with your partner in public; when you get angry, no one asks you if it’s because of your hormones; and people in power generally look like you. (This list is inspired by the work of activist scholar Peggy McIntosh.)
In our interviews with leaders, we’ve seen both helpful and unhelpful reactions when people are confronted with their advantage blindness. The unhelpful ones include:
Denying the playing field is unlevel. George, for instance, responds very differently from David, saying: “If someone doesn’t achieve, it’s not for lack of opportunity. It’s too easy to blame others. Life isn’t always fair. But things have changed. Being white or male no longer matters. I deserve what I’ve worked for.” By believing success is due only to hard work and personal talent, individuals don’t see how systems convey advantages to them. Board-level conversations confirmed for us that men don’t realize how easily they get heard, while women get ignored, even when they are making the same point in the same situation. One woman said of her white male chair, after a fruitless attempt at conversation: “I have to assume he’s deaf.”
Focusing on one’s own disadvantages. Michael describes his working-class background: “My grandparents faced hard times and discrimination. Sure, I now have many opportunities my grandparents lacked. But being privileged? It’s not part of who I am.” Chris also doesn’t feel advantaged, but for different reasons. He experienced bullying in an elite boarding school that had a lasting impact: “Others see me as someone privileged. But I hated my education and didn’t want any of the so-called advantages.” A difficult personal history can make it hard to recognize systemic advantages that favor one’s group.
Claiming inequality is justified by the innate superiority of some groups over others. From this perspective, results justify themselves — for example, “If men earn more, they must be worth more.” In a recent high-profile incident, James Damore posted a memo at Google arguing that women are biologically less capable of being engineers. Tellingly, his memo was greeted by many of his male peers as refreshingly candid, rather than full of false claims.
How, then, can leaders positively respond to being challenged about their advantages, without triggering one of these defensive reactions? Here are three constructive reactions we saw leaders make to address the issue:
Owning personal prejudice and bias. Addressing unfairness and injustice requires its beneficiaries to recognize their advantages. David says: “Years ago, I was in a meeting that was two-thirds women. A woman pointed out that the minority of men were talking most of the time. I was embarrassed I hadn’t noticed, and recognized it was true. Now I try to notice how much ‘air time’ men take.” In a business setting, it is not uncommon for women to struggle to be heard by men. Noticing how we implicitly ignore, interrupt, label, or judge people can be embarrassing, especially when we view ourselves as someone untouched by prejudice or habits that silence others.
Empathy from connecting with people who are “other.” In our fast-paced world, it’s hard to slow down enough to connect with people. One CEO said: “I like people to be bright, be quick, and be gone” when they offer an opinion. Yet we often don’t really understand another’s experience until we allow it to touch us. After his 360-degree feedback session, Tom now makes an effort to get to know coworkers who are different from him. By asking questions and really listening to their experiences, he tries to put himself in their shoes. This meant letting go of an unhelpful habit of explaining to people why his perspective is right and, by implication, theirs is wrong. “It’s sometimes uncomfortable to just listen,” he reflected, “but that really helps me to understand what it’s like for people who are different from me.”
Putting personal advantage to collective good use. Use your advantages to challenge the system, because you’re more likely to be heard and not to have your suggestions dismissed. Nick, another CEO, has initiated a system of reverse mentoring in his organization. Senior leaders are invited to choose a less senior employee of a different sex or ethnic background from themselves as a mentor. The mentors help leaders to understand what’s really going on from a very different perspective, through the invitation to speak truth to power. “It’s a win/win,” Nick says. “Executives have found it eye-opening, and the mentors have raised their profiles for career advancement.”
To address inequality of opportunity, we need to acknowledge and address the systemic advantages and disadvantages that people experience daily. For leaders, recognizing their advantage blindness can help to reduce the impact of bias and create a more level playing field for everyone. Being advantaged through race and gender come with a responsibility to do something about changing a system that unfairly disadvantages others.
from HBR.org https://ift.tt/2GNfh5H
