Changing the Conversation about Inclusion
Joan Buccigrossi, Director of Inclusion and Engagement, Rockwell Automation
I often ask people and organizations to pause and consider: what have you been doing up until now to create an inclusive organization? What part do you like and want to keep, and what really doesn’t work? Sometimes we want to jump to the metrics and say, “We don't have enough "fill-in-the-blank." We don't have enough women. We don't retain enough people of color. Because what we’re measuring is how many we have, our immediate response is either we have enough or we don’t have enough.
What I’ve been able to do is slow that conversation down. If we don’t have the level of representation we would expect in a part of the organization, we ask questions such as: What are the root causes? Why don’t we have that representation? Or if we’re effective at bringing people in, why aren’t we keeping them? The conversation shifts to the experiences of people within the organization, not just as a new recruit but over time. We start to understand why women exit the organization or what it means to not see other people of color at the top of the organization.
Understanding the experience of difference
For example, a lot of women have the experience of saying something in a meeting and nothing happens. Then "Joe" says it and everybody thinks it’s a great idea. I’ve come out of a meeting and turned to a white male colleague and said, “When I made that suggestion nothing happened, but when Joe said it, it suddenly got acted on.” For many of us the response has been, “That didn’t really happen; you’re being too sensitive.” Or, “I heard Joe say it differently.” Or, “I’ll take care of it—I’ll solve the problem for you.”
Because we have a better understanding, the response—for me—is now, “Oh, gosh, you’re right. Now that you point it out, I see it. I wish I’d seen it in the moment because I would have liked to have said something. I’m willing to take my cue from you, let me know if there’s something you want me to do now. Or how you’d like me to partner with you to help make that better in the future."
When your awareness is raised you can never go back to being uninformed again. So when in partnership, white men and I explore some of these topics and talk about what it is like to be white and what it is like to be a woman in this organization, there is an opportunity for so much more depth to our partnership, to our conversation, and to our ability to work together and be good leaders.
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One of the reasons I have attended the White Men and Allies Lab four times, is because I come with a team I’m supporting and we continue our partnership after leaving the Lab. We meet together to talk about our learnings and about our action plans, about how we are doing on them and where we need help. I want to know how I can be a resource. It creates a learning community.
