4 Reasons why YOUR learning is the foundation to DEI.

Mar 2

You’re busy, I know this.

We all are.

Sometimes we can get so focused on the job we forget why we’re doing it in the first place, or who we’re doing it for. A lot like DEI work actually. We get so eager to leap into action and do the work, we forget to check in with ourselves to ask why is it important, and who is it important to?

So right now, lets take a moment to lift our minds from the treadmill that is “business as usual” and check in with our understanding. Because if you don’t take the time to pay attention now, you may as well save your energy and money on that “one size fits all” DEI package you almost signed off, and go do something else.

Here’s 4 reasons why your learning is the foundation of DEI work.

1. You cannot possibly know everything already.

This might feel like a bit of a no-brainer, but often it’s the simple things that bear repeating. Allyship is a journey, not a destination. The work of DEI is never done. All we can do is learn to pay attention to what is going on with the people around us, and more widely in the world. Even those of us who are immersed in the world of DEI know that we still know very little of all the things there are to know. Curiosity and listening are fundamental skills for inclusive leaders and allies alike, allowing us to embrace that which we don’t understand and move towards a place where we start to understand a little better.

Expand your frame of reference with these great books:

White Women by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao – for white women who would like to understand more about their own racism (don’t be shocked, we all are – myself included).

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez – for men (and people of all genders) to learn how the world is created with a “male default” and ways we can all start to challenge the status quo.

2. DEI is more than a compliance-based pursuit.

Keeping an updated CPD log is a requirement of most professional qualifications, so I know this isn’t a new concept for a lot of you. But our growth and capability as effective allies must involve something deeper than that. That’s not to say you can’t rack up CPD hours along the way, but our motivations to be allies and accomplices will likely be driving us from somewhere beyond a simple compliance-based approach to learning. We want to contribute. We want to disrupt. We aren’t here for anything that is a tick box exercise. We want to add value to the conversations we have and make a difference to the outcomes that we’re accountable for. We want to know when to step up and make our voices heard, when to step aside and elevate the voice of someone else, and when to step back because our voice is not required at all. We can’t do this from a checklist. We have to do the work and know from within ourselves.

Challenge your thinking by listening to new perspectives.

Whether that means getting your news from a different source (The BBC world service or Al Jazeera), exploring new ideas from different people such as TEDx talks or the HBR IdeaCast, or simply taking time to talk to someone you haven’t to before. Or, if you really want to do some deep work of unlearning, you can join me on a Masters of Equality course! The choice is yours.

3. What motivates you will be different to what motivates your company.

The reason I say personal learning is the foundation to DEI is because we all have our own part to play in how cultures are created within our organisations. And if we aren’t clear about our own motivations and level of understanding, how can we even begin to start creating a strategy for our businesses?!

This is why I now tend to raise an eyebrow when I’m asked to provide a quote to deliver a one-off project that focuses solely on an operational outcome, rather than a strategic approach to long-term sustainable inclusion. Because a lot of the time we don’t take DEI as seriously as we would any other business matter. Would you ask your finance team to implement a new processing system without having done any work to understand what the challenge was you were facing, or if you even needed one in the first place? Or give your sales team the thumbs up to launch a brand-new product without doing any research to find out what your customers needed, and in what quantity. DEI is no different. With the added exception there is usually not an exec with expertise in the field already in the room to advice either.

So, because we are all people arriving to the conversation with our own individual thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, if we are not committed to doing our own personal learning on what is motivating us (as individuals and as a collective) we’ll only ever be able to roll out operational actions that are surface level at best – and usually see a poor return on any investment, and very little change for the people they are designed to engage.

Ask yourself the following:

What are my personal motivations for wanting to be an ally?
How does this align with the approach my business is taking?
What would I like to see done differently?
What could I learn that would help us achieve that?

4. Language, terminology, and understanding is ever evolving.

DEI work is not new. In her book DEI Deconstructed, author Lily Zheng shares the example of some early DEI efforts undertaken by the US Military in the wake of the civil rights movements of the 1960’s. She explains how the approach of well-intentioned academics to roll out “racial sensitivity training” actually had an opposite and negative impact on the relationships between the newly integrated service personnel at the time. Now it could have been quite possible for this catastrophic learning experience to be used as a basis of improving their approach to achieve a better outcome. Except it wasn’t.

What happened instead was this programme, and variations of it, became the blueprint for all business DEI efforts throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s too.

By not centring to the very people we are serving in our work, we can easily find ourselves straying down the path of least resistance for us as a dominant group, or clinging onto an idea that ultimately serves no-one and even causes harm. Personal learning as the foundation to this work ensures that you know who needs to be in the room when decisions are made. And if you’re in the room, and they aren’t, as an ally you know what you need to do about it. Step up and make it known, and step aside and make space for the voice that is needed.

As we saw with the US Military, if we think the work is done and we stop paying attention, we may still be doing the same problematic work decades later. And that helps no-one.

Remember:

We already know that we don’t and can’t know everything. In fact, the only thing we can know with 100% certainty is what it’s like to be us. Everything else… is learning.
Learning is about more than gathering qualifications and DEI is about more than remaining compliant. Both are about adding value.
We’re all individuals and we’re all motivated differently. Our personal learning will help us better know how this drives us, keep us engaged in the work, and help prevent us from staying on the surface. You’ll need this when the time comes to communicate your strategy, otherwise you’ll have lost before you’ve even started!
Listening to, and learning from others, and paying attention to what they need will always help us show up more meaningfully and genuinely. We don’t have to repeat the same old mistakes that have been made before, or not challenge something simply because someone said it was best practice. We also don’t have to guess. We simply have to ask. Listen. And learn.

Katie Allen