Resistance to Diversity Is Alive and Well

In addition to the challenges of finding and retaining diverse employees, leaders seeking to promote diversity continue to face fierce resistance. The first line of resistance comes from those who feel the greatest threat of losing the comfort and status they experience with the existing workforce structure. In the U.S. context, this typically means whites, males, heterosexuals, U.S. citizens, or any combination of those. The labels may be different in other countries, but the key characteristic is that these people belong to mainstream or dominant groups. Resistance may take the form of hostile and aggressive behavior or it may take more subtle forms, such as refusal to engage with or active ostracism of “different” colleagues.

At an institutional level, resistance manifests itself in discriminatory behavior in which dominant group members implement and support practices that disadvantage diverse colleagues. At one of the regional field offices of PWM Group, it was common practice to limit the territories of junior associates. On average, men in the organization had longer tenure than women—the company had only recently made concerted efforts to bring women into the sales force, which explains why women had shorter tenures. As a result, women had less desirable territories than their male counterparts and were unable to move product as effectively as the men. As a result, they received less favorable evaluations, and some were eventually dismissed for poor performance.

No one in management intended to create a disadvantage for the women—not only would that have been illegal, it would clearly not have been in the company’s best interest. In speaking with the sales and marketing executives, I found them genuinely surprised, concerned, and trying to understand what had created the situation. They ultimately decided to change the territory allocation process, though some performance differences between men and women persisted.

This example captures the subtle impact of institutional resistance. Practices that were developed and implemented without any intentional bias continue to be effective for a time. Then the workforce becomes more diverse, and those procedures are disadvantageous for people who are different. But it is difficult to change them, in part because they are so common that it’s hard to identify them as the source of the problem. In the same way that we rarely analyze the act of breathing, employees rarely question the viability of such practices: “It’s just how we do things.” Moreover, employees from the dominant majority, who are accustomed to successfully using these practices, bristle at the accusation that they are flawed.

Resistance can take unexpected forms. Sometimes people who are different react negatively to diversity initiatives. They may feel “spotlighted” and experience undue performance pressure as a result, which can increase stress and actually reduce performance. Rather than confront such challenges, people who are different may resist being associated with anything related to their identity group, or to diversity as a whole.

One of the enduring observations shared by people who aren’t part of the majority is that sometimes individuals from their own minority group are their harshest workplace critics. One example is the so-called “Queen Bee Syndrome,” in which established female managers in predominantly male organizations fail to support junior female colleagues. When people who are different undermine one another, they provide further justification for those who resist greater diversity. The heterosexual manager who encounters a gay colleague criticizing another gay employee may feel less dissonance in then criticizing or stereotyping gay employees as a group. This can quickly turn into overt or subtle discrimination that prevents talented gay colleagues from succeeding in the organization.