Managing Diversity Stifles Collaboration

The foundation of Managing Diversity activity came largely from the imperative to counter discrimination and mistreatment based on identity differences like race and gender. In the United States, this is backed by the force of law: legal mandates set the stage for traditional diversity activity. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination by employers covered under the law on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It also prohibits discrimination against anyone because of his or her association with another individual of a particular race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. An employer cannot discriminate against someone because of an interracial marriage, for instance.

But this legal legacy has begun to undermine the aspirational goals of diversity work—to support people of many different perspectives and backgrounds in working and living together in generative ways. The intent to abide by the law to reduce the risk of legal liability has had the unintended effect of encouraging people to reduce risk in their relationships with people who are different, especially those from legally protected classes. This manifests itself in many ways: not talking with others about controversial topics, not providing constructive feedback, and simply not interacting in any way. Productivity and innovation suffer severely in a culture of caution.

In discussing a discrimination lawsuit against his professional services firm, one corporate lawyer commented that the firm wasn’t being sued because someone had said something inappropriate. Of course, that does happen and must be dealt with. But, he said, they were being sued because no one said anything. His point was that the norm of carefulness that encouraged managers not to engage with members of the group that had filed the lawsuit had left those individuals out of the loop in critical discussions, limited their access to necessary feedback, and left them with increasingly impoverished work relationships that made it impossible for them to be successful. They felt that their only reasonable options were to leave the company or to file a lawsuit.

Managing Diversity approaches have inadvertently left leaders, managers, and their organizations in the difficult position of needing to create change while not being able to talk openly about how to do so.