I read an informative article published by Harvard Business Review that explored reasons why employees might resist making the changes needed to move forward on achieving organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals, including anti-racism. In To Overcome Resistance to DEI, Understand What’s Driving It by Eric Shuman, Eric Knowles, and Amit Goldenberg, discussed how psychology can help to explain employees’ resistance due to three types of threats they feel which are: status threat, merit threat, and moral threat. 

Employees from privileged communities experience status threat if they understand DEI initiatives as threatening their status within the workplace. The authors explained that these persons viewed DEI as a “zero-sum” gain, where they can lose status such as pay, job, promotions, etc. when persons from equity-deserving groups access these resources. Other employees may experience merit threat when they feel that by acknowledging the existence of systemic inequities, then they must also accept the fact that they advance in their careers and workplaces because of their privilege and not as a result of their efforts. The third threat is moral threat and this occurs when workers who consider themselves progressive feel that their identities as being supportive of DEI are threatened because they benefit from their racial, level of ability, sexual, gender, and other privileges.

The authors discussed how staff can be defensive and thus resist the changes by defending the current system, denying the existence of inequity, or distancing themselves from inequities. The authors suggested ways to overcome these barriers including changing the perception that DEI is a zero-sum game and using self-affirmation by creating space for persons to consider their values and beliefs and how these connect to the goals of DEI. Doing so allows persons to move away from defensiveness and be willing to engage in the deeper problems and solutions required to create equitable and anti-racist workplaces. To address distancing, the authors said self-affirmation can be used by connecting DEI efforts to shared values and not simply regarding DEI as a moral or legal obligation.

The authors' discussion of threats and resistance to DEI programs is very informative. I know from my many years of facilitating equity and anti-racist training and processes that some individuals want to shut out what they are learning. I prefer for them to share what they are thinking and feeling so I can help them unpack their emotions and responses, but that doesn’t always happen. I recall a training a few years ago where folks were not interested in discussing safety and equity issues affecting their community. Although the community experienced many issues, they felt we were outsiders telling them what to do, which was understandable because many of us from equity-deserving groups are patronized and our knowledge, expertise, and solutions are ignored. After almost an hour of resistance, I simply said “I understand you are not finding this information helpful, so we are going to leave.” We ended the session and I and two staff members went home. 

Considering the insights from this article, we started most training sessions by barraging people with statistics explaining how horrible the issues were in the city as a way to convince people to work together to address the issue. Perhaps, we could have used psychology to approach the topic and allowed people to connect with DEI and anti-racism personally by affirming their values and beliefs and reframing equity not as a zero-sum game where if someone wins then everyone else loses but as an opportunity for everyone to win. As facilitators, we could encourage persons to connect with gender equity at a personal and community level and explore opportunities to create fair and just outcomes. Leading a process of redefining power from the concept of hierarchy that only benefits privileged groups to understanding power as collective empowerment and shared responsibility would have been a much more useful approach that would allow persons to do the difficult work, but perhaps feel more supported to do so. Unpacking power and privilege is difficult, but a necessary part of DEI work.

Are you experiencing these challenges in your workplace DEI efforts? Will a psychological approach be more effective than a statistical one? Please share your feedback with me.

Thank you for reading this blog. And please subscribe to our revamped DEI @ Work Newsletter for more insights and tips on creating equitable and just workplaces. 

Michelle

Your Workplace DEI Consultant

michelle@mvdconsulting.ca