Lead toward Workplace Inclusion #diversity #leadership

In the workplace, employees are exposed unfairly to privilege in leadership, micro-inequities in employee treatment, institutionalized prejudice, and sometimes, overt discrimination. Heightened awareness by leaders can drive them to bring about a more inclusive workplace.

Inclusion and equality are extremely important to LGBTQ+ since they as a group do not have all the same protections under the law as do heterosexual, cisgender employees. Thus, LGBTQ+ employees may be impacted by those privileged employees and employers who may not know that LGBTQ+ are not provided equal treatment protections. Though privilege does not equate to bullying behavior and entitlement, this article will address these inequities and micro-inequities in Part 1 Privilege, and Part 2 Discrimination.

 

Part 1: Privilege

New employees may walk into an unfamiliar organizational culture and break implicit rules that are not written down but are enforced by leadership and followed by workers.  Newcomers may break a rule without even knowing that the rule exists because the rules are only spoken and dictated by those in power.  A most obvious example of privilege is when bosses don’t like the rules and change them to suit their own needs.  Bosses state this emphatically as “it’s my way or the highway!”  Not only do they have the privilege to change the rules, but they have the power to change them at will and whim.  This can lead to a confused organizational culture, causing employees to feel vulnerable and unsafe.

Institutionalized norms are so ingrained that we may think that new members’ are freaks or outcasts because they don’t wear team colors or company emblems on Fridays. Yet, they may come from other cultural norms in which Fridays are a sacred day and to lighten the mood with costume for sports or spirit is sacrilege. In other cases, levity in the office violates professional decorum.  In more decreed norms such as religion rites, these unspoken rules of conduct can cause a person to become ostracized.   Once in a suburb of Atlanta, a Catholic boss dismissed her mostly Catholic team on Good Friday, but made her Protestant employee stay at work and answer the phones in order to pretend that the office was open. The boss had assumed that Protestants don't hold Good Friday sacred.  Not only was the boss’s intent assumptive, but the impact on the employee was offensive.  The matter became one where a diversity and inclusion lesson ensued.

 In another example, white is the color for a funeral and grief in China but the color for a funeral in Western culture is black.  Red is a taboo at funerals in both cultures. Where do these rules come from?  Who wrote these rules and why do they stand as monuments to times past?

“In 1973 Mary Rowe while working for the President and Chancellor at MIT, coined the notion of micro-inequities, which she defined as “apparently small events which are often ephemeral and hard-to-prove, events which are covert, often unintentional, frequently unrecognized by the perpetrator, which occur wherever people are perceived to be ‘different.’ Rowe noted that micro-inequities often had serious cumulative, harmful effects, resulting in hostile work environments and continued minority discrimination in public and private workplaces and organizations.

What makes micro-inequities particularly problematic is that they consist in micro-messages that are hard to recognize for victims, bystanders and perpetrators alike. When victims of micro-inequities do recognize the micro-messages, Rowe argues, it is exceedingly hard to explain to others why these small behaviors can be a huge problem.”  < https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265450386_Micro-affirmations_Micro-inequities>

Such cultural and personal micro biases are ingrained at such an early age that many are blind to these biases as they engage in day-to-day activities.  At work, this can manifest as we have always done it that way.

 By raising awareness of a person’s own biases, employees and managers can train themselves to take a moment of pause and look inward before making a flash judgement about a situation or person.  This takes consistency of practice and continuation of reflection. It is an ongoing process of self-checks and heighted self-awareness.

Part 2: Discrimination

Universities can bastions of institutionalized discrimination. Often times these biases are labeled and dismissed as school traditions, the Ivy League Way, the SEC mentality, Frat Row antics, Mean Girls, or boys just being boys sharing locker room talk.  In reality, these are examples of institutionalized discrimination; these behaviors oftentimes are violations of school policies, workplace policies, and even federal civil rights laws.  Oftentimes, people inside the institutions don’t realize that they are participating in institutionalized biases. We call this the “bubble effect.”  Those inside the bubble don’t realize that they are functioning inside an isolated space of controlled norms of behavior and are restricted to the point of view of the institutionalized behaviors of conduct.  However, a visitor to the institution or organizational climate assessor easily can notice behaviors that are unique to that institution and may be deemed as a contribution to a toxic culture.

Sometimes people of privilege will pretend to embrace diversity and bespeak of embracing LGBTQ+ on an inclusive level, but at the first sign of a work disagreement, the privileged person will use the gay peoples’ differences against them: “She’s just an angry lesbian…why doesn’t she wear heels like the rest of the administrative team?  She needs to conform.” Then attacks can escalate. Workplace bullies will single out someone that they are competitive with or want to gain power over by attacking a primary trait of a person that cannot be changed. For example, “Well, you know he’s gay by the way he talks with his hands; he must be weak.’’  These non-sequiturs are no more than sabotage. Workplace bullies use these logical fallacies for their own surge in power and authority. When workplace leaders and policy makers allow these micro biases to flourish and become accepted as the truth, the subjects of these attacks suffer. Therefore, they do not perform at peak performance.   Employers will then become a participant in the gossip and start to believe it.  Such employers may find themselves as perpetuators of discrimination, in legal terms.    As recently as 2019, a young, millennial LGBTQ+ left his government-sponsored position because his boss kept telling him, ‘You know you can change your sexual orientation if you just turn your life over to God.”   The boss’s choice to perpetuate discrimination by repeatedly trying to change the young man’s core sexual orientation led to a violation of the separation of church and state and the boss was reprimanded by Human Resources. 

Other times, the workplace bully will become a sniper or saboteur by starting a lie as a rumor, no matter that the rumor was not validated. One boss who vocally purported to be an LGBTQ+ ally decided to attack someone she didn’t like. She was demonstrating her heterosexual privilege. She said with a scandalous tone in her voice, “I heard that he was on a gay dating site; if substantiated, I would fire him on the spot! He’s not committed to work.” Again, the boss sets up another non sequitur for her own personal gain showing flagrant display of privilege and power.

Some attacks on victims are outrageous.  I have even heard first-hand when a boss criticized a colleague saying that “the only reason that the employee was upset by the boss cursing her was because she was sexually molested as a child. A few harsh words would not be a big deal to her had she not been sexually assaulted.”  This type of slander exists in places where institutionalized discrimination is rampant.  It also creates a toxic culture.  These are ways that privileged person uses malicious sabotage to gain authority or power over a competitor at work who happens to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community, or other minority.  I say, “Gossip is the unassuming little mouse that chews the rope that sends the chandelier crashing to the table.”  The damage is not realized until it hits people in the face at the most inopportune times.  At that point, the destruction has been done.  The workplace is hostile; people file complaints. -Or people leave the organization, taking their expertise and job experience with them.   In these cases the workplace and leader bear the reputation of being perpetuators of discrimination.

Cheerleaders kneel during the National Anthem during a university football game to bow in protest to racial injustice-- Is this an act of disrespectful defiance to the status quo of privilege or is it an example of humility asking for equal rights and acceptance for people of color?  The answer lies in one’s ability to walk a mile in another person’s shoes, to see outside of himself/herself, and to take a moment of pause to ask, “What micro biases am I imposing onto the subjects of my criticism?” 

Effective leaders should not allow their organization’s rigid belief systems and dictatorial policies to cause catastrophic change or allow rebellion to destroy the organizational culture.   Instead, effective leaders should constantly be mending the foundation of the organization and making pathways malleable and welcoming for all who enter. Diversity of employees, diversity thinking, and an inclusive culture can bring about organizational harmony to become a model organization in the global marketplace.

    

Part III Heterosexual Privilege

In face-to-face diversity and inclusion classes, we start the training day with easy topics around awareness and work our way             to the more sensitive topics in the afternoon after trust has been built among class members and their facilitators.

Part III will address one of the more sensitive topics, heterosexual privilege.   It is sensitive because most of the people in a corporate diversity class self-identify as heterosexual, but don’t self-identify as having privilege because of it.            Privilege is defined as a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. (wikionary.org)

In the case of heterosexual privilege, we will address the immunity granted or available by being a member of the heterosexual identity. A heterosexual may not realize that the immunity exists because he/she grew up by being a member of this affinity group.

Here is a checklist of questions that may indicate privileges that heterosexuals have that members of the LGBTQ+ orientation group do not have.   Please participate and answer yes or no to each question.

Was the Supreme Court required to make a decision on whether you had the right to marry?

Did the Supreme Court have to decide that the person you loved had the right to be your spouse?

Does the Supreme Court or State Courts have to decide whether or not you and your loved one have the right to become parents?

Were you ever afraid to place a photo of the person you loved on your workplace desk?

Were you ever held accountable under law to be fired by vocally identifying yourself as heterosexual?

Did you ever fear being fired for bringing your love interest partner to workplace functions, parties, or reception?

Were you ever not invited or disinvited to a workplace or religious function for being heterosexual?

Were you ever shunned or excommunicated for declaring to your religious body that you are heterosexual?

Did your family ever threaten to disown you for declaring your heterosexuality to them?

Were you ever an object of ridicule, shunning or bullying during your school years because you self-identified as heterosexual?

 Were you ever refused for your heterosexuality for wanting to buy a cake because you self-identify as heterosexual?

Were you ever denied access to visit a loved one suffering or dying in a hospital because you are heterosexual, and therefore, not considered family?

Historically, heterosexuals have experienced some of the above when the heterosexuals were involved in an interracial relationships, interfaith relationships, and sometimes even in intergenerational relationships.  As society pushed for the laws to catch up with social acceptance and norms, laws were enacted to provide equality and equity in the aforementioned areas.

Yet, the above questions indicate just of the few areas that LGBTQ+ experience inequity in work, life, and existence in the USA.   Heterosexuals, being in the majority, don’t often have to justify their intimate, loving relationships or have to keep these relationships secret for fear of losing their jobs, loved ones, their families, or even their roles in society.  

Those heterosexuals who identify as allies and support equal rights for LBGTQ+ are valued and appreciated.  By the majority population accepting and supporting a minority population, the minority population becomes more accepted as a normal difference in the population at large.  Those heterosexual allies who speak out and support LGBTQ+ members of their families, congregations, and workplaces help support  safer and more inclusive lives for members of the LGBTQ+ communities.