Anima Blog

Challenging Institutional Discrimination at Work

Racial discrimination is the act of treating someone differently because of their racial identity.

At work, this might look like a pattern of unequal pay or rate of promotion between white and racialized staff. Or it might be more subtle, like a manager assuming an employee is less competent because of their accent. Whether you’re working to develop an organizational diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategy or you want to be part of creating a workplace where everyone matters and belongs, here are 9 things you can do to challenge institutional racial discrimination in your organization.

1. Let Go of Perfectionism

Letting go of perfectionism is also about letting go of shame. Perfectionism tells us that “if you make a mistake, you are a mistake,” and eventually we forget that making mistakes is a natural part of learning and growth — even with topics as highly charged as discrimination.

A fear of getting things wrong can stop equity, diversity and inclusion work before it even beings. We need to remember that learning is a process, so it’s important to manage your expectations and commit to playing the long-game.

Don’t be ashamed to say “I don’t know,” or to acknowledge mistakes as they happen. Perfectionism has never been the goal of DEI work. Instead, the goal is to create environments where people feel more valued, more welcomed, more comfortable and more safe. And when you let go of perfectionism you give yourself—and your team—permission to show up as themselves.

2. Measure Outcomes and Collect Data

What kind of change is your organization looking for? In order to reach success you’ll need to clearly define what success looks like and collect data to track your progress.

When you first collect DEI data, it will help you identify areas where your organization can improve. And over time, data becomes a useful tool to check organizational progress and understand how your DEI efforts are impacting your organization.

Need to collect some data? At Anima, we offer DEI surveys, measurement tools and social inclusion audits that can help your organization get the data you need to get clear on DEI goals.

3. Equip Leaders and Staff with DEI Resources

4. Learn to Recognize and Challenge Patterns of Bias

A valuable skill in DEI work is learning how to recognize and challenge patterns of discrimination in the office. Sometimes discrimination is obvious, like when a manager uses a clearly offensive term. And sometimes discrimination is less obvious, like a pattern of racialized colleagues being interrupted in meetings.

Developing equity literacy means having the awareness to notice when a pattern of discriminatory behaviour becomes an unseen norm within the company. This means being aware of identity bias in formal (i.e. hiring, promotion, performance reviews) and informal (i.e. meetings, social events, inter-office communication) practices.

This also means letting staff know that they’ll be rewarded—rather than punished—for speaking up when they notice these patterns. This can help all members of your team better advocate for internal change!

5. Be Curious About Urgency

Racism and other forms of systemic discrimination are urgent issues. But when we try to solve any problem from a place of urgency, we tend to be less effective in our work.

Urgency asks us to rush into action without fully understanding the problem. Instead, we invite you to get curious about urgency: are you more focused on doing something, or doing the right thing?

Moving with awareness and deliberation instead of urgency allows you to be more effective, by making space for DEI work that’s focused less on a quick fix and more on lasting change.

6. Sweat the Small Stuff

7. Build Trust

Your own organizational culture is one of the biggest factors that will determine the success of your DEI efforts. It’s important to create an environment where everyone feels they can share openly and honestly, because they trust that feedback is not only respected—but valued.

Employees won’t be honest about their experiences with discrimination if they feel they won’t be heard or believed—or worse, that they will face retaliation. And staff may not speak up at all if they doubt they’ll see meaningful change.

Even the most equitable policies can’t replace the practice of building relationships, managing emotions and nurturing an environment of psychological safety.

8. Prepare for Your Organization’s Status Quo to Change

When you really commit to DEI work and begin taking meaningful steps towards challenging institutional discrimination, you’ll begin to see change in your organization’s status quo.

We know that change is uncomfortable, especially when it may lead to people questioning company norms and suggesting new policies and practices that challenge tradition. Give yourself permission to feel uncertain, but don’t let discomfort and defensiveness get in the way of your organization’s progress. Remember that things need to be unsettled to make room for change.

This is why it’s so important to do the emotional work of building trust, safety and awareness into your company culture. Developing these core personal and inter-personal foundations will make sure you’re prepared to guide your team through the process of change, even if things get rocky.

9. Advocate for Change

Now What?

With new strategies for challenging racial discrimination across your organization, you’re ready to take action. Remember that creating a more equitable and inclusive workplace is an ongoing and collective process and we all need to do our part.

So whether it’s a course, a DEI audit or more free resources, now’s the time to take the next steps towards creating meaningful change in your organization and beyond.

Terms like “white guilt”, “white tears”, and “white fragility”—once the language of academics and activists—have been making their way into the mainstream as whiteness is being named in a way that it hasn’t before…and leaders are expected to address it.

But beneath all of this talk about whiteness is an important question that often goes unasked and unanswered – WTF is whiteness anyway?

Whiteness Defined

But whiteness is not an insidious evil lurking in the shadows of our culture. Instead, whiteness is better understood as a cultural pattern of behaviour, a specific way of seeing the world, learned preferences and a very specific idea of what it means to be “normal” at work and beyond.

The lead educator of our course Decoding Race for White Leaders, Dr. Emma Lind, remembers the moment she first began to question and understand what it means to “white”. After inviting her partner to have dinner with her family, they said, “…you know, Emma. We think we’re both white. But having met your family, I know you’re whiter than white. You’re a kind of cartoonish white. I may have white skin, but you’re really, really white.”

She was shocked by the idea that not only did different types of white people exist. And they existed in a hierarchy? That somehow, made her whiter? What does that mean?

“For years, I had never questioned my own racial identity. I certainly didn’t think racism had anything to do with me, other than I accepted that white privilege was a part of my life.”

Dr. Emma Lind

For white folks, the pressures of whiteness may not weigh heavy on their minds because it doesn’t feel like pressure – it feels like normalcy. But if we take for granted that culturally or racially specific practices are neutral, we might also take for granted that we are neutral.

When you get used to thinking about yourself as without ethnicity (as so many are taught in colour-blind discourse), it becomes easy to think that conversations about race and ethnicity are always for other people. But understanding whiteness can help us understand that each of us, regardless of our race, have our experiences shaped by our racial identities.

In the early 1900s, many immigrants from Europe were not considered “white”. Irish, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and others from Europe faced high levels of racism and discrimination in Canada. In this, they weren’t alone; this was the era of residential schools, the Chinese head tax, and the banning of Black servicemen in the Canadian military. However, over the course of the twentieth century, many European immigrant groups began to be perceived of as white.

Our modern understanding of who and what qualifies as white, is a creation of society that was literally shaped by history. 

In the early 1900s, many immigrants from Europe were not considered “white”. Irish, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and others from Europe faced high levels of racism and discrimination in Canada. In this, they weren’t alone; this was the era of residential schools, the Chinese head tax, and the banning of Black servicemen in the Canadian military. However, over the course of the twentieth century, many European immigrant groups began to be perceived of as white.

This wasn’t accidental.

Many groups we now consider “white” found this status by actively assimilating into dominant traditions. Today, it is not unusual for someone of Irish, Portuguese or Italian heritage to be considered white in Canada. Stories abound in families and immigrant records: Boychuks who became Boyds, parents insisting English was the only language to be spoken in the house, conversions to Protestant denominations, and everything from cooking practices to décor that were changed to appear more “Canadian” (read: English or white).

The social and political reward for these behaviours was to pass as white – to experience less racism, to have greater economic opportunities, and to live more successfully in Canada. 

Whiteness as Identity

Now What?

As our social, political and professional landscapes continue shifting towards an equitable lens, it’s important to have the tools and knowledge needed to understand our place in the world—and that includes whiteness. 

Naming whiteness means challenging the particular cultural patterns we understand as “normal”, many of which make people of colour feel as though they do not belong. 

Understanding whiteness helps us to recognize that it is not neutral, but instead, is just as ethnic and cultural as any other non-white ethnic or cultural group. And when we recognize this, we can step into the work of challenging the inequality these patterns perpetuate in life, at work, and beyond.

Decoding Race for White Leaders

As a white leader*, move past discomfort into racial literacy and active ally-ship to promote strong relationships and cultures of belonging. In this course you’ll look at whitness as a system of power while investigating your own racial identity with the attendant unspoken assumptions and behaviours brought into the workplace.
*This course is focused on white leaders but is open to leaders of all identities.

Learn More

Giving and receiving feedback is an essential skill for all managers. By making space to listen and learn from employees, companies can avoid being blindsided by instances of discrimination or misconduct. But when feedback is done wrong (or not done at all), it can create serious problems down the road.

Here are 8 tips to help you give and receive feedback with clarity and care so you can leverage this powerful tool for self-development, career advancement and organizational growth.

Giving Feedback

1. Don’t wait or withhold

Give feedback that’s frequent and timely so that issues are addressed as they come up. When you are sharing feedback, make sure to engage all employees in the feedback process so they can benefit from your comments.

2. Set the tone and set the time

Getting feedback can feel scary and disorienting, so as a leader it’s important to create an environment where employees feel safe and comfortable. Because of implicit bias, minoritized employees especially tend to be given feedback in ways that feel demoralizing, which can make it more difficult for feedback to be heard and processed in a meaningful way.

Foster a sense of psychological safety by taking the time to privately pull folks aside before offering commentary on their work. Avoid giving unexpected feedback in front of colleagues in a tone that feels condescending or in ways that call into question an employee’s skills and knowledge. Make it clear that the goal of the conversation is support, not criticize them and be sure to embody that intention in your words and actions.

3. Keep things balanced

Feedback doesn’t always have to be negative. Remember that receiving feedback can already be a difficult experience, so you’ll want to avoid offering a laundry list of missteps that make an employee feel like they’re being devalued or micromanaged.

Avoid focusing solely on an employee’s weaknesses while minimizing their strengths and successes. Address what needs to be improved while also creating space to celebrate what they’ve done well and how they’ve contributed positively to the team.

4. Be clear and constructive

Feedback is most effective when it’s clear and concise. When possible, use concrete examples to support your evaluation of their work. Avoid saying things like, “this presentation could have been better” and instead, offer more clear advice like, “I would have loved to see you spend more time on slide 9 with the client.”

Before you have the conversation, take time on your own to think through what you’d like to say. Identify areas of strength or development then brainstorm concrete examples you can use to support your message.

Receiving Feedback

To close the positional power gap, it’s important that managers ASK to receive feedback from their employees and intentionally create a space where employees feel safe commenting on your work.

6. Practice self-awareness

Receiving feedback is hard and in the moment you may begin to feel tense, defensive or upset at what you’re hearing. Tuning into your thoughts and feelings will allow you to keep your emotions in check so you can stay open to the important feedback you’re receiving.

Notice your breathing and be intentional about taking deep slow breaths to create a sense of safety in your body. Notice if your body feels tense and do your best to ground yourself by feeling your feet on the floor. Notice any self-judgment that’s coming up and offer yourself self-compassion.

Don’t worry too much about naming your feelings if you can’t immediately identify them, just do your best to stay present while observing these sensations in your body and mind. You’ve got this!

7. Listen deeply

As you listen to your body you may want to begin defending, correcting, educating or comparing to draw attention away from criticism or push back against feedback that feels unfair. But retaliating erodes trust and psychological safety in the feedback process.

As a leader, you set the emotional tone for your team and it’s important that you create a sense of safety so folks feel comfortable coming back with necessary feedback down the line. Resist the urge to interject and instead focus on listening with your whole body and tempering the desire to dominate or derail the conversation. Instead, do your best to listen for feelings beneath the words you’re hearing so you can better understand and validate the speaker’s perspective—this will help them walk away feeling seen and understood.

8. Know your position

Be aware of your positional power and how it feeds into the dynamics of the conversation. Even those with strong awareness can be momentarily swept up in the misuse of power. Positional power can decrease our empathy by making us feel more entitled to assert our perspective and opinions without regard for those “below” us.

Before entering the conversation, consciously step into a mindset of empathy, compassion, generosity and allyship. Get comfortable with the idea of acknowledging how your social identity and privilege may affect your relationships at work with minoritized staff and take the experiences of your employees seriously.

End any feedback conversation by thanking them for their feedback and taking time to process and internalize what was shared.

Now What?

By learning effective ways to give and receive feedback at work, you put yourself and your employees in a better position to co-create an environment of safety, equity, inclusion and belonging that benefits each individual within the wider organization.

For more on how you can become a better manager and develop skills to transform your workplace into a more equitable environment, join our course Authentic Management: Leading Diverse, High Performance Teams.

Authentic Management – Leading Diverse, High Performance Teams

Dive into management essentials critical to nurturing diverse, high-performing teams including psychological safety, performance feedback, power awareness, time-management as well as general smart practices for leaders.

Register

In this webinar we’ll explore four common traps that trip up leaders in their EDI work and how to overcome them. 

Leaders often, and unknowingly, jeopardize their organization’s EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) efforts, wasting time and effort as well as the most critical resource: employee morale. This results in negative impacts on both racial marginalized and white people.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In this webinar we’ll explore four common traps that trip up leaders in their EDI work and how to overcome them. Here’s a hint: data is key. Measurement efforts like EDI assessments can help your organization identify what’s going well and where you’re falling short, especially in relationship to barriers faced by minoritized groups.

You can learn more about the Deep Diversity® Audit tools mentioned in this episode here.

Join us as we explore 15 leadership lessons learned from 15 years in the JEDI world with Annahid Dashtgard, CEO and co-founder of Anima Leadership. 

2022 marks Anima Leadership’s 15th anniversary, a decade and a half of taking a compassionate approach to racial justice with thousands of participants from organizations from around the world.

To pre-order Annahid’s new book mentioned in this episode follow this link: https://annahiddashtgard.com/books/bones-of-belonging/

Examples of microaggressions in the workplace and beyond

We’ve all had moments of feeling excluded or isolated, but some people are constantly targeted because of their social status. Women of colour have long been the subject of social bias, and in our Anima Café Women of Colour Breaking Barriers Anima CEO Annahid Dashtgard and author Deepa Purushothaman shared their own experiences. These true stories capture examples of micro-inequities faced by both.

Story One: Annahid

A few years ago, Annahid arrived on set to speak on a TV panel. Wearing a formal dress and heels, she waited excitedly for the program to begin alongside her officer manager James who was dressed in casual clothes and a backpack. Despite the difference in their appearance, three separate producers introduced themselves to James instead of Annahid, assuming that he must be the talent.

As each producer entered the room, they made the same assumption: that it must be the white man in a position of power and not the woman of colour. That it was the James who deserved their respect and attention and not Annahid. These repeated micro-inequities left Annahid feeling deflated and unimportant.

Story Two: Deepa

Deepa Purushothaman is a woman of colour who made senior partner at her consulting firm at an early age. She would often find herself leading people 10+ years her senior. But people would frequently dismiss the possibility that she could be in charge, even requesting to speak with the senior partner in the meeting — with her standing right there.

“The first couple of times it doesn’t bother you,” she said, “but if it’s happening four or five times a day it does start to eat at you. What is it about me that they don’t see me as a leader?”

Talking about race can be an emotionally-charged experience, and talking about race at work is no exception. You may feel anxious about introducing JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) topics at work because of the big emotions these conversations bring to the surface, but if we want our organizations to be inclusive and equitable they are conversations we need to have.

But the key isn’t to ignore these emotions, it’s to lean into them. Yes, talking about race can feel challenging. But developing emotional intelligence will help to work through the anxieties preventing you from leading your team with confidence.

Learning how to notice and manage our own and others’ emotions is a foundational aspect of effective leadership. Here are some tips to develop your emotional intelligence skills so you can feel more comfortable talking to your team about racial justice.

Don’t Talk Around Emotions — Talk About Them

Remember that—like you—your coworkers are also carrying complex feelings about discussing race and JEDI issues at work (especially if you haven’t made space for these conversations in the past). Some may feel excited, while others may feel anxious or resistant. And as the conversation progresses, these feelings and questions will continue to grow.

While it may feel safer to ignore these unspoken emotions and focus only on theory and statistics, our research shows that this only makes existing negative emotions worse. Humans are not solely rational actors: we don’t just think things through, we also feel our way through the world. And ignoring our emotions doesn’t mean we’ve left them behind.

Instead of letting emotions run unchecked, bringing intentional awareness to the feelings in the room gives you the power to guide your team through them. But having the ability to do this skillfully comes from being able to navigate your own big feelings as well.

Manage Yourself Before Your Team

It’s important to nurture an environment where people can take risks and make mistakes as part of the learning and unlearning process, especially when it comes to anti-racism work. In order to embody these values for others, you must first practice them with yourself.

Self-awareness and self-management are vital parts of effective leadership. As a leader, you set the emotional tone for your team: remember that it all begins with you. With your position comes power, and with power comes emotional responsibility. When we are able to regulate ourselves, we invite space for others to do the same.

There are no shortcuts to the inner work necessary to lead with presence and compassion — but here are a couple of tips to get you started:

1. Take the time to bring awareness to your emotions throughout the day. Your awareness is like a muscle, and as this practice becomes more frequent it will also become more automatic. Practice asking yourself “how am I feeling right now?” will help you become more familiar with your own emotions and develop the internal and external vocabulary you need to recognize them.
2. Anticipate and navigate your triggers. Conversations around race, gender, ability, class, and other identities can lead to strong, almost visceral emotional responses. Learn to recognize when your fight, flight or freeze response is kicking in and you’ll be able to take the steps needed to re-center yourself more quickly and easily.
3. Practice grounding exercises. When you find yourself feeling distressed, it’s helpful to have reliable tools available for self-regulation. Find practices that help to ground you in a more stable emotional state. It could be as simple as going for a walk, taking a few deep breaths or repeating positive affirmations.

Some people choose to commit overt, intentional acts of racism — but most are being influenced by the structures and patterns that have led them to think and act a certain way: their own implicit bias.

When we talk about racial justice we must remember that so much of what we do is quietly controlled by our unconscious mind, the set of cognitive processes beyond our conscious awareness. While your conscious mind reads this sentence, your unconscious mind reacts instinctively to the words on the page. When you hear a bark, it automatically prompts you to think of a dog. And when you see a stranger, it makes quick judgements about who they might be.

Our minds are constantly feeding us impulses, recognizing patterns, influencing our emotions, forming habits and collecting biases all without our conscious input. All of us have bias – and that’s why we need to talk about it. Having bias doesn’t make us bad people, but it does expose a need to explore racism beyond intentional acts of discrimination which are easier to recognize.

In this article we’ll answer the questions:

1. What is implicit bias?
2. How does implicit bias show up at work?
3. How can Implicit bias be Overcome?

What is Implicit Bias?

Within the context of racial justice, when we refer to implicit bias we’re addressing our hidden or unintentional preferences for a group based on their social identity. As a result of both internal patterns (human nature) and external patterns (socialization) our minds make quick associations that help us navigate the world and stay safe. Without the quiet work of our unconscious mind we would struggle to make the mental shortcuts needed to quickly understand and act on the world around us. But what happens when we apply these quick shortcuts to people?

Sometimes our unconscious thinking patterns lead us to make unfair judgements about people based on stereotypes attributed to their social group. Or they can lead us to subconsciously feel hostile or unsure about people who seem unfamiliar. This is implicit bias: the unconscious thoughts, feelings, patterns and impulses that our minds draw on as we interact with others.

Having bias is not a conscious choice, but we can make the conscious decision to acknowledge and correct it as needed.

How Does Implicit Bias Show Up at Work?

What are the things, actions and ways of being that you associate with familiarity? Who are the groups that make you feel safe? Who are the people who feel like you? Although you may not be consciously aware, these feelings affect your actions at work, in school and in our communities.

These implicit biases affect who you feel inclined to help, hire, promote and include. They also impact who makes you feel uncomfortable, who you distrust and who you choose to avoid.

For example, in most of Canada and the United States the cultural bias towards English results in resumes with anglicized names being favoured over non-English sounding names. You might imagine how easily this can lead to discriminatory hiring practices. When enough people share similar biases, their choices become embedded in the systems that govern our communities. So while implicit biases may play out in subtler actions like micro-inequities at work, they can also compound into massive systemic failings for minoritized groups.

Community is a basic human need. When we don’t feel a sense of belonging, we often begin to question our self worth or hide parts of ourselves to try to fit in. But because certain groups are already marginalized in society, they tend to face the brunt of negative effects from implicit bias. And these same marginalized groups can face chronic feelings of exclusion because of the biases embedded in our minds and social systems.

Implicit Bias: A Community Member’s Story

Unfortunately, when marginalized people try to address these systems, things don’t always get easier — sometimes they get worse. A marginalized member of our community shared the ongoing impact of frequent micro-inequities they faced in a previous position.

In their own words, “Imposter syndrome makes it sound like it’s your fault that you have some issue, right? But it’s not your fault cause it’s something that was put on you. External factors that created this feeling of self doubt where you constantly question yourself.”

Their self doubt was brought on by years of internalizing comments from a white manager who would often undermine, embarrass or question the intelligence of marginalized staff members. They faced regular pushback against their ideas — only to have them adopted by white staff members who would be credited for their work. Their ability to speak English was questioned, not because of their skill, but because they carried an “ethnic” name. And when taking on new tasks, their manager would often initially suggest they were unable to handle it, only to be impressed by their work later on.

While all of this showed a clear and unspoken system of bias in their workplace, when they spoke up they were told they were being “too sensitive.” When they scheduled a meeting to draw attention to how some actions contributed to an uncomfortable environment for marginalized staff—like a white employee being quickly promoted above more veteran staff, including the marginalized woman who’d trained her—their manager took offense and threatened them professionally. That conversation left them feeling scared and vulnerable.

“I couldn’t talk to anyone about it because then it puts me at risk. I felt like I was walking on eggshells all the time.”

The months that followed were marked by the heavy emotional toll of being regularly underestimated, denied promotions and subjected to embarrassing comments. Even when their employer undertook a diversity training as suggested by the marginalized employee, they were excluded from both the planning and execution. Eventually, another employee advised them that it might just be best to stop resisting the “office culture”. But they couldn’t — so they left.

Unfortunately, this experience echoes that of many people in marginalized communities who must navigate the complicated terrain of identity, power and implicit bias at work. If the goal of racial justice is to foster a society where—regardless of identity—we all feel a sense of belonging, then we need to work to address our individual biases and the influence they have on the institutions we are part of.

How can Implicit Bias be Overcome?

It’s very challening to recognize our own biases without shame or blame. A simple practice to begin recognizing your implicit bias is to begin to notice and question your assumptions about marginalized social groups. You can do this by taking the time to learn and understand the history that informs your culture and the institutions you rely on. Reflect on who was or was not traditionally included and listen to marginalized voices to gain broader historical perspectives.

Having bias doesn’t make us bad people, but it does invite us into the work of understanding our own patterns to identify those that are helpful and those that aren’t.

Be ready to meet yourself with compassion on your JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) journey. You may make mistakes along the way, but your commitment to the work outweighs your imperfection.

Now you know what to do… what’s next?

Education will always be a key component in advancing racial justice, and compassion will always be a key component in education. Anima Leadership believes in racial justice education that allows us to champion compassionate and inclusive leadership.

For more on how you can transform your workplace into a more inclusive environment, join our Deep Diversity Course. It’s available as online self-directed training, instructor-led group webinars and fully customizable in-house courses. Register today to take the next step on your JEDI journey!

When done correctly, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI) training can inspire deep, purposeful change that creates inclusive, high functioning teams and organizations. Unfortunately, this outcome isn’t a given.

Many well-meaning organizations adopt JEDI initiatives without being prepared to face challenges that may arise. Our research shows there are even specific leadership behaviours that are more likely to inspire backlash and lead to equity-oriented training that fails to promote meaningful change.

Avoid having your organization become a victim to a similar outcome. Whether your company is looking for or engaging in JEDI training, this resource will highlight the five common traps your company should avoid to clear the path for an easy, effective, equity-oriented training.

1. Backlash is Not Anticipated

Although backlash is undesirable – it’s also unavoidable. Educators and leaders often forget that humans are emotional creatures and the process of change will naturally trigger emotional reactions. This is especially true for JEDI issues. The key to navigating resistance is to become aware of its potential, to anticipate its arrival and to incorporate mitigation strategies into the planning and execution of JEDI initiatives.

Doing so will help ready you to meet the moment with compassion, understanding and presence.

2. Emotions are Underestimated

There are always big feelings in any equity training context because it touches our identities — our core being — and these feelings govern our actions. Neuroscience research has demonstrated unequivocally that our emotions influence our behaviours more than our thoughts, and this is especially true when engaging in JEDI issues. That means we need to address the emotions in the room first in order to create a productive space to learn. Unfortunately, most leaders and trainers underestimate emotions, believing that sharing compelling cognitive ideas will result in behavioural change. But this is not the case.

Relying on logic and cognition to tackle deeply emotional topics like racial or gender justice only exacerbates feelings of resistance among participants. To reduce backlash, it’s critical to welcome emotions into your JEDI training and communications. As we discuss in our post 10 Success Factors for JEDI Training, when you acknowledge participants’ feelings, you create a psychologically safe container that allows them to feel seen and heard as they move through this work.

3. Shame and Blame are Activated

JEDI trainings often unintentionally activate feelings shame and blame by overemphasizing negative consequences, morality or history. This can lead to feelings of defensiveness, guilt, anger, fear or impatience. These emotions may cause people to shut down or inspire feelings of resistance among staff.

As mentioned above, in order to keep everyone meaningfully engaged it’s important to use the psychologically safe environment you’ve created to help everyone feel able to participate, regardless of their dominant or non-dominant identities. JEDI trainings should promote JEDI literacy and practical skills development without using shame as a motivator. Instead, your organization should aim to select trainings that develop psychological and emotional intelligence and are led by educators who can embody the principles they are teaching.

4. Urgency Comes Before Literacy

Many anti-racism/anti-oppression trainings unconsciously emphasize urgency rather than equity literacy. Although the issues of race, gender and identity are urgent, over-emphasizing the hurt and harm cause by systemic injustice can backfire by triggering those feelings of shame and blame. From Anima’s experience and internal data, we know that embracing a literacy framework is far more effective in advancing JEDI goals. Like language literacy, equity literacy takes time. It requires people to learn how to identify systemic patterns of racial or gender bias, and to see things from a new perspective in order to learn and unlearn.

Trainings driven by a sense of urgency can also inspire performative actions that are mismatched with organizational goals or values. Truly transformative change requires us to be deeply present while acknowledging that change is an ongoing process, not a one-off moment.

5. The Environment Lacks Trust

Workplace culture is the most important factor in determining how JEDI trainings are received. It would be a mistake to blame the JEDI training if it doesn’t “stick” when your organizational culture may be the culprit. Low trust environments often sabotage efforts because you’re likely to receive backlash fueled by existing organizational dysfunction or from manager-employee tensions. Training often surfaces the hidden (or not so hidden) issues within your organizational context that may require you to spend some time creating trusting relationships and psychological safety so that your JEDI training can grow in a fertile environment.

Now you know what to avoid… what’s next?

Equity-based trainings are an important tool in our path towards more inclusive workplace cultures. But in order to inspire positive change, we need those JEDI programs that work. By watching for and avoiding these common traps, you’ll be better equipped to select a successful JEDI training that creates the kind of change your organization is hoping to achieve.

For more on how you can transform your workplace into a more equitable environment integrating all of these best practices, join our Deep Diversity Summer Institute.

With the push for businesses to focus on diversity initiatives, you may be surprised to learn that most justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI) trainings don’t work. Despite good intentions, organizations are implementing diversity trainings in thw workplace that don’t provide the desired impact. Instead, trainings can even cause more harm by wasting resources or inspiring resistance and backlash that damage company culture.

But—and this might come as a surprise—we don’t think they should stop.

Instead, we need to rethink what goes into racial justice training programs to make them more effective. Education will always be a critical piece in advancing racial justice and we’ve seen that when done correctly, the results are rewarding. Research drawn from nine years of program data involving 870 participants, including 250 leaders from US and Canada-based organizations, shows that there are 10 success factors that make JEDI trainings “stick” instead of fail. This data forms the foundation of our Deep Diversity Organizational Change Program and we hope that by inviting you into our process you’ll understand how to move your JEDI training in the right direction.

Whether your company is looking for or engaging in JEDI training, here are the 10 success factors that will lead you out of confusion and into deep organizational change.

1. Prepared Executive Leadership

The success of any organizational initiative will be determined by your senior leadership’s level of preparation. This is especially true of JEDI work.

Before your training begins, executive staff should invest time to learn about DEI issues through pre-training, get clear on organizational goals and prepare to receive equity-based feedback. Doing this work in advance will create a strong foundation to support the success of your DEI training and lessen your chances of wasting resources by moving in the wrong direction.

2. High Trust with Educators

Whether your JEDI training is being facilitated by an internal or external team, building high levels of trust between the educators and participants is critical. As the training progresses, difficult emotions or conversations may arise and the level of trust established between the educators and participants will influence whether your staff resist or lean into the process of change.

To create a smooth path forward, educators should seek to build a sense of community by modeling personal vulnerability, emotional intelligence, compassion and JEDI expertise.

3. Centering Emotions & Psychological Safety

We may like to believe that we are rational creatures, but the truth is that we are also highly emotional. Ignoring these emotions is a mistake—but it’s one that most JEDI trainings make.

Resistance is a natural, emotional part of any change process, especially when related to JEDI issues. Uncomfortable feelings may arise, but when we can acknowledge the feelings in the room educators can create a sense of psychological safety that allows participants to stay open regardless of their identity.

This requires the training team to have done the inner work necessary to connect with their emotions so they can hold space for participants to sit with big feelings and questions that accompany conversations about racial justice and equity.

“We are not rational creatures. We’d like to believe we are. But we are in fact emotional creatures. And us starting with that as the beginning is actually really most helpful.”

— Shakil Choudhury, co-founder of Anima Leadership

4. Program Content

Your program content, of course, will be an integral part of your JEDI training. In order to maximize the potential for success, your training should integrate both psychological and JEDI frameworks with practical skill development. Based on existing research and Anima’s years of experience, trainings that use an interdisciplinary approach are more likely to be embraced by learners, and therefore, have more impact.

By recognizing the psycho-emotional state of participants, teaching them JEDI literacy and giving them the tools to implement those learnings in the real world, your organization will be more likely to create lasting change.

5. Program Process

How your organization moves through its diversity training in the workplace will impact the outcome. Be intentional about the process and the effects of your training will be more likely to “stick.” Anima’s experience and research suggests that successful JEDI trainings integrate the following processes:

1. An extended time frame of several months using a cohort model with a clear start and end date.
2. Enlisting volunteer managers first instead of immediately integrating mandatory trainings.
3. Opportunities to apply JEDI concepts and problem-solving real time issues.
4. Coaching and support from JEDI experts.

Meaningful change takes time and intention. The extended cohort model allows your company enough time to make change, while engaging volunteer managers invites those with pro-equity tendencies to create positive “buzz” within the organization. Mandatory trainings are “buzz-killers” because they integrate those that are more hesitant into the room too early, which can result in a disengaged tone for the group. And finally, as you navigate you training, allowing opportunities for applied learning and support will solidify learning outcomes in the minds of employees.

6. Program Supports and Self-Directed Tools

Proven self-directed tools are crucial to help managers engage their teams on JEDI content in order to reduce their anxiety—and unrealistic expectations—that leaders have to be JEDI experts. If your managers feel supported, you set them up to better support other staff through the process of change.

7. Engage Managers

Anima’s experience and research shows that it is critical to have managers meaningfully engaged in JEDI problem-solving and action planning from the beginning, and to have them provide input into the broader organizational JEDI strategy.

Your managers are indispensable human resources in moving your JEDI strategy forward. It’s important to keep them engaged and informed in every step of your process so that they can effectively contribute to the success of the company.

8. Measure Outcomes

In order to identify success, you’ll need to define and measure it. Measure your JEDI program effectiveness using qualitative and quantitative methods. Analyze your data over time with internal measures such as employee engagement, hiring, promotion and advancement demographics. The data you collect will be valuable in tracking your progress and identifying areas of stagnation where more action may be needed.

If you’re not sure where to begin, Anima offers social inclusion audits, measurement tools and reports that will help your organization map out a clear path for its next steps in JEDI work.

9. Organizational Context Matters

Existing organizational context and culture is often the most influential factor in determining JEDI program uptake and outcomes. JEDI trainings are more likely to succeed in contexts where there are high levels of employee engagement and trust. Conversely, trainings are more likely to struggle in environments with low morale, dysfunction and low psychological safety. If the latter is your organization’s reality, JEDI training may reveal some of the organizational glitches that need attention before equity principles and practice will flourish in your context.

10. 360 Hours for Equity Literacy

Racial justice trainings need to be seen in the framework of an equity literacy project, not a one-off moment. Anima’s co-founder Shakil Choudhury often likens this process to developing language literacy.

It’s estimated that 360 hours is required for an adult to develop basic English-as-an-Additional-Language skills. Once the underlying pattern is decoded and recognized, what was once just a “squiggly line” becomes a letter, and an unrecognizable sound transforms into a word or sentence that has meaning. Similarly, in the early stages of learning systemic patterns of bias are like the squiggly line and can be hard to recognize.

Perhaps you may not notice that female employees are regularly interrupted in meetings while the men are allowed to speak freely, or that Black employees are more likely to receive lower performance evaluations than white counterparts — it’s through learning and practice that the patterns become easier to recognize.

It’s useful that successful JEDI training integrate a similar 360-hour benchmark for learning, practice and application for leaders to develop a basic level of equity literacy.

Now that you know what you need… what’s next?

Justice-based training and education are key parts of a necessary shift towards greater fairness, engagement and productivity. But to truly support organizational change we need JEDI programs that work.

Keeping these success factors in mind will help you make better decisions when you design, implement or select equity-based training programs. By focusing on doing the things that matter, you’ll avoid wasting time, resources and energy running an ineffective JEDI training.

For more on how you can transform your workplace into a more equitable environment integrating all of these best practices, join our Deep Diversity Organizational Change Program.

Join Annahid Dashtgard in conversation with Deepa Purushothaman, about her new book “The First, the Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America“. 

Since #metoo we’ve seen a societal tipping point moment in realizing the gap between gender forward policies and what happens in reality.

That gap is even wider for women of colour. According to Deepa Purushonotham’s new book “The First, the Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America“ one in three women of colour in corporate America want to quit. And yet, BIPOC women represent among the most highly trained and talented workplace demographic to attract and retain.

In conversation with Anima CEO Annahid Dashtgard, Deepa shares what propelled her research and why major media are paying attention. What will it take to move past the tired debate about meritocracy? What will it take for us to break the invisible barriers holding us back? What does a future look like where everyone, regardless of identity, has the opportunity not just to survive, but thrive.

It’s common for anti-racist practitioners to turn to the language of “white fragility” to describe those moments where white folks “freeze” out of fear of doing the wrong thing. And the resulting dynamic for people who identify as BIPOC often includes anger and frustration. In both cases, it’s easy for disempowerment to set in. And when that happens oppression wins. 

So what does it look like to push against the edges of whiteness, to be centered, authentic and remain in relationship as we seek to achieve racial justice in the workplace and beyond?