The “mattering” frame is sharper than the usual belonging talk.
Belonging says: you’re included here.
Mattering says: your judgment changes what happens here.
That’s the harder leadership test. A lot of companies make people feel welcomed but not consequential, which is basically corporate wallpaper with a badge.
So happy this landed for you. And as Amri shared, the issue and the solution are structural. It’s not just in how you make people feel but also in how you design your roles. When you create roles that are consequential, then it’s much easier to recognize how the people in them are contributing to the mission and bottom line.
Feel free to “help them navigate” diversity, equity, and inclusion without my presence or validation of their “allergy.” You have confirmed that I am absolutely the wrong audience to attend.
We don’t want to turn off those in support. We want those who have developed, at best, an incomplete frame based on bad practice to engage with those who have perhaps taken inclusion to mean “helping” the needy; as well as, those who have depth as to the transformational nature of inclusion when practiced in a way that is about “creating the conditions for people to thrive and for organizations to be generative.”
From my perspective, you have done exactly what you didn’t want to do. You have turned me off.
“Allergies” to diversity, equity, and inclusion (my deliberate choice to use the words and not the acronym) reveal a negative framing toward what is a fundamental reality: that people are different, that systems have historically excluded many of them, and that intentional effort is required to change that. Framing resistance to this as an “allergy” to be “navigated” treats bigotry as a medical condition where exposure to diversity, equity, and inclusion results in a severe life threatening condition. Hyperbole, much? It centers the comfort of those who refuse to do the work while asking the rest of us to be patient with their refusal.
I am not interested in helping people feel better about their unwillingness to see me as deserving the space I have earned. That is not dialogue. That is performance. And my presence in that room does not educate. It decorates.
I’m much too old and have experienced way too much to feel comfortable walking back what little progress we’ve made over the years for those “allergy-prone” people.
Got it. Thanks for the feedback. You don’t have allergies. Many others have been influenced in a way that they do.
If so-called DEI is only about exclusion and certain types of people that have experienced it (as many different kinds of folks in all of their complexities have) it only puts us back to where contentiousness and grievance are the currency rather than creating the conditions for everyone to thrive, including those who have experienced or are experiencing marginalization.
There’s a more robust and sustainable way to meet the needs of folks. The past five years of practice after-Floyd is not that. Of course, good practice has been done but it is not promoted and propagated the way that the anti-DEI grifters have framed them.
Now is a critical time to make the future of “the work” impermeable to silliness.
@Kellie, these are exactly the conversations I have sought out.
Most of the people I’ve talked to who are resistant, dismissive, even hostile to so-called DEI became due to a narrative of DEI being less of an opportunity to create systems of opportunity and care where all can thrive and add value to one that is about “racism” and “bigotry” and other isms and phobias.
We’ve been in that way of thinking for decades and we have seen little shift in a meaningful and sustainable way.
The “mattering” frame is sharper than the usual belonging talk.
Belonging says: you’re included here.
Mattering says: your judgment changes what happens here.
That’s the harder leadership test. A lot of companies make people feel welcomed but not consequential, which is basically corporate wallpaper with a badge.
Really strong piece.
So happy this landed for you. And as Amri shared, the issue and the solution are structural. It’s not just in how you make people feel but also in how you design your roles. When you create roles that are consequential, then it’s much easier to recognize how the people in them are contributing to the mission and bottom line.
I am not “allergic” to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I suppose I’m not your target audience then.
You might actually be exactly the right audience.
We don’t treat people with allergies as if they are deficient. We help them navigate. That’s what I hope this conversation will do.
@Amri B. Johnson, my co-host, and I would love people with every perspective to join.
Feel free to “help them navigate” diversity, equity, and inclusion without my presence or validation of their “allergy.” You have confirmed that I am absolutely the wrong audience to attend.
We don’t want to turn off those in support. We want those who have developed, at best, an incomplete frame based on bad practice to engage with those who have perhaps taken inclusion to mean “helping” the needy; as well as, those who have depth as to the transformational nature of inclusion when practiced in a way that is about “creating the conditions for people to thrive and for organizations to be generative.”
https://reconstructinginclusion.substack.com/p/inclusion-is-polysemous?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
From my perspective, you have done exactly what you didn’t want to do. You have turned me off.
“Allergies” to diversity, equity, and inclusion (my deliberate choice to use the words and not the acronym) reveal a negative framing toward what is a fundamental reality: that people are different, that systems have historically excluded many of them, and that intentional effort is required to change that. Framing resistance to this as an “allergy” to be “navigated” treats bigotry as a medical condition where exposure to diversity, equity, and inclusion results in a severe life threatening condition. Hyperbole, much? It centers the comfort of those who refuse to do the work while asking the rest of us to be patient with their refusal.
I am not interested in helping people feel better about their unwillingness to see me as deserving the space I have earned. That is not dialogue. That is performance. And my presence in that room does not educate. It decorates.
I’m much too old and have experienced way too much to feel comfortable walking back what little progress we’ve made over the years for those “allergy-prone” people.
Got it. Thanks for the feedback. You don’t have allergies. Many others have been influenced in a way that they do.
If so-called DEI is only about exclusion and certain types of people that have experienced it (as many different kinds of folks in all of their complexities have) it only puts us back to where contentiousness and grievance are the currency rather than creating the conditions for everyone to thrive, including those who have experienced or are experiencing marginalization.
There’s a more robust and sustainable way to meet the needs of folks. The past five years of practice after-Floyd is not that. Of course, good practice has been done but it is not promoted and propagated the way that the anti-DEI grifters have framed them.
Now is a critical time to make the future of “the work” impermeable to silliness.
I agree with Liana here. An allergy is a medical condition and using it to highlight bigotry is ridiculous.
@Kellie, these are exactly the conversations I have sought out.
Most of the people I’ve talked to who are resistant, dismissive, even hostile to so-called DEI became due to a narrative of DEI being less of an opportunity to create systems of opportunity and care where all can thrive and add value to one that is about “racism” and “bigotry” and other isms and phobias.
We’ve been in that way of thinking for decades and we have seen little shift in a meaningful and sustainable way.
oh looking forward to this one !