We See Your Company’s Hypocrisy About DEI Through 1 Revealing LinkedIn Post

LinkedIn lit up the other day when director of diversity, equity and inclusion Cornell Verdeja-Woodson posted this:

“I’m tired! I need to rethink my career in DEI. I care way too much about this work and it impacts my mental health drastically. Fighting to have your work valued, to have your voice heard, and wanting people to care about DEI as an important business imperative is so exhausting. I’m not sure I’m cut out from this anymore! I’m tired of fighting with these organizations!”

As of this writing, that post has inspired nearly 14,000 reactions and 1,660 comments. Just to put that into context: in a quick scroll through his most recent posts, the highest number of reactions was 172 and the highest number of comments was 13. That’s not a criticism: it just underscores the power of how Cornell is thinking and feeling about fighting for what he believes in, and how deeply people are connecting to his honesty, to the thoughts and frustrations he expressed, and to him directly.

I admit: I’m tired, too. I’m frustrated with leaders who say they want diversity, equity and inclusion but don’t realize it takes more than their “official” Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, check-the-box programs. They have no idea how to solve for it. In fact, many DEI executives have directly expressed their concerns about the promises their organizations made in 2020, because their leaders and employees are divided into three camps:

1. Those who think DEI is a priority because retaining talent and growing our business depends on it.
2. Those who think DEI is a problem because we have never solved for inclusion, which makes it difficult to solve for equity.
3. Those who think DEI is a waste of time because it doesn’t mean anything to me.

We Won’t Achieve Actual DEI with ‘Official’ DEI

Many executives seek my counsel to discuss their DEI goals and ask for concrete strategies. I tell them what I’ve learned over 15 years: that no matter how many trainings and programs they offer, if they don’t also do the work of discovering how they’re suppressing individuality throughout their organization, and also do the work of changing their systems and pivoting toward unleashing individuality—not only will they not achieve their DEI goals, they will be further from it.

See my previous article on this very topic: “Is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bringing Us Together, Or Pushing Us Further Apart?”  

I insist on an approach that tackles those root problems, that helps leaders and organizations identify ways they’re suppressing people and ways they’ve been suppressed, and learn how to lead in a way that unleashes individuality.

But what they want is a simple approach that will look good on paper, that won’t take too much time or resources and budget away from other priorities, that they can cross off their list as a success.

That LinkedIn post is about those who work in DEI in particular, but I hear the same frustrations expressed by those who work in any situation in which they don’t feel seen as an individual and their contribution isn’t valued.

Here are a few excerpts from the comments to that thread:

• “Fighting against such forces to advance the right thing to no avail...brother I feel you.”
• “I feel this so much. You are not alone.” 
• “I hear you. Organizations and their leaders say they value things but they often don’t.”
• “Working so hard, where no one recognizes it is heartbreaking.”

Others made comments like: “keep up the good fight,” “take a break but then come back, we need you,” “stay focused,” “don’t quit!”

But when you’re exhausted from being suppressed, having people encourage you to just keep going is not helpful.

When our individuality is suppressed:

• Our dignity isn’t supported
• Our mental health is at stake

Contributing to something at our fullest capacity reinforces our sense of dignity. No matter our title, our education, our training, if someone recognizes what we’re capable of as an individual, and we feel like we have a real chance to achieve what we’re capable of, that’s when we feel seen and valued. Just as important: that’s when we’re able to see and value others.

But when we’ve been subjected to a system designed to deny us that dignity, not only do we feel despair for ourselves, but it’s much harder to see and support the individual dignity in someone else. The system has trained us to see others as competition and to see our work and our lives as a zero sum game: if you win, I lose.

“Fighting to have your work valued, to have your voice heard” is the part of Cornell’s post that stands out to me. It reminds me of a quote from Donna Hicks, Ph.D., an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She is an expert in human dignity and a specialist in conflict resolution. Through her work, she identified a major obstacle in our relationships with each other: “Our failure to recognize how vulnerable humans are to being treated as if they didn’t matter.” (That’s from her 2011 book, “Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict.”)

I’ve learned over the years that these are the core elements of our individuality:

• We have value: we want to be included.
• We are worthy: we want to be seen in our full humanity.
• We are unique: we want to be ourselves.
• We have experience and insight: we want to do more.
• We have ideas: we want to explore our possibility.

It’s painful to realize how much we hold ourselves and others back. But it’s also freeing to see that we have the power to unleash ourselves and others.

Learn more at my organization’s third annual Leadership in the Age of Personalization Virtual Summit to discover how to unleash individuality by addressing these five critical questions:

1. Who do you let in?
2. How do you see them? 
3. Who do you let them be?
4. What do you let them do?
5. How do you let them do it?