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A Fast Way To Test If Your Company Has Problems With Discrimination In The Workplace

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You may have heard that a leader with Salesforce recently resigned over frequent discrimination at work.  As first reported by Protocol, Cynthia Perry posted her resignation letter on LinkedIn, saying, "I am leaving Salesforce because of countless microaggressions and inequity. I have been gaslit, manipulated, bullied, neglected, and mostly unsupported … the entire time I've been here. Salesforce, for me, is not a safe place to come to work. It's not a place where I can be my full self."

I don't know if Salesforce executives were surprised by Cynthia's resignation, but I've seen hundreds of cases where the executives were utterly flabbergasted and blindsided by these types of discrimination concerns.

In the Leadership IQ study called Leaders Don't Want To Hear About Discrimination In The Workplace, we surveyed 5,778 employees and leaders. Among the two dozen discoveries was that only 29% of people say that management at their organization always listens to employee concerns about discrimination (race, sex/gender, age, etc.) without blame or defensiveness.

Even worse, only 11% of Black employees feel that management always listens to concerns about discrimination in the workplace without getting defensive, while white employees are approximately 250% more likely to feel that management always listens without defensiveness.

A key question for every executive and leader is how to discover that your organization has these problems long before your employees start quitting and publicly posting their resignation letters. And, of course, determining how to use your discoveries to actually fix the underlying issues.

The fastest way we've found to pinpoint the extent of these problems is to conduct a quick pulse survey of your employees. 

If done correctly, within a week, you could have actionable insight pinpointing the extent of your issues and exactly where (departments, shifts, etc.) they're occurring. 

What questions should you ask your employees? I recommend using some of the survey questions contained in the Leadership IQ discrimination study. For example, one of the most important questions you can ask is, "Management at my organization listens to employee concerns about discrimination (race, sex/gender, age, etc.) without blame or defensiveness."

Our research shows that while taking action to solve discrimination issues is critical, taking meaningful action is unlikely to occur until an organization's leaders can first listen to the concerns without blame or defensiveness. And while it might seem disturbing that leaders potentially can't hear concerns about discrimination without getting defensive, I consider this, weirdly, to be a positive step forward.

I see companies tie themselves into knots trying to figure out how to solve discrimination and increase diversity and inclusion. There are so many potential approaches and solutions that trying to find the perfect one (or two or three) consumes the bulk of our time and mental energy. And while we're debating the ideal solution, no concrete actions are being taken.

By contrast, once we understand that no solution to fix discrimination can be implemented until leaders can actually listen to concerns about discrimination without blame or defensiveness, we have something concrete to fix. Teaching managers to listen to discrimination concerns does not require endless debate about future states or grand strategies; it simply requires teaching leaders how to listen to uncomfortable truths without defensiveness.  

Now, teaching leaders this listening skill isn't inherently easy. It will take work and practice. For example, empathic listening (i.e., putting yourself in another's shoes) is tough. Across the thousands of people who've taken the online test "Do You Know How To Listen With Empathy?" about a third of respondents decisively failed the test. And only about 20% of people achieved perfect scores. It's easy to say that we want to listen with empathy, and without blame and defensiveness, but doing it in real life is actually fairly difficult.

However, once we know that listening empathically, and without blame and defensiveness, is our goal, we can institute training with clear success metrics. Let's go back to one of the survey questions I recommended, "Management at my organization listens to employee concerns about discrimination (race, sex/gender, age, etc.) without blame or defensiveness."

Whether leaders listen effectively to employees' concerns isn't something that can be judged by the leaders, it can only be judged by the people sharing the concerns (i.e., employees). But that's something you can measure fairly easily and quickly with something like a pulse survey.

Every company should be, at least, a little concerned that they have issues similar to Salesforce. But you needn't tie yourself into knots determining your future strategy; simply start with a fixable issue. You may hear some hard truths, but having the courage to listen without blame or defensiveness instantly puts you light years ahead of most organizations.

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