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Capitalize on Your Team’s Differences
First-wave feminism focused on minimizing gender differences, but current research highlights that gender-diverse teams, leveraging unique strengths of women—such as emotional intelligence and holistic thinking—outperform homogeneous groups by mitigating blind spots in decision-making.
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Develop an Action Plan
Kenji Yoshino’s research highlights the inadequacy of many diversity initiatives since the 1960s, proposing a three-step framework—diagnose, analyze, and act—to effectively address identity covering in workplaces and foster genuine inclusion.
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Narrow the Gap Between Stated Values and Lived Values
Kenji Yoshino’s research highlights the gap between organizations’ stated and lived inclusion values, urging leaders to engage in meaningful dialogue with employees to align practices with core values and address any discrepancies.
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Unify Employee Affinity Groups
Kenji Yoshino discusses Robert Putnam’s bonding and bridging capital, emphasizing that while bonding capital unites individuals within groups, bridging capital fosters connections across diverse groups, advocating for combined bonding and bridging activities to prevent isolation in organizations.
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Accept the Symbolic Role of Leadership
Kenji Yoshino’s research highlights that covering demands from leaders significantly diminish employee commitment and engagement, emphasizing the need for leaders to actively support diversity initiatives to fully harness their workforce’s talents.
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Explore Covering In-depth
Covering, the tendency to downplay stigmatized aspects of identity, affects individuals across various groups, particularly minorities, and understanding its four axes—appearance, affiliation, advocacy, and association—can enhance inclusivity and bridge-building in the workplace.
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Understand the Concept of Covering
Sociologist Erving Goffman introduced “covering” in 1963 to describe efforts by individuals with stigmatized identities to downplay their stigma, a concept later expanded by Kenji Yoshino, who found that everyone, including straight white men, engages in covering, fostering solidarity through shared experiences.
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Support Human Flourishing in the Workplace
As workplaces evolve into total institutions that demand more of individuals, leaders must prioritize authenticity and support human flourishing, as 61% of employees report covering, which significantly harms their sense of self.
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Class
Re-envisioning Inclusion
The decades-old movement to diversify workplaces has yielded mixed results, as NYU Law professor Kenji Yoshino suggests that companies often impose restrictive definitions of diversity, and advocates for fostering connections with those who feel pressured to suppress their identities for acceptance.
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Rethink the Term “Microaggressions”
In a video lesson, inclusion strategist Ruchika Malhotra emphasizes the importance of recognizing “exclusionary behaviors,” such as mispronouncing names and stereotype-based assumptions, which can significantly impact marginalized individuals’ well-being and sense of belonging, and suggests asking for correct name pronunciations as a simple act of inclusion.
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Recognize and Address Unconscious Biases
Code-switching, a natural behavior adjustment based on context, becomes unhealthy when it requires suppressing one’s identity to avoid discrimination, as explored by inclusion strategist Ruchika Malhotra, who highlights its psychological toll and suggests methods to identify unconscious biases.
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Key Concepts for Understanding the Experiences of Marginalized Groups
In this video lesson, inclusion strategist Ruchika Malhotra explores how intersecting marginalized identities can compound workplace challenges, emphasizing the need for inclusive cultures to support women of color, who often face both hypervisibility and invisibility, and are frequently underestimated in their career progression.
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How to Put an End to Imposter Syndrome
In a video lesson, inclusion strategist Ruchika Malhotra discusses how workplace messages contribute to imposter syndrome in women, particularly women of color, and offers strategies to foster a more inclusive and equitable environment.