Centering Nuance in DEI
Centering Nuance in DEI
DEI as a field has expanded. In our expansion, many have entered the space with an understanding that passion, lived experience, along with participating in and facilitating a few trainings (usually related to a particular identity or identities consistent with one’s lived experience) is sufficient to be successful in a DEI role or in some cases, even lead the function.
At a minimum, most feel the above is enough to hold the title of DEI practitioner. This could be true. It is also inconsistent with all sustainable DEI efforts I have seen over the past three decades.
Passion is important, but it is insufficient. Lived experience has value, but holding it up as a qualification is self-limiting, and getting repetitions as a facilitator and learning what many would consider the basics of DEI or DEI 101 can establish a good foundation. Yet, it doesn’t allow one to hold the tension and nuance that sustainable work in human systems requires.
Let me use the recent lived experience to extend the notion of nuance.
I am learning German. I live in a city where the primary language spoken is Swiss German (Schweizerdeutsch).
For those unfamiliar, Swiss German is a dialect of High German (Hochdeutsch). It's typical for non-native Swiss German speakers to learn High German before learning a Swiss German dialect.
A non-native speaker learns High German before picking up the local dialect of Swiss German, like Baseldeutsch, Zürichdeutsch, Berndeutsch, or another local dialect. To most non-native speakers, each of the Swiss German variations wouldn't be as different.
To the untrained ear, they wouldn't even sound remotely different. But to someone who can hear the nuances, these differences are evident.
Hearing the distinctions requires a mastery of the language. Without such skill, one can listen to the differences between High German and Swiss German. However, making distinctions in regional variations is highly improbable until many years of learning and others with mastery share distinctions with you.
Languages, by and large, all evolve in similar ways. People develop local shortcuts and shorthand to articulate local uniqueness, history, and solidarity. Accents, phrases, and specific words used in one geography are signals of one’s localness. Such nuances can also signal how things get done and what one should be mindful of when doing certain things.
Organizational life is full of nuance. Like languages, entering into a firm with fixed notions of personal experiences and searching for local problems without considering the myriad distinctions is to dismiss or minimize the company's uniqueness, history, and context. It reduces the organization and its people to our personally bounded possibilities.
Practicing DEI with nuance means resolving that I will be off the mark. The propensity to do something that fails to create the conditions for everyone in an organization to thrive increases proportionally to my confidence in knowing what people need.
The more I believe my advocacy, protest, prostration, or condemnation leads to an ideal state I have created in my consciousness, the less I consider nuance and complexity. The less I recognize that holding the tensions of nuance is one of the primary jobs of a DEI practitioner, the higher the likelihood that I am creating harm.
When I feel myself gravitating toward a side or a particular stance or standpoint when with a client or in personal reflection, I stop to think about who benefits from my beliefs and actions. Whose perspective am I not considering? Such contemplation doesn’t connote agreement but a consideration that “[We] are large. [We] contain multitudes.”
As DEI practitioners and those committed to DEI, what possibilities do we create when we make nuance live at the center of our work?
I recognize the above is an insufficient exploration of nuance. And I wanted to get started in a public place as it is crucial.
I will explore this question more with a few colleagues who have come to me recently, worried that our lack of nuanced thinking negatively impacts the perception and performance of people doing DEI work. We agreed that it is a space that we have to honestly reflect on and consistently, situation by situation, elevate our capacity to practice sincerely.
Feel free to reach out if you would like to engage in these dialogues.
I hope this was helpful. . . Make it a great day! ✌🏿
In the latest episode of the ‘Reconstructing Inclusion’ podcast, we talk about the complexities of DEI outcomes and challenge DEI practitioners to explore a broader, more inclusive approach that engages all individuals in fostering change and reflect on their “skin in the game”. The important question remains: how can we make DEI accessible, actionable, and sustainable for everyone, irrespective of role or expertise?