I’m just aghast at the industry that has grown up around “diversity.”
I don’t think training courses in diversity have any more affect on behavior than do training courses on most subjects. And I don’t regard diversity as a legitimate specialty, since you can’t “consult” or “train” in diversity without a thorough knowledge of organization development, human behavior, and change management, to name just a few relevant disciplines.
Most organizations provide only lip service to diversity and tolerance, throwing money at the subjects (hence, the growth of the “industry”) in order to satisfy the pubic, the press, the employees, and the shareholders that the organization is enlightened, empowered, tolerant, a good place to work, et alia. But nothing really changes.
The key isn’t in the input—the “awareness” or the training—but rather in the output. For example, research seems to indicate that heterogeneous teams perform better than homogeneous teams. Most organizations have finally realized that the more the employee base mirrors the customer base, the more sensitive, effective, and responsive those employees and customers tend to be. These are pragmatic business needs, not arbitrary tasks.
Eschew the urging to “prove” your organization’s fairness by providing arbitrary and highly suspect training and coaching in this narrow field. Rather, just like financial management or human resources development, a diverse and equally treated work force should be the responsibility of every manager, built into emphasis areas, reviews, communications loops, reward systems, succession plans, and so forth.
Biases and prejudices, if they are to be changed, won’t be affected in training classes. They must be addressed through appeals to the value system, both that of the organization and that of the individual. When the organization’s value system is manifest—no “glass ceilings,” role models of all types throughout the organization, absence of politics in promotion, promotion according to merit, etc.—an individual’s value system can be aligned or that person can be removed if intractable. That happens on the job, through coaching, reinforcement, and fair but firm management, not by “diversity specialists” running exercises in a classroom.

© Alan Weiss 2002 All rights reserved.

Alan Weiss, Ph.D., CMC is the author of 20 books, including the seminal Million Dollar Consulting (McGraw-Hill) and his newest, How to Acquire Clients (Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer). You can reach him at Alan@summitconsulting.com. Visit his web site, http://www.summitconsulting.com to subscribe to his free monthly newsletter, Balancing Act: Blending Life, Work, and Relationships.