Diversity mentoring good practice
Difference can manifest itself in many ways, from sexual orientation to race and disability, but a common factor is that it is a contributor to inequality and stereotyping in the workplace. Diversity mentoring is a process of open dialogue that aims to achieve both individual and organisational change, through shared understanding and suspending judgement, within a relationship of mutual learning.
Diversity mentoring helps people from minorities build track record, gain access to promotion opportunities and establish networks within the organisation. It also has the benefit that it usually results in the education of senior managers, who become mentors, in a wide range of issues relating to diversity. In particular, it gives mentors an opportunity to experiment with conversations, where they might otherwise be inhibited by political correctness. At the same time, it gives mentees an opportunity to create and implement practical ways to overcome cultural barriers to performance and career progression.
In general, having a mentor from a similar race or gender tends to a high level of empathy and social/ emotional support. By contrast, having a mentor from a different race or gender is more closely associated with understanding the organisational politics, career guidance and a high level of intellectual challenge. Some organisations deliberately match mentors and mentees on as many points of difference as they can, to stimulate mutual learning.
A key conversation to have at the beginning of the diverse mentoring relationship is how to position difference, as the following quote illustrates: As a mentee, it doesn’t hurt my feelings if someone acknowledges the difference between us. In some ways I like those relationships better. It makes me feel more comfortable – we’re not dancing around the issues in some artificial way. What’s uncomfortable for me is when we have to pretend there isn’t a difference
Also important is an agreement between mentor and mentee that they will encourage each other to be open and that they will give each other feedback, whenever they feel uncomfortable about what the other person is saying. Mentor and mentee should not assume that an insensitive statement is malicious; it is more likely to be the result of ignorance – and hence an opportunity for learning
Training for diversity mentoring
Mentors within programs, which have a strong diversity agenda, typically need additional training input and on-going support as they learn how to build trust across the barriers of difference. In particular, they need to acquire the confidence not to be “politically correct”, as this will reduce the openness of their conversations. Diversity mentoring training often conveys an understanding of:
- Implicit bias and the psychology of differentiation
- The systemic components of disadvantage and discrimination (for example, how attitudes of others can result in diverse leaders undervaluing their strengths and potential)
- The difference between equal opportunities, diversity management and leveraging difference
- The emotional complexity of workplace disadvantage
- Rapport-building across apparent or real difference in perceptions and values
- The concepts of referent power and rank in the context of diversity.
Mentors need to have insight into their own perceptual biases and assumptions; and the skills to help the client gain insight into their own. Mentoring in the context of diversity requires the mentee to adopt an exceptional humility and a mindset that they, too, are learning from the relationship.
Ideally, mentees also receive similar training, so that they, too, can get the maximum learning from the mentoring conversations.
The diversity awareness ladder
The Diversity Awareness Ladder is a tool, created by David Clutterbuck, to help both clients and practitioners understand and work with their stereotypes and implicit biases about people, who they perceive as different from themselves. It has also been used widely in the context of general diversity education.
How does it work?
The Ladder is a model of two conversations – the inner conversation, which represents instinctive, emotional responses to difference and is not normally spoken out loud; and the outer conversation, which offers a way of engaging with the other person to counter and overcome the concerns of the inner conversation. On the early steps of the Ladder, people tend to avoid conversation with the “different” person or group – often for positive reasons, such as not wanting to offend by saying the wrong thing. When a client defines where they are on the ladder, they have a starting point for addressing the assumptions and concerns that prevent them having fully open conversations that genuinely value difference.
| Stage
| The inner conversation | The outer conversation
|
| 1. Fear | What do I fear from this person? What do I fear learning about myself? What might I be avoiding admitting to myself? | What do we have in common? What concerns do you have about me and my intentions? |
| 2. Wariness | What if I say the wrong thing? Is their expectation of me negative and/or stereotyped? How open and honest can I be with them? | How can we be more open with each other? How can we recognise and manage behaviours that make each other feel uncomfortable/ unvalued? |
| 3. Tolerance | What judgements am I making about this person and on what basis? What boundaries am I seeking/ applying in dealing with this person? | How can we exist/ work together without friction? How can we take blame out of our conversations? |
| 4. Acceptance | Can I accept this person for who they are? Can I accept and work with the validity of their perspective, even if it’s different from mine? | What values do you hold? How do you apply them? |
| 5. Appreciation | What can I learn from this person? How could knowing them make a better/ more accomplished person? | What can we learn from each other? How will we learn from each other? |
Using the Ladder:
The Ladder is most often used in the context of a diversity mentoring programme, as a means of helping people open up about the difficult topic of implicit bias and stereotyping. However, it can also be valuable in any coaching or mentoring relationship, where the client needs to become more at ease and more effective in dealing with diversity issues. The Ladder helps the client identify and acknowledge the inner conversation, and explore with their coach/ mentor how to replace that inner conversation with one that is more authentic, more self-honest and more likely to result in positive communication and mutual respect with regard to groups they may consciously or unconsciously avoid. It can also be useful in training coaches to become more aware of how they can build rapport more effectively with people, from backgrounds very different to their own.
The critical steps in using the Ladder are:
- Helping the client recognise their instinctive, often unconscious assumptions about groups of “others”. (How they categorise a group may vary considerably.) Simple ways to do this include recalling times when they have had (or avoided) conversations with people from that group. How did they feel? What inner conversation was going on for them?
- Recognising the benefits of adopting a different inner conversation, which might lead them to a different conversation with people from that group.
- Helping them gradually replace the existing internal and external conversations with new, more inclusive conversations that show greater appreciation of difference
- Helping them embed these new conversations – and the new ways of thinking that under[in them – into their day to day responses to other people.
© David Clutterbuck, 2014
Prof David Clutterbuck
Coaching and Mentoring International Ltd
Woodlands, Tollgate,
Maidenhead,
Berks, UK. SL6 4LJ
www.coachingandmentoringinternational.org
e-mail: info@coachingandmentoringinternational.org
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