Diversity Equity and Inclusion Leaders Are the Catalysts for Change

Emily Gambacorta, Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Central Hudson

How can I start making an impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion in our organization? As a DEI professional, leaders ask me this question frequently. Before leaders can start to impact DEI organization wide, they need to understand and be accountable for how DEI impacts them personally.

DEI’s power is centered on our personal ability to change. While change is a personal choice, true commitment requires resilience when change becomes uncomfortable. It is critical for leaders to guide employees through new experiences that DEI programs are meant to support. Here are a few possible scenarios and questions you can ask yourself as a leader to better support your employees as you grow together in the DEI space:

• Employees may hear details of someone else’s lived experiences that are different from their own, which can impact their own experience of stability and how they think things are or should be. What experiences have impacted the way you think? What stories can you share that made you reconsider how things have always been done? How have your perspectives changed throughout your leadership to help support organizational change and what impact has that had on your personal growth?

"Remember your value, your voice and how to compassionately show up for others and DEI will become a natural part of your organization"

• Partner in exploring the edges of what makes employees uncomfortable. Hold space for conversations about bias (conscious or unconscious) and be willing to discuss your own biases as you identify them. What in your childhood led you to have biases around success? How has the media impacted your perception of who gets ahead? How has challenging your biases supported your leadership decisions?  

• As employees learn about the history of underrepresented groups and how they have worked to overcome institutional barriers, it is normal to feel all different emotional responses. Some employees may feel angry or sad to learn of historical and current oppression. Others may feel affirmed or relieved when they hear stories like their own. What have you learned about our history that challenges things you may have been taught or believed? What new experiences have helped connect our history to our current efforts in support DEI? What activities can you attend with your employees to experience together?

When I dig deeper with leaders as to what is holding them back from being more active in DEI, they admit they are afraid to get it wrong. It’s true; no one is going to get DEI right 100 percent of the time. There is always room, regardless of intention, for a negative and unintended impact. The best thing we can do is to set clear expectations with our employees.

“I am not going to get this right all the time, and it’s okay for us all to make mistakes. I expect you to let me know if I have impacted you in a way that was harmful or hurtful and you can expect that I will give you the same feedback.”

Throughout this work, I have had to build my own resilience around the learning, discomfort, and conflict that can arise with DEI through self-care and compassion. As leaders, showing up with humanity and compassion for our employees sets the critical precedent that we all deserve to be our whole selves at work in a safe and supportive environment.

  Here are three self-care actions and how they benefit our employees:

 1. Practice listening to yourself by slowing down and listening to how your thoughts affect your body. That feeling in your chest, the tension in your jaw, the shortness of your breath. What specifically is your body telling you it needs? What are you carrying? What love can you give to your own suffering? The goal is to identify when you are uncomfortable and how you can support yourself through it compassionately. Practicing this skill will help you show up for others with empathetically listen even when it is uncomfortable.

2. Gain perspective by stepping out of your routine. Try new things to disrupt old patterns of behavior or to see things from a different perspective. Get close to nature, the water, the mountain, the trees, the grass, and even a plant. Take five minutes to exercise or stop movement and find stillness in a crowded day. Confide in a friend who holds the open book of your heart and lets you read it to them without judgment. The goal is to intentionally practice changing your perspective for your individual needs, so the impact of hearing someone else has lived experience through a story different from your own has an open path to expand your thinking.

3. Release by laughing a big laugh, feeling your fears, and crying when you need to. Start noticing your emotions when they are not so big so you can better manage them when they are. Sometimes it’s just noticing the subtle moments of joy, like the way the light hits the trees on your morning commute or the great luck of your favorite dance song coming on in the supermarket. Sometimes it’s hearing your inner wisdom when your stomach tightens around the coworker whose energy is not serving you best today. It’s noticing how media affects you as injustices continue to happen around the world and show up in your news feed. Showing up for your own humanity with compassion will allow you to acknowledge emotions at work as part of a whole and complete person. The goal is to practice giving yourself the grace to experience emotions in a healthy way as needed so you can create a safe place for others to be themselves at work.

Leaders determine whether DEI can grow and thrive or stop it in its tracks. Remember your value, your voice and how to compassionately show up for others and DEI will become a natural part of your organization. We owe it to ourselves to be the leaders we need; our employees our counting on it.