I have recently joined a small group within my organization that has taken upon itself the mighty task of working on a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) initiative that has swept our company (and the country in general) since the George Floyd incident and the whole Black Lives Matter movement that it re-sparked last year. While instinctually I would never participate in such initiatives, I had to this time, since it was the easiest way to add an extra-curricular objective to my annual performance objectives, a mandate by my new boss.
A little bit of background is warranted here, on two topics.
The first, is the topic of a new boss. About 6 months ago, I joined my dream organization and was assigned my dream project within a company I very much admire and would never want to voluntarily leave. Everything was going very well. Until, three months in, I was yanked from my dream project and dumped into an admin role in a team that doesn’t seem to need me beyond managing some of the day to day administrative tasks. The three months that I was in that project were an emotional roller coaster in itself but more on that later. It doesn’t help that I do not particularly get along with the new Boss who is so high up in the chain of command that its hard to even expect she would take the time to make a new employee in her group feel comfortable. We talk 1:1 once in 2 weeks and each talk feels like a report card where nothing I do seems to be enough. Its become bad enough that I want to now explore other options, possibly outside Ford.
The second, is the topic of not willingly wanting to participate in the DEI initiatives. This is a very sensitive topic. It is sensitive for a multitude of reasons and the whole point of it is that its subjective. As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. This, in my opinion, fits the scenario perfectly. One person my feel they are the subject of bias but the perpetrator of the bias may not even know they are doing it. Its all personal perception. And as with all personal perceptions, things can easily get out of hand and cause a lot of pain that one didn’t even intend to cause. For example, being told that, for someone coming from India, I have excellent English skills, sounds derogatory to me as it makes me feel that people here are ignorant to think that all of India is just a bigger, broader version of Slumdog Millionaire (a movie, incidentally, I absolutely loathe). But, the people who said that to me, meant is at a huge compliment! If I had lashed out at them because I was offended, how do you think those relationships would have turned out? It is so that I never lash out or show any signs of disapproval or say something incredibly insensitive myself, that I choose to stay away from such initiatives.
Now, to come back to the subject of this post – my own observations and fascination on how the above two topics are so intertwined.
Going back to something I teased when I was talking about my dream project, I was in immediate heaven. I felt that after a struggle for 6 years, all my hopes and dreams were finally being fulfilled. Even though I had no clue what I was doing, every day was a new learning experience and that’s precisely why that was my dream project. It is (possibly) due to this reason that I was taken out of the project. They did not have the time to have a team member learn and not contribute, even though, personally, I felt like I was getting there quite quickly. Out of the 3 months on that project, for the last 3 weeks, we were in a holding pattern, waiting for management direction on next steps and just when those next steps arrived, just when I felt I would finally be able to actually help out, I was removed. To me, that was unfair. But, they must have had their reasons. I moved on. Even during those three months, it took a lot out of me to speak up the handful number of times that I did and I felt snubbed. To me, it felt bias since I was the “outsider”, the “newbie”, the “inexperienced”. Once, when someone more senior on the team articulated the same point I was trying to make in a separate meeting, it was very well received and even considered thoughtful. I shrugged it off thinking that will change when I learn to articulate myself better and when I gain more experience. But that was snatched from me. Now I am relegated to admin work. To be clear, I do not think any work is beneath me but I feel like I am regressing in my career at a point where all I want is to progress. I did not feel encouraged or empowered enough to talk to my boss about my thoughts on this change. It has been at least two occasions when I mentioned I would like to talk about career with her and she brushed it off both times saying we need to talk about the PowerPoints she wants me to organize. When I don’t understand her language and ask her questions to help me understand, she gets frustrated. When her clarifications don’t make sense and I do what I thought she wanted me to do and show them to her, she gets frustrated. Since I do not talk her language, I am left out. Since my team doesn’t need me for the important project management work, I am left out of key discussions where I could have possibly learnt something. To be fair, what I am leaning is important to an extent, its how to be diplomatic when handling relationships.
My whole team is a team with product development and finance background. And I, come from IT. They throw around terms and concepts which I have no clue about. I asked a team mate about some of them and he pointed me to a guide and thank god he did! At least that’s helped me in some way to feel more like I am part of the team. To be fair, my two team mates are nice! Even though they are males who bond over college football and basketball games in pretty much every meeting, one of them has 2 dogs so he bonds with me over that sometimes and the other has kids and loves baking shows so bonds with me on those. At least, they try and make that effort. But work wise, I am still left out with absolutely no way out. Ideally, this is where you would expect your boss to help you. Its been said so many times that employees quit bosses, not jobs. I used to think that I could manage a hard boss if the job was my dream job but now I have neither a good boss nor my dream job. Its becoming harder every day to hold on to hope. This proves how important it is for a boss to make their employees feel more included.
My company has been looked at as a white male dominated company for most of its long history. Women have forced their way into management in recent years and we are becoming more diverse but we still have a long way to go to. Some organizations within the company, though, are doing better than others. IT, for example, is the obvious best example where you have non-white males and females doing flawless work everyday and they are increasingly becoming the backbone of the company as we move from a traditional automotive to a software focused mobility company. But the core functions like Finance and Strategy are still struggling with diversity. Theoretically, Strategy is trying to be diverse. They brought me in didn’t they? There are a bunch of non-white males and females in the group now. But still, majority of the people in this group are from a Finance, Consulting or Investment Banking background. It is incredibly hard to stand up in front of these people and say anything at all. If I was a CIO or an entrepreneur or something similar, I may have been able to at least find common topics to discuss but I am not.
I face this on a daily basis. But I cannot articulate this as a bias in our DEI group discussions. It is a bias that I feel. Its not a “common” definition of bias. The overall theme of this group tends to be focused more on women empowerment and hiring more diverse talent. Another common area they tend to focus on is community outreach. All of this is important, I will never argue with that. Coming from a life of privilege, I will be among the first to admit, I know nothing of hardship and I want to do everything I can to help someone in need. My fear is, we will never achieve the true meaning of DEI without doing enough on the inclusion front. We cannot try to make the outside world a better place when our own home is struggling. I don’t think I am being judged for being a woman or being a woman of color. I am being judged because I’m not of the same background. I am not being given enough opportunities to feel included. I am having a hard time communicating with a boss who doesn’t think its important to connect with every employee and develop a shared language instead of trying to bend everyone to follow her language. To me, that’s what we need to really focus on. If we focus on that at the workplace, we start propagating it in our personal lives. If we start propagating these practices in our personal lives, among friends and family, we develop ourselves as more tolerant and inclusive people and slowly but surely, we turn our surroundings into a better culture.
I wish I could make this speech during one of our little group meetings but I already know I would get tons of rolling eyes and a bunch of inattentive net surfers who will write this off as another case of not truly understanding the greater good, who don’t truly understand what I feel. And THAT is, once again, why I don’t participate in DEI initiatives.
Musings of a confused nut! 