Chapter 9

Questions and Answers for Managers

Because managing diversity is on the leading edge of thinking about human resource management, and because implementing it is complex, there are many questions and many misconceptions. Particularly difficult for many is separating managing diversity’s general assumptions from those of affirmative action and valuing differences.

Some wonder about securing commitment from senior management, others about the pragmatics of initiating such a complex venture. In this chapter are some of the most frequently asked questions about managing diversity.

Question: Briefly, how would you define managing diversity?

Answer: Managing diversity is a holistic approach to creating a corporate environment that allows all kinds of people to reach their full potential in pursuit of corporate objectives. It is not a prepackaged set of solutions. It is not a program for addressing discrimination.

Question: What was the motivation for creating managing diversity? Was it an effort to get away from the negative images associated with affirmative action, such as quotas and unqualified people?

Answer: This may be a byproduct of managing diversity, but it was not its driving force. Managing diversity is not a ruse for “backdooring” affirmative action. It approaches diversity from a management perspective: how best to manage the company’s human resources, given the fact that those resources are now far more diverse than in earlier times. It is not about leveling the playing field to give minorities and women an extra advantage; it’s about maximizing the contributions of all employees. It is something that is done for the benefit of the corporation in the interests of remaining competitive in an increasingly unfriendly environment.

True, all groups will benefit, whether they are different in terms of age, lifestyle, gender, or race. But their benefit is not the driving motivation. Managing diversity presumes that the driving force is the manager’s, and the company’s, self-interest.

Question: Where did the term “managing diversity” come from? Who originated the concept?

Answer: No one really knows who originated the concept. As I use the term, “managing” indicates the managerial approach—it’s for and about management—and “diversity” simply reflects the reality of the work force today.

Question: Is managing diversity new or is it simply affirmative action warmed over?

Answer: Managing diversity is not warmed-over affirmative action. It is, instead, a different set of challenges and opportunities. It goes far beyond race and gender. And it is new—a process that hasn’t yet been put on the agenda of America’s companies. It’s not that corporations have failed with managing diversity; they have not addressed it.

Question: Does managing diversity replace affirmative action? If not, how do they fit together?

Answer: Managing diversity will, in the long term, make affirmative action unnecessary. In the short term, corporations will need to do both in parallel. Managing diversity may make people more receptive to affirmative action, primarily because it suggests that there is an end to the tunnel.

Question: I’ve heard the term valuing differences, but I’m not sure exactly what it means or where it fits in.

Answer: Valuing differences initiatives are designed to enhance the individual’s awareness, understanding, and acceptance of differences among people. In that it focuses on the individual and interpersonal levels, as opposed to the organizational level, it is similar to affirmative action. Typically, valuing differences does not involve the changing of corporate culture and systems as espoused by managing diversity.

Question: Why not simply skip affirmative action and valuing differences and go straight to managing diversity?

Answer: Managing diversity in a very real sense encompasses affirmative action and valuing differences, but there are two reasons why you can’t ignore the more traditional modes.

The first is that implementing managing diversity to an extent where you can tap a substantial amount of its potential will take time. Just launching the managing diversity approach can take as long as five years. Full implementation and evaluation of results will take a minimum of ten years, more likely between fifteen and twenty years. So there must be ways to deal with diversity-related issues that arise while you are moving forward with managing diversity.

The second reason is that affirmative action and valuing differences have dealt with these issues in a way that has produced significant results. The difficulty is that they can’t sustain them naturally. If you eliminate affirmative action and valuing differences before gaining the benefits of managing diversity, you risk having diversity-related issues not addressed. This will disadvantage people who are “different’’ and, more critically, it will affect the productivity of the organization.

Question: What is the likely scenario? Is it affirmative action, then valuing differences, then managing diversity—or can we go from affirmative action to managing diversity?

In other words, can you manage diversity without valuing differences?

Answer: You can manage diversity without valuing differences, but you can’t manage diversity without understanding differences. The sequence that makes sense for me is that affirmative action must be followed by understanding and accepting differences, and then by managing diversity.

To say that managers must value differences before they can manage diversity implies that there is a choice, that managers who don’t place a premium on diversity won’t have to deal with it. But there is no choice. The reality is that whether you value diversity or not, you will have it as a major characteristic of your work force. If you are to be effective as a manager, you will have to manage diversity.

I also believe, however, that if you manage diversity effectively, you easily will come to value it.

Question: What kind of diversity does a manager see?

Answer: Although the most obvious sources of diversity are ethnicity, race, and gender, employees can differ along any number of lines. They may, for example, differ with respect to age, functional and educational backgrounds, lifestyle preferences, tenure within the organization, personality traits, and ways of thinking.

Obviously, they differ in numerous other ways as well. The significant differences for a given group of employees must be ferreted out empirically. They cannot be assumed or assigned, but must be identified through interactions with individual subordinates.

In determining how employees differ, managers must avoid stereotyping, positively or negatively. This may become more difficult as a manager gains experience with members of a given group and begins to believe that he “knows” what “they” are like.

Yet a manager always manages individuals, not groups. The most any manager can say is that “based on my experience to date with employees in my corporation, I have found certain characteristics to be shared; however, I understand that individuals differ, and that I cannot assume that these premises will hold true as I interact with additional members of a given racial, ethnic, or gender group. Instead, I must be open to the possibility that new members will be different.”

Question: Why “managing” diversity rather than leveraging diversity or capitalizing diversity?

Answer: Because I begin from a managerial perspective. I define “managing’’ as the task of creating an environment that allows the individuals being managed to reach their full potential in pursuit of corporate objectives.

Through various legal, moral, and social responsibility mechanisms, we have created a diverse work force. Now we must ask ourselves whether we have the managerial know-how to tap the full potential of this entity that we have created.

Leveraging differences suggests that you’re going to identify the differences people have and leverage those differences. This goes against the managing diversity concept. We’re talking about managing a group of people who have both significant differences and significant similarities.

Question: Why managing diversity now? Why is this term coming up?

Answer: Diversity is becoming an issue not only because of the increasing percentage of minorities and women in the workplace but because of changing attitudes as well. In the past, people who were “different” were willing to assimilate, in order to get ahead in the workplace. Increasingly today, people are celebrating the things that make them different. They’re more reluctant to put their differences on hold.

As a result, managers will find themselves dealing not with diversity but with unassimilated diversity. It is this lack of assimilation that creates the challenge. In the past, assimilation allowed us the luxury of having people who were different on the surface but homogeneous underneath. Now we must learn how to manage people who are different below the surface as well.

Question: Managing diversity doesn’t say much about the richness of diversity and the benefits that can be gained from workplace diversity. Why is this? Aren’t you ignoring a potentially strong motive for moving forward with managing diversity?

Answer: Many individuals believe that there is a richness in diversity that you can’t get from a homogeneous work force. This may be true, but it’s not necessary to support managing diversity. Whether there is a richness or not, managers will have employees with significant differences and similarities. The compelling case for managing diversity lies in the fact that diversity is a reality—or soon will be. By focusing on the richness, you risk suggesting that the manager has a choice. (The thinking goes, if you don’t value this alleged richness, you don’t have the need to move forward.)

Question: Are minorities and women naturally better at managing diversity?

Answer: No. It is easier to say that minorities and women may be more receptive to affirmative action and valuing differences because of the apparent benefits for them and also because of their experiences as minorities and women.

When it comes to diversity, however, most corporations have not asked anyone to manage in the real sense of the word. As a result, all managers are equally ill prepared. You might reasonably expect women and minorities to be sensitive to diversity issues, but being sensitive is not equivalent to managing.

Question: We have just spent years telling people that they should be color-blind. Now we’re telling them to recognize and value the differences. Isn’t this a major inconsistency?

Answer: No. The notions of color-blind and gender-blind never did call for ignoring the reality of differences. They simply insisted that we not discount or disadvantage a person because of his or her differences. In other words, neither color nor gender determined a person’s worth.

Managing diversity calls for recognizing that people are different without condemning them for these differences. It also calls for taking these differences into account as managers determine what environment will allow diverse people to reach their full potential. Managing diversity is congruent with the true notions of color-blind and gender-blind.

Question: Women and minorities are just beginning to get something from affirmative action and now they are being asked to give that up for something that includes white males—who have always been advantaged. Isn’t this unfair?

Answer: No. This question reflects the zero-sum nature of the traditional approach to diversity: that one group advances only at the expense of another. Remember, managing diversity isn’t about doing something for employees. It’s about enabling the manager for the benefit of the organization to tap the potential of all people. Including white males under the umbrella is not at the expense of anyone.

Question: What is going to prevent blacks from ending up on the bottom of the diversity pile?

Answer: Again, this reflects the zero-sum nature of the traditional approach. It also reflects a belief that somehow the system will work to the disadvantage of black employees.

Managing diversity is not based on a zero-sum assumption. A manager who practices managing diversity in a way that results in any group ending up on the bottom of the pile is not understanding the true sense of the concept.

Question: Won’t managing diversity diffuse the effort now being devoted to race and gender issues?

Answer: This question normally is a reaction to the multiple dimensions of diversity. Often minorities and women will have difficulty seeing how a corporation that has not been able to handle two dimensions of diversity can now handle multiple dimensions. They fear that any progress in implementing the managing diversity concept will be at the expense of the attention traditionally given to race and gender issues. This is a real risk on a temporary, short-term basis. But as the manager gains expertise and capability in managing diversity, this risk will be mitigated.

It is also important to realize that true sustainable progress comes only when all of diversity’s facets are addressed. Managing diversity is not a program. It calls for changing a way of life. Such a change cannot be selective; it happens across the board.

Question: We (white males) are being forced to change to accommodate them. They should change in order to fit in. We changed; why shouldn’t they?

Answer: Willingness to be assimilated—to change in order to fit in—is an individual decision. For any number of reasons, different groups, whether they be white males with different life styles or ethnic or racial groups with different cultural backgrounds, are increasingly reluctant to accept assimilation.

So, as a manager, you have a choice. You can refuse to entertain the possibility that the corporation should adjust, and continue to place the adaptation burden on the individual. But if you do that and individuals are unwilling to assimilate, their full potential will never be tapped. And if your competition is a company that is willing to talk about a mutual adaptation process, you will soon find yourself at a disadvantage.

Question: I’m not clear about what you mean by assimilation. Can you give an example?

Answer: A manager of a department whose employees are predominantly Hispanics asked: “Is it too much to ask these people to speak English? We’ve given them the best job they’ve ever had.” This is another way of asking, “Why won’t these people assimilate and use our language?”

From a managing diversity perspective, where the manager’s challenge and responsibility is to tap the full potential of all employees, it’s more valid to ask, “Is there a compelling business reason for these workers to speak English? Does the nature of their work require it? Is it too much to ask me to speak English and Spanish?” Managing diversity assumes that both the corporation and its employees must adapt to each other.

All companies will and should require some individual adaptation. The challenge is to ensure that the prescriptions are essential to the integrity of the organization and not unnecessarily restrictive.

Question: From the perspective of senior management, how risky is empowerment management?

Answer: In the context of managing diversity, I make a basic distinction between leadership and management. Leadership tasks include ensuring that the corporation is imbued with vision, that there is an articulated strategy (decisions designed to enable the corporation to gain a competitive advantage), and that there is an appropriate corporate culture. The outcomes of these three leadership tasks provide the context for carrying out managerial tasks.

The basic managerial task is to “bring in the bacon” in the short term—up to two years. There are at least two principal modes prescribing how a manager should do this: the doer and empowerment models. The empowerment model is practiced within the context of leadership. The more effectively the leadership tasks have been carried out, the more well-defined the context is for implementing the empowerment model.

In reality, if there is a clear vision and a very supportive and strong culture, empowerment management is much easier. In other words, leadership serves to socialize an individual employee with the essence of what the organization is about—the vision, the strategic rationale, and the basic critical assumptions that are driving the enterprise. When all this is understood by the individual, the risks of empowerment are greatly reduced. One of the main reasons managers are reluctant to empower is that they don’t trust employees to function in a desirable way.

I believe that managers have a dual role: that of managing and that of leading. Leadership provides the context for management and in this way it also provides the context for empowerment.

Question: You put a lot of emphasis on changing cultural roots. What should be the roots of corporations that desire to move forward with managing diversity?

Answer: This is an empirical process question. In other words, managers must go through the process of examining their competitive environment and the nature of their business. They must then examine the present roots of their corporation in the context of these environmental realities.

Occasionally, personal preferences and strategic necessities conflict. One manager, confronted with the necessity for cultural change, said to me, “I like the roots of my company; they work for me.” This is fine, but it misses the point. The issue is not whether the roots work for you and people like you, but rather whether they work for those who are not like you—whether they allow you as a manager to enable people who are different from yourself.

If the roots won’t serve you well, you must determine what changes are needed in the existing culture. After that, you must develop a plan to direct the move from the present to the desired state. There is no substitute for this process. Implementing cultural change will require a commitment from managers to drive this change for at least a decade. Without the kind of individual commitment that develops as a result of going through the whole process, there can be no successful cultural change.

Question: What can I (senior management) do to change culture? What can I (middle management) do to change culture?

Answer: Senior managers often argue that their hands are tied because of middle managers. Middle managers say they can’t do anything because of senior management. The reality is that both groups can contribute to the process of changing culture at their own level.

Managers at all levels must carry out both management and leading tasks. In practice, cultural change ultimately will require senior management’s involvement and endorsement because of the magnitude of the effort. Yet it would be a serious mistake to assume that cultural change can be carried out solely at this level. The leadership tasks of building and maintaining a culture must occur throughout the pyramid. Each level of management must apply appropriate levers. These must be identified and action plans developed. In some instances they are basically the same levers but manifested differently.

Among the cultural change levers that both senior and middle managers must use are the following:

These and other cultural change activities can’t be confined to any level of management, but must prevail at all levels.

Question: Why isn’t the “family” root appropriate in managing diversity? It has worked well for many corporations up to this point.

Answer: The notion that “we are family” is exclusive in nature—and that is the exact opposite of what managing diversity is about. The concepts of team and community are much more inclusive.

Also, the notion of family gives rise to a paternalistic climate where managers are like parents and employees are like children. This results in dependent behavior on the part of employees, and dependency is a major block to empowerment.

Even more important, the family model gives rise to the doer model: the manager [the parent] does the work and thereby shows the employees [the children] how the work should be done. This contrasts directly with the empowerment model. If you can’t practice empowerment management, you can’t practice managing diversity.

Question: How do you explain to middle-level managers the benefits of an empowerment style of management?

Answer: We must remember that all individuals aren’t suited for management; some may be more suited as doers. This is not a negative statement; it’s simply descriptive.

People are often made managers as a reward—they make a manager’s higher salary but remain great doers. Corporations must devise ways of recognizing and compensating legitimate and effective doers without using management per se as a reward mechanism. They should then seek out individuals who have the skills and attitudes necessary to become empowerment managers.

Corporations that want to move to empowerment management must do much more than convince managers that they need to empower their people. They might need to do a major restructuring of the selection process for new managers, perhaps even redeploy some present ones.

Question: How do I get my managers to do the “right and proper” things?

Answer: This is fundamentally an educational process. (I don’t mean training. Education deals with the way we think about issues; training deals with developing skills.) Progress must be made in changing the mindsets of individuals. If managers are to move forward with managing diversity, they will have to have mindset changes.

Question: My job is so demanding now that I don’t have time as a manager to worry about this diversity stuff, and neither do my colleagues.

Answer: This is equivalent to saying, “I don’t get paid to bring about cultural change; I get paid to deliver results.” Managers who make this statement are indicating that they have described their job in the “doer” model mode. And in reality, doer managers don’t have time. The only way to get around the time constraints is to change the concept and priorities of the manager’s job. It takes a manager who accepts the reality of leadership tasks to agree to spend the time and energy needed to implement cultural change.

Question: What do you do when management seems to have no motivation at all to move forward in managing diversity?

Answer: Managing diversity is not for everyone. It requires either vision or the presence of pain. Corporations that have a vision of the future and an understanding of the implications of the changing work-force demographics and attitudes can understand the opportunities presented by managing diversity. Similarly, corporations experiencing pain with diversity at this time can appreciate the necessity. Without vision or pain, however, there is not likely to be sufficient motivation to pioneer with a concept such as managing diversity.

Even when there is vision or pain, a corporation’s managers may be reluctant to pioneer because pioneering is incongruent with their corporate culture or individual natures. These managers must wait until others have established a track record with managing diversity before they jump on board. This means, however, that they probably won’t be able to tap managing diversity as a strategic opportunity because many corporations will be far ahead of them. They will jump on the bandwagon simply to keep up with the competition rather than staying ahead.

Question: Can anything be done without senior management’s commitment?

Answer: Yes. The press for managing diversity can begin anywhere and, in practice, often does. Ultimately, given the nature and magnitude of the change we’re discussing, senior management’s commitment will be necessary, especially in a doer, paternalistic organization. But the beginning of exploring managing diversity and of recognizing its potential benefits can occur at any place in the organization. What’s important is that individual managers who press for the implementation of managing diversity recognize that they must eventually impress and influence senior management to become committed.

Question: Little has been said about subordinates and managing diversity. What role do they play?

Answer: Subordinates can play a major role in furthering the implementation of managing diversity. Central to this role is accepting, understanding, and appreciating differences among employees, since they will be part of a work force characterized by unassimilated diversity.

Subordinates must also help managers identify, appreciate, and understand differences among employees. They must be willing to foster quality communication lines between managers and themselves. Finally, subordinates must accept some responsibility for implementing managing diversity. They must agree to share the change agent role. Without informed, committed subordinates, managers cannot launch or sustain major, long-term change.

Question: What about support groups? Are they compatible with managing diversity?

Answer: Support groups have been very effective in many corporations. However, once managing diversity has been fully implemented, you wouldn’t expect to see them. These groups evolve when people feel the need to interact with people who are similar. When people feel that the overall environment supports their efforts, they are less likely to need additional supports. In this context, support groups are transitional mechanisms as corporations move from traditional programs to a managing diversity approach.

Question: How does meritocracy—the presumption that “cream will rise to the top”—fit with the concept of managing diversity? Are they in conflict?

Answer: No. Our research suggests that merit promotions have three dimensions:

1. Task merit: Demonstrated capability to perform a given task sufficiently.
2. Cultural merit: Demonstrated capability to conform to the major requirements of the corporation’s basic assumptions or roots.
3. Political merit: Demonstrated capability to attract the endorsement of someone with sufficient clout to minimize doubt about an individual’s qualifications.

People who are “different” often are able to meet the first condition but not the second or third.

Managing diversity simply calls for the manager to ensure that cultural and political realities do not advantage or disadvantage anyone because of irrelevant considerations. In this sense, then, there is no conflict between the two ideas.

Notice that this merit framework makes it clear that cream does not rise naturally. All employees, even “self-made” individuals, benefit from political assists. This is the nature of organizational reality. This explains why “just do your job; don’t get involved in politics” is bad advice. New managers who follow this advice often wonder why they are overlooked for promotions. There is no substitute for fulfilling all three requirements of the merit framework.

Question: Can you point to any success stories with managing diversity?

Answer: Managing diversity is an embryonic, pioneering concept. Some corporations have been successful in launching managing diversity efforts, but I cannot point to any corporation where managing diversity is a “done deal.” It is simply too early.

Indeed, if I could identify corporations where managing diversity is a reality, it would invalidate one of the most significant points: managing diversity can be the source of strategic opportunity. The more success stories there are, the less the strategic opportunity becomes. Inherent in the notion of strategic is the assumption of doing something others haven’t been able to do.

Question: How do you measure managing diversity’s success?

Answer: You begin by asking the appropriate questions. Don’t ask, “How many minorities and women do we have at each level of the organization?” or “How good is our representation of minorities and women in the corporation?” These are important questions, but they’re not the best questions for determining whether you’re making progress in managing diversity.

You must be clear that the goal of managing diversity is to tap the full potential of all employees. You want to measure your progress by getting a sense of how well you are tapping this potential, or at least developing an environment that ultimately will allow you to do so. A major premise of managing diversity, for example, is that you must have an appropriate culture and systems. So, to measure the progress of managing diversity, you must determine the extent to which your systems are supportive of a diverse work force.

We need ways to measure both the appropriateness of the culture with respect to a diverse work force and the effectiveness of a set of systems in serving such a work force. Here are some of the questions we should be asking:

We have not yet reached the stage of implementing evaluation technologies. But when they evolve, they must be grounded in the understanding that it is necessary to assess whether the corporate culture and systems are becoming multicultural rather than remaining monocultural. Multicultural reflects the reality of diversity; monocultural reflects the preferences and nature of the dominant group.