Diversity and/or Inclusion?

Many of us have heard the catchy phrase in the diversity and inclusion space: Diversity is about counting people; Inclusion is about making people count.

I like that this phrase calls us to go beyond hiring people based on their skin colour, their orientation, their religion, etc.  It calls us to create workplaces that build upon and value different experiences and opinions.  It is not enough to have members of diverse populations on our teams and in senior leadership.  They need to feel included. 

Making diverse people feel included, making space for different opinions, different attitudes, different assumptions can be hard.  It does not happen by simply including diverse people in the same old discussions in the same old formats.  We need to take conscious steps to explore differences and work hard to find common ground.

This is why diverse teams and organizations are more productive and more creative than non-diverse teams.  If a team has struggled to include different ideas and find common ground where none was obvious before, that team will be more successful.

We have to be careful not to lose focus on the undeniable fact that we are all deeply influenced by our social and economic environment, our sexual orientation, our gender, our ethnic roots, our religion, etc.  In the effort to be inclusive, we cannot let ourselves revert to the phrase that has caused so much harm, “we are all basically the same underneath.”   This is only true in the most basic sense.  We all need food and water, security, meaning, self-realization. That is obvious.  How we get those things differs based on our culture, our experiences, our beleifs and values.