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Invisible Diversity: What You Can’t See Can Help You
Jill D. Jacobson, 04-20-2009
Charles Schwab has dyslexia. So do John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems, and David Neeleman, chief executive of JetBlue Airways — and so did the late computer pioneer William Hewlett. These very successful executives learned how to turn their supposed weaknesses into strengths and, in the process, developed methods of contributing to their organizations that were different from their peers’.
Dyslexia provides individuals with a life experience that is completely different from most of the population. According to Dr. Sally E. Shaywitz, director of the Learning Disorders Unit at the Yale University School of Medicine and the author of Overcoming Dyslexia, those with dyslexia often have a variety of qualities, including resilience, adaptability and the ability to formulate original insight. “What distinguishes [those with dyslexia] is that they can really think outside the box,” Shaywitz said in a 2003 New York Times article.
Schwab and Hewlett are white males, lacking the obvious diversity markers of race, sex, physical disability and the like. But each carries an invisible diversity marker — dyslexia — that gives them a unique and, for some, valuable, perspective. Most organizations would consider it a windfall if they unknowingly recruited an individual with dyslexia who turned out to be a Charles Schwab.
Organizations with active, robust diversity programs can even promote and encourage the disclosure of invisible diversity markers, and by doing so can enrich and improve business development, recruitment and retention.
Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are
“Diversity” traditionally is defined to mean racial, ethnic and gender diversity. But diversity manifests itself in many other ways. Invisible diversity is the diversity we usually do not see when we meet and interact with others. It can encompass disability, religion, class, age, regionalism, sexual orientation and other characteristics that contribute to diversity.
Individuals with invisible diversity markers often choose not to disclose them, especially if the markers carry a social stigma. “It’s painful to think about it,” Schwab told the New York Times in 2003. Indeed, many individuals fear reprisal if they disclose socially disfavored markers such as gender reassignment, sexual orientation, poverty or minority spiritual beliefs.
The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals in the workplace provide solid examples of the costs incurred when invisible diversity is hidden. Discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity is still legal in a substantial number of states, and the federal government has yet to pass workplace protections for such individuals.
Often, LGBT individuals will attempt to protect themselves against discrimination by hiding their identity. This requires careful policing of conversations and an almost complete absence of acknowledgement of family and friends from the workplace. Hiding one’s identity in this manner takes a terrible psychological toll and often results in co-workers building walls around each other, the 2003 New York Times article states.
The National Commission on Employment Policies has calculated that hostile work environments that cause such behavior cost companies $1.4 billion in lost output each year due to the reduction in LGBT-worker productivity.
Clearly, workplace environments that foster diversity of all types and encourage disclosure of invisible diversity markers can increase engagement and improve morale and employee satisfaction. Happy employees are less likely to stray, which improves retention. They are more likely to say good things about their employers, which can improve recruiting, and they provide better customer service, which improves business development.
Make the Invisible Visible
Leveraging an organization’s invisible diversity — encouraging employees and customers to disclose invisible diversity markers and acknowledging those markers for the tangible and intangible contributions they can make to the bottom line — requires much more than simply including various characteristics in a nondiscrimination statement or revising organizational policies to include diversity goals or initiatives.
According to Kirk Snyder, author of The G Quotient: Why Gay Executives are Excelling as Leaders, “Lip service doesn’t count anymore.”
An organization’s demonstration of its commitment to diversity must start at the top. The organization’s directors and executives must believe in the business benefits of diversity and demonstrate that belief by hiring a diversity officer who reports to the CEO rather than the human resources director, for example.
Business leaders also must ensure the diversity message is consistent throughout the organization. More than one Fortune 500 company has included sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies, only to have lawyers argue in court that such policies are nonbinding goals or objectives the company has no duty to observe.
Leaders also should be cognizant of the various microinequities that permeate workplace environments: Hand gestures, accents, even certain voice tones can send negative messages that belie an individual’s or organization’s outright statements about diversity.
But sometimes the best way to encourage disclosure of invisible markers is to ensure the organization’s leaders disclose their own markers. If a CEO grew up in a shack in the Appalachian Mountains, she should be encouraged to share her experience with her mentees. If such disclosures are commonplace among leaders, subordinates will feel more comfortable sharing their own experiences. And in sharing these experiences, all employees will feel they are more valued as individuals. And this will help improve their perspectives on the organization’s commitment to inclusion.
Surveys show Charles Schwab employees are among the happiest in the financial industry. Those surveys do not attribute the cause of such job satisfaction to his disclosure of his disability, but such a result is not implausible. After all, “when Schwab speaks, people listen.” And if they do, they are bound to feel more comfortable and secure making their own invisible markers visible. That will affect all aspects of employee morale and, ultimately, the bottom line.
Jill D. Jacobson, Esq., is co-managing partner in the Richmond, Va., office of Bowman and Brooke LLP, a law firm. She can be reached at editor@diversity-executive.com.
Navy Unit Takes Steps to Enhance Diversity
The Naval Special Warfare Command (NSW) — which is part of the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Navy’s Special Operations force — is taking proactive measures to increase diversity within the unit, according to a March article on ShadowSpear Special Operations’ Web site.
To begin, members of the NSW have been making the rounds to historically African American colleges and universities — such as Norfolk State University, Winston-Salem State University and North Carolina Central University — to target recruiting efforts to more diverse candidates.
