Diverse definitions
How do you currently define or describe diversity, and what is your experience working with or leading diverse individuals, teams, or larger organizations?
I currently define diversity as a collection of difference in all forms. I immediately thin of one specific experience when dealing with diversity and leading a diverse team of individuals. This example is most appropriate as it directly ties into JMU. Going into my senior year as an undergraduate, I took up the task of creating a brand new diversity program for the JMU Orientation Office from scratch. The office had been utilizing a program titled “Faces of America” for years and it seemed out of place to me. This presentation focused on the gender and racial differences that exist and portrayed them in an extreme way. While I can see the usefulness of the exposure, the overall message seemed to extreme and out of place. By putting on the “Faces of America” presentation, JMU Orientation was assuming that incoming first year students needed an, in your face, wakeup call when it comes to diversity. I felt that this program needed to be changed and become more reflective of our community and inclusive for incoming students.
I dreamed up a program called “I am JMU”. This program is still utilized by the Orientation Office today. The central idea is that JMU, while not diverse at first glance, is teeming with diverse individuals with important stories to be shared. I thought about all of the people I had met at JMU and thought that these people are incredibly diverse. Why don’t we put these students on stage and let them share their stories with the incoming freshman. The underlying message of the program was that diversity is all around us every day. We don’t have to wince when we hear the word diversity and think of ethnic minorities. Diversity is something to be celebrated and embraced as the diversity amongst individuals is what spurs development in both a professional and cultural way. Leading this change came easy to me because I was working with my friends and fellow Dukes.
This all started by sitting down and figuring out what elements of campus I wanted to expose during the presentation. We had a gay fraternity member, a devout Catholic Accounting Major, a sorority sister who was still trying to figure out her major and feelings on her religion as a junior, we had a JMU football player, we had the 2008 Mrs. Madison who shared her challenging upbringing. My job was to encourage these people to share their stories on stage in front of every incoming student at JMU. Remember, these were not performing arts students or anything. These students had the courage to put their paper, memorize it, and then share their life in a way unique to them. I gave the students creative freedom when it came to presenting their story. This small element encouraged them to portray themselves how they wanted to without any pressure to deliver a message in a specific way. This may be one of my greatest accomplishments up to this point in my life.
What is your current perspective on the roles and responsibilities of leaders relative to equity and inclusion? Is it compliance oriented? Is it proactive?
I believe that we all have a responsibility to promote equality and inclusivity when it comes to our day to day actions. Everybody needs to lead the people around them by standing up for equal rights and speaking out when they see injustice. It was MLK Jr. who said, “Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere.” The little things we let by will eventually turn into bigger issues. Within an organizational structure, leaders have the power to set the culture of diversity. This is something that should be both compliant and proactive. Leaders are often times directly responsible for the people who get hired and added to staff. This means that they have the opportunity to bring on people who fall in line with what is already in place, or they can bring on someone who will bring new perspective and a diverse outlook on the way things can be done. Aside from the talent within the organization, the working relationships with other organizations highlights an organizations attitude towards diversity. Leaders decide who they would like to partner with on given projects or programs. These leaders are setting the culture of diversity for the organization when they decide whether or not to partner with organizations that are very similar or with organizations who are different. Leaders need to be mindful of how their decisions will impact their followers. They are responsible for the culture and need to ensure that all members of the organization feel included and supported. This is done by encouraging diversity within the workplace.
What are ways you believe leaders can improve representation and better embrace and lead diversity in a sport organization?
I believe that sport leaders can improve representation and better embrace and lead diversity in a sport organization by including all community members and seeking out best practices in other sports. By involving the community, you send a message that everyone matters. I can tell you from my personal experience that the most important part of my job as a youth sport director was not the outcomes but the way in which we built the community. I firmly believe that people will continue to come back and participate if they feel that they matter in your organization. This is done by introducing yourself to new families, keeping up with each player’s development and inquiring about community satisfaction both formally and informally. Ice hockey is an affluent sport and usually played by middle to upper class white males. Like other sports, this can be an intimidating community to get into if you are not white or financially stable. As a leader, I can extend a greeting and share a laugh with all members of the community regardless of their socio-economic status or ethnicity. This tells my community that I embrace diversity and that everybody has a place in our community. Doing this simple action over time sets an example and subconsciously conveys the message that everyone is welcome in our program.
Utilizing best practices in other sports is another great way to encourage diversity. Without a doubt, your community is made up of individuals from different athletic backgrounds. They may know nothing about the sport their child is playing but they man be incredibly knowledgeable in another sport. It is helpful to utilize best practices from other sports because it creates a familiarity within the community and encourages inclusivity in addition to providing a better developmental framework for participants. An example of this is the American Development Model utilized by USA Hockey and a collection of other sport organizations. Current sport science research suggests that we need to look at age appropriate training and long term athlete development for our kids. Instead of our five and six year olds training like NFL football players and lifting weights at an early age, let’s build athleticism from the ground up and introduce certain exercises when appropriate. This is still not utilized fully by all major athletic governing bodies in the United States. However, more sports are turning to this philosophy and implementing the ideas into their structure. This would not be possible if we didn’t seek out best practices and diverse approaches to youth sport development.
What are some of the critical issues, as you know of them now, in relation to women and special populations in sport?
This is an interesting question and speaks to a much larger issue. I would say that almost every demographic is excluded from a sport in one way or another. Until recently, women did not hold coaching positions within the major sport associations in the world. This is still a, nearly impossible, area to get into as a woman and it is because most sport leaders don’t view women as viable options for leadership positions. Is this right? Absolutely not. Women consistently demonstrate their ability to lead sport organizations in coaching, management, player roles, etc. There is an implicit attitude that exists towards women and for that reason women are excluded. We need to re-wire our brains here and look at reality for what it is. It is not fair to say that a woman could not effectively coach a NFL team for example. I say fair because it is not the capability of women but instead our cognitive make-up as a society that keeps this from happening. The attitudes about women in sport need to evolve and fall in line with today’s reality. The reality is that men and women are equally capable and able when it comes to sports. This idea can be applied to other populations with similar experiences in sports.
How might you assess your own, or others’, leadership competencies relative to diversity and inclusion> How could this information be used in leadership evaluation and professional development?
In a University setting, we are lucky to live and work within a community that has a higher degree of acceptance for diversity. There may be some that disagree but I believe that a lack of appreciation for diversity is often times due to ignorance or a lack of education on the topic itself. I think that everyone needs to continually look at the world around them and embrace the diversity that exists. It is easy to overlook a lack of diversity when we are continually surrounded by one group of people, one set of ideals, genders, etc. My own personal assessment tells me that I don’t do this enough. I have many thoughts running through my mind as I type this because I think about how important it is to encourage diversity in the workplace and knowing that there are ways to lead this attitude. I think that the competencies of others are mostly similar. There are some leaders who do a much better job of this and there are other leaders who have no regard for diversity and reject its importance.
This information is incredibly useful in leadership evaluation and professional development because diversity is an essential piece of an organizations culture that has real implications. Left unnoticed, an organization may underachieve as a result of limited diversity. This can be as simple as ideas or as blatant as race. If you have a staff of 300 employees and only one is white, that person may feel isolated because they don’t associate with anyone else. This can lead to feelings of isolation and limit their work productivity. Similarly, an organization may try the same thing every time to see a sub-par result. If the same leadership would open the process up to new ideas, the diversity in opinions may yield a more productive and profitable process.
Three Items:
1.) Surface-Level versus Deep-Level: This topic interests me because you usually only see organizations that care about the surface level diversity without regard for the deep level. This is usually seen whey organizations mandate that all employees attend a diversity training at random. The training has no real implications when it comes to the work being done and is never brought up again after the training is over. Is that really all we need to have a diverse workplace? I don’t think so. If we don’t care about diversity let’s not be insulting and pretend we do. Take that a step further, we may care deeply about diversity but why administer a training without any purpose. The deep level is where we all need to get to. Easier said than done but still necessary. Deep level diversity is only achieved when we are constantly monitoring the world around us and identifying any different. Deep level diversity is not thinking of diversity whenever you see a person of color. We need to shake off what we’ve been conditioned to think about diversity and think about it for ourselves. That concept in itself is diversity. We need diverse opinions on diversity. We don’t need more diversity workshops that discuss only ethnic differences.
2.) Approaches to Diversity Management: This topic interests me because it frames the idea of diversity management as a choice. I really do think that embracing diversity is a choice and that the way we manage people sends a message about how we feel towards diversity as whole. Let’s look at my assistantship right now, majority of our participants are white, English speaking families. However, there is a large population of Hispanic, Spanish speakers, as well. The organization hired a Hispanic, Spanish speaking woman to serve as the recreation program director. This employee not enables the office to communicate with the Spanish speaking population where they couldn’t before. This is all well and good but the majority of our communication to the community comes in the form of emails and our website. Take a look at these two areas and you won’t find a word of Spanish. Are we really providing an inclusive environment for these families? I would say not. I think that the organization may have broached surface-level diversity when they hired our Rec. Director but they didn’t really think of how her talents will enable us to reach out to an entire population of people that we were missing out on. We should be sending emails, posting on social media, and displaying content on our website in both English and Spanish. I would categorize the management style as reactive and surface-level.
3.) Leading a Culture of Diversity: This topic resonates with me because it is incredibly hard to do. Most people want to say that they encourage diversity and they probably really mean it. The issue is that most leaders can’t even identify a lack of diversity around them because they accept their current situation for what it is without any true desire to see it change. I fall into this same boat at times too. Leading a culture of diversity is incredibly hard and I much easier when you have an outside perspective. As leaders, we need to build diversity into our culture. I spoke about feelings of loneliness and isolation above when I references a scenario where you had one white person working in an office of 300 people. Leaders need to really think about these things so that we set ourselves up and our followers up for success.
