The Circle Project

Patti Digh featured as "Meetings Industry Guru"

Circle Project co-founder Patti Digh was featured this week as a Meetings Industry Guru on the Meetings Industry Megasite. In that role, Patti contributed three short articles on diversity issues for meeting planners:

Let’s hold our next National Conference over Christmas!

Make inclusive meetings your brand

How accessible is your meeting?

What drives diversity change? Not what you think.

-David Robinson, The Circle Project (www.thecircleproject.com)

Think of the Grand Canyon. Or of a river gorge closer to home. We know from those examples that water follows the structure of the land. Behavior is also like water; it too follows the structure of the land.

And yet, as we provide diversity expertise and training in organizations whose core values include a commitment to inclusion, often they're not in it for the long haul - they don't really want to investigate the structure of the land, but want to quickly look at the water and move on to things that are more "mission critical."
 
We can either belittle their shortcomings or we can move them to deeper and more intentional action about diversity issues. But how?
 
There are two things required of a good model for change: 1) the issue has to be personal, and 2) it has to be relevant for the long view - it has to apply to something bigger than me, go beyond me. Perhaps there are actually three things - the third has to do with believability: I have to believe that my actions matter (the actions are immediate but the impact is long term).
 
Relevance is actually the first thing (if we don't do this now we'll lose in the long run), then making it personal (this is mine to do, in everything that I do), then believability (I may not see the change but I know if I act now the change will happen).
 
After watching An Inconvenient Truth, I am re-astounded by the capacity of human beings for denial, or truth construction based on what we want to believe. Given all that Al Gore has presented, all the science and data, the actions our leaders are taking (and in fact, we ourselves) are less than minimal. The same can be said of diversity efforts.
 
Regardless of what we want to believe, people do not act out of reason. Smokers who continue smoking in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are killing themselves provide one good example of this. Approaching diversity solely from the standpoint of data and statistics is ultimately futile.

Executives demand data and the omnipresent "business case for diversity," but they will not really respond to it in significant actionable ways because it is irrelevant to their experience (they can't see it) and the only kind of "personalization" they can see is "I will lose or my people will lose." They have no visceral reason or understanding to act on the data and data, in fact, is largely a negative impetus, not a positive one.

I've spent much of my career training young actors to free their impulses so they can get to the root of what drives their actions, what defines their intentions on the stage. People like to think that reason rules the day but it doesn't. We act out of emotion (usually fear or desire). If reason ruled the day, modern marketing wouldn't work, diversity would be a non-issue, and I'd be selling my car (which, come to think about it, isn't such a bad idea).
 
Significant diversity change is not possible as an intellectual exercise or “data dump,” nor can it be legislated. Significant diversity change will only come when it is personal and relevant to the leadership of our organizations. Until then we are incapable of looking beyond our behaviors to the structure of the land.

[amazing, beautiful river images from David Jensen]

Dead Metaphors and Counterfeit Conversations

-by David Robinson

HR professionals continue to rely on metaphors of diversity that obfuscate and complicate the very challenges they are meant to address. “Stir fry,” “mosaic,” “tossed salad,” and “bottom line” is all metaphors that HR professionals use—and abuse—in talking about and addressing diversity issues. They have become pablum of sorts, quaint “shorthand” for diversity; we are losing their meanings and power

The reality of diversity in the workplace is complex. It requires metaphors capable of grasping complexity, expanding perspectives, and facilitating a meaningful dialogue across difference. By unwittingly “literalizing” their metaphors, HR professionals hinder their capacity to grasp and address the multifarious nature of diversity. Without the capacity to engage with multiple perspectives that comes with metaphor, their only recourse is to default to well-worn cycles of legislating behavior, thereby perpetuating the notion that diversity is a problem to be “solved.”

Business identifies itself through what it believes to be quantifiable, objective data. The “bottom line” is a favorite and oft used expression (and a metaphor). It is not surprising then, that HR professionals, working within a context that greatly values the reduction of information, are stymied when confronted with a complexity like diversity. Business demands that issues be reduced to prose, which condemns HR professionals to perpetually seek ways to address the “bottom line” of diversity. When “seeking the bottom line of diversity” refers only to “what is the pay-off?” or “what will it cost?” the metaphor (bottom line) is being used literally and no longer functions as a metaphor. It is in effect, dead.

The parade of literal business cases made to address the literal “bottom line of diversity” indicates that the metaphor has lost its referential power. A living metaphor connotes; it is the poetry that reaches for understanding beyond the ability of language to grasp. A dead metaphor denotes; at best it describes. It is prose. When taken literally, a metaphor (bottom line) has no power to illuminate; the subject (diversity) is reduced, the interpretive possibilities neutered and the complexities denied. In fact, the inert metaphor holds the subject (diversity) captive reducing its access to quantitative statements, dollars and cents. “Stir Fry,” “Mosaic,” “Jelly Bean Jar,” and “Tossed Salad,” are among the plethora of “different-things–in-a-single-container” comparisons used to describe but incapable of illuminating diversity.

A living metaphor facilitates a more significant and revealing engagement with diversity. It does more than describe. It affords HR professionals the capacity to deal with the complexity of diversity in a useful way. For instance, Robert Fritz teaches that behavior, like water, will always follow the path of least resistance, a path determined by the structure of the land. How might diversity interventions transform if the focus shifted from regulating behavior to engaging with the underlying structure of the land? How might diversity become meaningful if it was no longer seen as a container-of-different-things (a “silo”) but instead was understood as an action, “how we do what we do?” These perceptual changes are possible within a living metaphor in which the “essence” or the “ends” or the “heart” or the “fundamental nature” of diversity become relevant.

Dead metaphors are supported by two concepts: split intentions and counterfeit conversations.

A split intention happens when actions taken do not support the stated intentions. For instance, when an organization sincerely includes diversity in its statement of core values but does little to address its recruiting and hiring practices, systems of promotions, compensation, etc., it has effectively split its intention. A split intention is often invested in the appearance of an action and not the action itself. When diversity is encased in a dead metaphor, HR professionals have no choice but to split their intentions in order to make their initiatives appear impactful.

Counterfeit conversations result from the continued, persistent use of a dead metaphor as if it were still alive. The metaphors we use frame the choices we see; when a metaphor no longer refers to an illumination, it becomes concrete and obfuscates absurdities. In this instance, when we take seriously the metaphor of the “bottom line of diversity,” it appears that the unsolvable might be solved. The organization, invested in the concrete nature of its metaphor, is within its rights to demand that expenditures en route to solving the unsolvable be justified. HR professionals with the task of “solving” diversity while staying under budget have no other recourse but to talk around the issue and pretend that a mountain of data, lists of statistics, 10 best tools or a host of interventions and conferences will actually result in the “solving” of the problem. It is a vicious circle.

It is a trick of language that deludes us into grasping for diversity like it is an object, a thing, jellybeans in a jar. The word “diversity” is, after all, a noun. It is only through another trick of language, a living metaphor, that we will able to reach beyond the limits of our language and encounter the many complex forces, the poetry that we reduce to the prose “diversity.”

-David Robinson is co-founder of The Circle Project, providing unique, experiential training about diversity and inclusion issues and culture change. www.thecircleproject.com; 828-280-5766 (East Coast office) or 206-853-8289.

 

2007 Retreat Series Open for Registration

Registration is now open for our 2007 Retreat Series. Our course catalog and registration materials are now online; feel free to contact us with questions you might have about any of the retreats planned for this year:

April 13-15
Exploring the Power of Metaphor: Accessing deeper personal and organizational wisdom

May 14-17
Training at the Edge: Experiential Tools for Transformational Learning
[A Train-the-Trainer Intensive]

September 28-30
Mind the Gap: The Power of Personal Stories [A 37days Retreat]

October 26-28
Wicked Problems & Tame Solutions: Navigating Complexity in Organizations and Communities

Each of our 2007 retreats can accommodate between 14-16 participants only; they will be held at the beautiful Bend of Ivy Lodge near Asheville, North Carolina.

You'll find course descriptions and logistical information in the brochure (PDF). We would welcome your participation and engagement and insights. Please join us if you can.

Circling the issue of diversity

When people meet my friend Dan, they often turn away from him, act like they’re suddenly busy with lint in their pockets…anything to avoid looking at him or shaking hands with him.

Why this almost universal response?