What can Diversity bring to your Team?
Once individuals have connected to 'why EDI matters to them personally', it's then important to understand the organisation's bigger purpose moving away from the individual, to answering these questions from the organisation's point of view.
Why would any organisation want to be inclusive?
What will it look like for your organisation to be inclusive?
How will you know you're getting there and then, achieved it.
But a more fundamental question is this one....
What can diversity bring to your team?
In other words, what's the purpose, what's the why behind becoming a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce?
Answering this together, as a team can help pick apart the questions about what diversity would look like, also by beginning to look at their current state in the representation of diversity. What areas of diversity does the company feel they have good representation, where do they feel vulnerable, what's the desired state?
This is where I aim to really help them scrutinise the 100% truth in their discussions.
“In diversity there is beauty and there is strength”
In the work I have done to date with teams, I have experienced organisational blind spots where being well represented in one area of diversity, can often lead to them struggling to see where they lack in others. It's vital here I am really explicit about protected characteristics and specifically those which are not always visibly evident.
I ask them to consider what's the organisational culture? How do they believe difference is experienced? Is it missed. judged. de-emphasised. Or is it deeply understood and bridged?
How do they know?