Igniting Diversity, Inclusion with Augmented Empathy

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is a complex, thorny subject on which volumes have been written. As a result, individuals can easily get overloaded and eventually tune out. In October, I had the opportunity to take a different approach to tackling this issue when I was selected to speak at the HR Tech Conference in Las Vegas. What made this speech vastly different from the dozens of speeches I give each year was its unique format: something called an “Ignite” talk. Ignite presenters use 20 slides, which auto-advance every 15 seconds, to make their point. That means I had just five minutes to help people understand something that has eluded or otherwise plagued our nation for nearly 350 years!

I spent more time working on this five-minute presentation than I typically spend on a half-day workshop program, but I learned something important in the process: you can pack a LOT of meaningful information into five minutes. This was a good practice regarding discipline, simplicity, and clarity of message (which is a good foundation for any presentation).

For your consideration, here are my 15-second “Ignite HR” soundbites:

1. America is at a crossroads. We are a nation divided not only along ideological lines, but also across life outcomes among women and people of color. Something has to change.
2. There are powerful forces exerting pressure against the status quo to overcome these disparities, but these forces are being met with vigorous efforts aimed at maintaining that status quo, or even taking us backward—back, in their view, to the “good-old days,” when outcomes were even worse for women and people of color.
3. As it stands, the status quo isn’t so great for women and people of color in Corporate America. Women, African-Americans, and people of Hispanic decent have a higher rate of unemployment and make less money than their white-male counterparts, despite levels of education (Source: U.S. Department of Labor).
4. If we want to change these results, we will have to approach the issue of diversity and inclusion in a radically different way—starting with having a deeper understanding of why D&I matters in the first place.
5. To start, there is a whole host of studies that conclude that D&I makes good business sense. While nothing is guaranteed, the evidence is clear that companies that believe in the importance of D&I outperform their peers (Source: McKinsey). But this should be only a secondary outcome.
6. Not only does it make good business sense, valuing D&I makes good people sense. Just as holding grudges is unhealthy, hate, resentment, and mistreatment are taxing. Working in diverse and inclusive cultures offers the opportunity for people to live richer, more interesting, healthier, and happier lives. When people thrive, families thrive, businesses thrive, and communities thrive. And, embracing D&I makes you more valuable to your company, particularly as a future leader in an ever-changing workplace.
7. So, how do we get there? First, we need to have a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the problem. It’s much deeper than the overt-isms. We need to understand the root causes.
8. Those root causes can only be unearthed through a deeper understanding of people—knowing what makes each of us tick. For instance, we know through brain science that stereotyping, as hurtful as it can be, is really a function of the brain trying to work as efficiently as possible. We need to put things in boxes to understand them. This is how we make sense of the world.
9. The most important box to us is our tribal box. People are indeed tribal. We are drawn to people with whom we share things—shared experiences, beliefs, customs, and traditions. It is our comfort zone.
10. Absent any existing relationship, the best evidence we have that we share something with others, that we in the same box or tribe, is our external characteristics, such as race and sex. Upon sight, those brain processes, such as stereotyping, start to work.
11. The desire to connect with our tribe is so profound that it happens on not just a conscious, but also a subconscious level. People who claim they don’t hold any racial or gender bias routinely demonstrate such bias in studies where MRI technology is used to detect activity in certain brain regions (Source: National Institutes of Health).
12. Moreover, studies suggest, for instance, that our “mirror neuron” system, which is really our internal empathy system, may not work the same across racial lines. In other words, we may not literally or figuratively feel each other’s pain (Source: The Journal of Neuroscience). Why do we lack empathy?
13. We lack shared experiences to build such empathy. America is still segregated across racial lines (Source: Huffington Post). Whites, particularly, prefer to live around other whites. And it is not just about age. Young people (18-34) are 67% more likely to live around people like them (Source: Pew Research Center).
14. How do we build empathy in a segregated society? We manufacture it! We now have access to new technologies, such as natural language processing and machine learning, that can be used to understand people in a more profound way, enabling us to literally and figuratively feel each other’s pain.
15. With virtually-reality technology, we can sit a man in a boardroom next to a woman who is being sexually harassed. We can put a white person in a breakroom where racist jokes are being told in the presence of African-Americans. We can put a straight person in a cubicle alongside a gay employee who is contemplating suicide because of the harassment he has endured.
16. Such experiences have the potential to rewire our brains in ways that a presentation, case study, or documentary cannot. This technology essentially tricks our brains, rendering these situations indistinguishable from real life for key brain mechanisms.
17. If this sounds promising, keep in mind that it is merely step one. Triggering empathy creates increased understanding and may trigger the desire to do something. However, there is a host of related skills that must be honed to turn that increased understanding and desire to help into meaningful action.
18. Repositioning diversity and inclusion beyond awareness to involving a set of skills, including empathy, will allow us to use predictive and prescriptive technologies to identify and meet individual learning needs, so that we can make real progress.
19. Without this, people will continue to miss what is in front of them; they see what they expect to see, what they want to see, or what they need to see. It’s not because they are bad people. It is because they are human. They are tribal.
20. At this challenging time, when our nation is polarized regarding issues of D&I, Corporate America can stand up and be the adults in the room who can ensure an equal shot at prosperity for all our citizens. Technology, through approaches like augmented empathy, is the mechanism to get us there—to help us create one big, bold, beautiful human tribe.

I’ve shared these soundbites in hopes of igniting a new conversation. Whether you had the chance to hear my presentation at HR Tech, or you’re reading this for the first time, I invite your views and contributions on diversity and inclusion. Together, we can face a challenge that has impacted our society for centuries.