Last week, I wrote about how Diversity and Inclusion would benefit from a more rigorous Project Management approach. This got me thinking: what other areas can we take inspiration from to improve our approach to Diversity and Inclusion?
Many are aware of the benefits of mentoring, both for personal development and for giving advice around Diversity and Inclusion. Coaching however, is usually more misunderstood; and whilst a growing amount of Diversity and Inclusion professionals may offer coaching-type services, this may often turn more towards mentoring where experience is predominantly shared which, although potentially beneficial, does not fully embrace the full positive benefits of coaching.
So what is coaching exactly? The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
In other words, coaching is about prompting the client to think for themselves around a subject, and the role of the coach is to prompt growth through insightful and powerful questions. Mentoring is more about knowledge transfer – the mentor is directly imparting information to the mentee taking their own experience as the reference point.
From my experience, coaching and Diversity and Inclusion go hand-in-hand. It is a way for individuals to come up with an understanding of the issue themselves, as well as providing actions they can take from the point of view of their own personal upbringing. It also makes the subject more accessible, and can bring in views from those who do not have an obvious reason to be interested in D&I (e.g. being white, straight, abled etc.)
Coaching is extremely powerful as it allows individuals to come to their own solutions, rather than being told what to do (something as humans we tend to dislike!). It also allows us to bridge the gap between a difference of experiences. I have previously ‘reverse mentored’ senior white leaders, and whilst this process was highly valuable for both of us, I was mainly describing experiences that the senior leader would find difficult to identify with directly; this led to a conclusion that ‘this was a nice relationship and something to think about’, rather than giving genuine growth to the senior leader in question.
I have since taken a coaching approach, and I have found this far more effective to overcome the obstacles they have around diversity and inclusion. For example, I recall working with one senior white leader who found this subject extremely frustrating and difficult to access: they cited the terminology constantly changing as an example of not knowing what to do. They also just simply did not understand the issue properly as they was not seeing it happen in front of them, and were too senior to see this playing out on the ground – even if the statistics did prove that this was happening.
Through a coaching approach, I was able to dig deeper into their stumbling blocks around the subject, give some prompts as to why this may be frustrating (which in this case was partly because it felt like that they did not care about their staff, which was not the case) and over the process of time get more comfortable talking about diversity and inclusion for themselves. It also allowed them to bring their own perspective and understanding of the subject.
By the end of the process I found that senior leader who was one of the biggest advocates for diversity and inclusion within the organization, and the outcome was far more effective than if I had taken an approach to constantly bang the drum to them about why diversity and inclusion was important.
So I personally believe that Diversity and Inclusion practitioners (and indeed anyone advocating around the subject) would greatly benefit from use a coaching approach, particularly when having a trusted relationship with seniors.
I believe it also better mimics how we as individuals got passionate about diversity and inclusion in the first place. For most of us, this required a genuine stimulus relating to an injustice we have witnessed or felt personally, which made us reflect on why inequalities are allowed to happen. Coaching allows us to give this experience to senior leaders who may not have experienced any of these issues, simply as they never saw it themselves.
I have all too often seen the passion of individuals around diversity and inclusion crossing over to becoming an impediment to positive change; whilst positive energy is certainly needed to drive the agenda forward, many senior leaders can be put off or intimidated by practitioners who can come across as intense or are seen as one-dimensional as their approach tends to always be to challenge the organisation. What is lacking here is the supporting function to bring a leader who has little to no experience in this area into a space of awareness and allyship, something which coaching is extremely successful in doing.
One area which I am currently working on (and need to get on with!) is writing a book bringing a coaching approach to diversity and inclusion with a new framework to prompt individuals to better understand these issues for themselves, whether they be white, straight, abled or not. Hopefully this will help bridge the gap for diversity and inclusion practitioners and give them a new way to successfully influence their senior leaders and bring positive change to their organisations.
These are my thoughts, but what do you think about taking a coaching approach around D&I?