As DEI and racial equity professionals, your work to increase racial equity in the workplace is undoubtedly one of the most important tasks that you’re responsible for. But if your efforts are mismanaged, ill-advised, or lacking honorable gamesmanship, it can set back any progress that’s been made and do more harm than good. 

You probably feel the pressure of prioritizing racial equity in the workplace with the constant threat of a recession. It's a huge responsibility and important task to take on - but unfortunately, mistakes can be made along the way. To ensure that your hard work isn't wasted and that you don't inadvertently put already vulnerable groups of people in an even more precarious situation, it's important to know some common pitfalls. 

We’ll walk through 4 crucial mistakes HR pros make when working toward racial equity – and how to correct them with honorable gamesmanship. We know you have a tremendous amount on your plate – but let's be honest...your job is too important to miss this one!

Mistake #1: To lead the charge for racial equity, unaware of how systems behave around you.

Mistake #2: Not reading signals from multiple directions as an executive leader. Leaving your flank open.

Mistake #3: Executive leadership that overlooks the weak signals embedded in the organization’s operations.

Mistake #4: Settling for the racial status quo. Not using your leadership power to attenuate structural racism.

Distinct from what you’ve heard before, I hope these lesson in honorable gamesmanship and strategic foresight reinforce the hope you started this work with. May it affirm that this time, with my distinct Equitecture® process, you’ll get the results and impact you’ve been dreaming about.

Mistake #1: To lead the charge for racial equity, unaware of how systems behave around you.

Are you keenly aware of how systems behave around you? Do you then use this intel to engage in strategic forecasting, to think five to 10 steps ahead?

Engage with these four reflective questions to build even more knowledge of how systems behave around you. Your answers to these questions offer you insight so that your leadership and honorable gamesmanship effectively compel unequal systems around you to equalize. 

Answering requires race analysis skills and an ability to unpack your racial positionality.

Reflective questions to guide your honorable gamesmanship: 

• What race & gender-based stereotypes get activated around you, and under what conditions?
• What stories get made up about you that are rooted in stereotype expectancies?
• What negative stereotypes are you worried about confirming are true, based on the multiplistic, layered, ever-evolving identities you carry?
• What negativity do biases get activated around you, and under what circumstances?

After you jot down answers, look across the responses to note any patterns. What do you notice? What seems compelling?

Notice how your answers offer you insight into how the system has behaved when your leadership begins to compel unequal systems around you to equalize effectively. Since these stereotypes, stories, and biases arose in past instances, they will likely arise again. Loud and in color. 

Notice any frequency in which they happen and specific conditions that trigger them. The patterns aid predictability.

Knowing how systems behave around you can help you pregame, anticipate, and debrief dynamics astutely.

Mistake #2: Not reading signals from multiple directions as an executive leader. Leaving your flank open.

When you’re leading a change effort, it’s an imperative part of honorable gamesmanship for you to make the dynamics around you legible.

And that you read what’s legible in multiple directions -

1. above you in the hierarchy,

2. lateral to you, and

3. beneath you.

When reading dynamics above you (north): Ask:

• How wide is the gap between espoused values and actions/outcomes?
• Do they demonstrate race analysis skills? To what degree?
• What’s their risk tolerance? For what arenas are their risk tolerance wider? Narrower?
• What’s the extent of their muscle and agility in managing dilemmas and high-stakes decisions?
• What kind of choices do they make when it's inconvenient, requires disloyalty to be ethical, and demands they face their greatest fear?

Reading dynamics lateral to you (east and west):

• Do they understand the work you drive and why? If not, how do they manage to be in negative capability? And what are the implications for peer dynamics?
• Where do they sit on the spectrum of buy-in? And why? What would increase their buy-in and is that something you're willing to offer?
• What might the work require them to give up? Why? And are they willing to make that offer?

Reading dynamics beneath you (south):

• Is what is sacred to them safe with you?
• Are they most proximate to the problem and multiply marginalized? If so, how do you view them?
• How does the work advocate for what's fair, humane, and ethical on their behalf?

Mistake #3: Executive leadership that overlooks the weak signals embedded in the organization’s operations.

When leading transformational change - like you do when you’re working to eradicate systemic racism - it’s imperative to pay attention to strong and weak signals in your honorable gamesmanship. 

Strong signals prove the easiest. It's in the explicit, the overt, In the flashpoints and crises. In what others want you to know, see, and hear.

Weak signals, on the other hand, are not so easy. Weak signals are subtle indicators of an emerging problem. I’ve found it essential to have senses that are sensitive enough to detect what’s implicit, concealed, vague, and elusive.

I’ve sensed weak signals show up in unexpected places and when I wasn’t even looking for them. I've seen them in light conversation over dinner, on retreats meant for relaxation, in unsuspecting work meetings, and during long commute rides home.

You know you’ve encountered a weak signal when you look in hindsight at the 20/20 vision you didn’t have but needed at the moment.

Here are eight places to sense weak signals:

1. What’s said
2. Tone implications: What’s said nicely, complimentary
3. Tone implications: What’s said in a seemingly neutral way, but there’s a song beneath those words
4. Tone implications: What’s said with disdain and contempt, seemingly out of nowhere and without cause
5. The elephants in the room and how they are rigorously avoided
6. When the elephants in the room get said and how the present participants respond, and the participants who were not present but have heard things
7. Action 
8. Inaction

Mistake #4: Settling for the racial status quo. Not using your leadership power to attenuate structural racism.

Inequity is the unfortunate racial status quo in so many contexts (McKinsey, 2021). It’s hard for some people to accept - often those not adversely impacted. 

The racial status quo gets maintained every time we settle for the current DEI industry standard.

And we settle in at least two ways.

The current DEI industry standard suggests that it’s ok:

• To say, “we have more work to do” every year.
• To progress at zero to two percent increases in representation every year.
• To hire Black workers less in general. And even less in jobs that are faster growth and most in demand. Nevermind roles in higher-wage industries & higher-wage jobs (McKinsey, 2021).
• To make matters even worse, once organizations DO hire, they tend to less frequently promote Black talent. Even graver, organizations provide Black talent with the least opportunity for advancement and yet furnish conditions for the highest attrition at entry-level & frontline roles (McKinsey, 2021).

Why would anyone settle for the racial status quo knowing these facts and figures?

That’s a good question. 

👀

Settling occurs in another way, too. Knowing that current efforts haven’t led to different outcomes, yet, remaining committed to them. Then, investing energy in suffocating innovation and kicking out departures from the norm. 

Mistakes rest in inaction also. In going along to get along. In moving with currents headed in a dismaying direction.

Whether the settling shows in the form of less-than-mediocre “progress,” doing the same ineffective interventions despite failure, or inaction, the downstream impacts can be a catastrophically tragic mistake.

Now is not the time for your organization to give up on your racial equity work. The stakes are too high, and there’s too much at stake. 

If you find yourself thinking about pushing forward against the grain, avoid these four mistakes: 

1) Don’t lead racial equity work unaware of how systems behave around you, 

2) don’t go forward without reading signals from multiple directions, 

3) don’t overlook the weak signals embedded in organizational operations, and 

4) don’t settle for the racial status quo.  

I help trailblazing leaders like you, who are stuck between mainstream minutiae and resistance from status quo keepers, pivot organizational systems from unfair to equitable.

When you enroll in The Equitecture® Academy for Decolonizing Leadership, you shift from:

• Risk aversion to fortified, unshakable leadership
• Mainstream generic approaches to unprecedented models for more racially equitable outcomes
• DEI burnout to tenacious healing and growth
• Martyrdom , reactivity, or inaction to honorable gamesmanship
• Misaligned and unclear to found providence
• Being an isolated load bearer to cooperative command

Work with me to expand your leadership capacity in care-curated leadership crucibles, sustained coaching, community, and battle-tested curriculum. If you want help applying these concepts, enroll in The Equitecture® Academy for Decolonizing Leadership.