Diversity Means Nothing Like You Think It Does

It's always fascinating to tune in to a Gen Y wrestling with how his generation, and the older generations, deal with the question of diversity as it exists today: Has Gen-Y transcended race? by G'Ra Asim on The Daily Voice (Black America's Daily News Source).



This writer himself, demographically and educationally for example, embodies the contradictions so common among Gen Ys, when it comes to identity. As they enter the workforce in droves (they are a huge generation, compared to Generation X, and there are massive numbers of jobs that need to be filled over the next 10 years), my prediction is that companies will try, and fail, to integrate them into their Diversity Programs. They will fail to make this happen for the simple reason that diversity doesn't mean to Generation Y what it means to so many of us that built these "diversity" programs and initiatives in corporate America.

One of the managers in a recent session I facilitated brought up the example that the feedback from their company's firm-wide diversity training was decidedly mixed, from the younger demographic of participants. He shared that one young person asked "why do I have to learn how to work with my friend who's black?" Looking at the baggage that Baby Boomers carry around about race, and the desire to "fix it" through corporate diversity initiatives, you can see where the disconnect starts to occur, between the old guard and Generation Y: young people who've never known anything BUT a multi-cultural, multi-faceted environment.

A big open question for me is this: Is the answer to scrap all legacy diversity programs, because they don't resonate with incoming employees who will someday grow into the company's manager's and leaders? Is our "work" really done on the legacy issues of gender and race parity, especially at the senior level of companies, and in certain industries? And, finally, demographically speaking, do companies have a choice in the matter?

We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

img credit: chelseagirlphotos from flickr.

Generational Differences

I speak and train a lot on the topic of generational differences in the workplace, and it’s amazing to me how predictable people’s reactions to the topic are. If it’s a Baby Boomer audience (which most of corporate America is!), they come in ready to complain about the younger generation (Gen Y) – their lack of work ethic, their propensity for multi-tasking, their dress code and general lack of professionalism – and sometimes I fear that by association, as I am an X’er, I am going to be run out of the room, and/or fired!

Since there are never any Y’ers in the management ranks, they are never actually in the room in these sessions to “represent”, and even if they were, they’d have a hard time standing up for themselves without getting dog-piled.

But I had a good group today – at a major media company that shall remain nameless. They weren’t on their blackberries (the perennial trainer’s challenge), but listening, taking notes like good students, and asked great questions at the end. There weren’t a lot of what I would call “resistors”, so I got off easy this time J .

The questions that came up at the end had to do with global issues (are generational differences the same everywhere? Yes and no …), my favorite which always comes up, which is “aren’t they just going to get older and grow up and mature into people like us?” (I don’t think so), and “aren’t companies just going to outsource and look globally for talent if US Gen Y’s continue to be so entitled?” (a big concern for me).

A good friend sat in the session, and is thinking about writing a book on parenting as a Gen X’er – how X’ers parent differently, and how their kids will bring a post-Gen Y mentality to the workplace – and this is fascinating because I think the Boomer parents have to a large extent raised Gen Y kids to be the problem children in the workplace – with all the attributes they dislike so much. They seemed to resonate with the quote I often use:

“We’ve seen the enemy, and it is us.”