What is the right word?
Friday, July 16, 2010 at 9:16AM I am a fan of all things Rosetta Thurman and I highly recommend that you read her and follow her and pay very close attention. Smart, funny, gifted, passionate, going places. She recently wrote a post (Diversity is not the right word) that really resonated with me and touches on a topic that I have been coming back to consistently.
One of the reasons we have a really hard time having conversations about issues related to diversity and inclusion is that we are all talking about different stuff. Even when we are using the same words, we are talking about different things and those conversations are almost always doomed from the beginning. We are almost using different languages as we try to examine these very contextual and complex issues that are woven throughout our society, our organizations and our communities.
Common language. Clarity. Alignment of language and beliefs and actions. These are maybe the greatest challenges facing this body of work today. Organizations that want to have real conversations about diversity need to find some agreement on what that word means for them (and why), so that the conversation can mean something for them. Sometimes what we need to discuss is mostly about power and privilege. Sometimes what we really need to discuss are issues related to race or gender. Sometimes what we really need is to examine are some of the dynamics of diversity, but people think diversity is really code for race, or orientation or gender. Regardless of what it is that we need to or hope to talk about, a little more precision with our language will go a long way.
Of course part of the problem is that people often enter these conversations afraid of saying the wrong thing, which also gets in the way of saying anything that actually matters.
Want to “do diversity” in your organization or community? Want to drive change, launch an initiative, make waves? Start with the basics. Clarity, simplicity, defining the terms, developing a common language. Often overlooked, this is really, really, really important stuff.
Words do matter. Language is messy by nature, which is why we must be careful in how we use it. As leaders, after all, we have little else to work with. We typically don't use hammers and saws, heavy equipment, or even computers to do our real work. The essence of leadership -- what we do with 98 percent of our time -- is communication. To master any management practice, we must start by bringing discipline to the domain in which we spend most of our time, the domain of words.
-Peter Senge
Reader Comments (13)
Great post. Love the focus on language. I've shifted some of my training to do with diversity and have begun to call it cultural intelligence work. It really seems to resonate. Did a workshop at the United Nation's Rio World Urban Forum a few months ago on the topic and it was received really well. I think people are hungry to talk about issues like this in meaningful ways.
I agree Lee-Anne and I really like "cultural intelligence"...I have toyed with that label as well. Thanks for reading and responding and good luck with your work!
Some excellent points. I think we have to be wary of definitions when it comes to labels we put on complex subjects. Shared meaning can only be created in dialogue. Sometimes we are not even aware of the meanings we have attached to things until we get into conversation about a word or a subject. I'm with you that this is "really, really, really important stuff"!
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