Creating A Culture of Conversation.

Creating and fostering a healthy culture of safety in open and honest conversation is crucial if you want to get employees into the mindset of challenging issues of exclusionary - or offensive - behaviour on the ground when they arise. One of the most effective ways to embed a healthy workplace culture is by encouraging employees to be their authentic selves, share thoughts and opinions and listen to those of others.

Incidents of exclusionary behaviour can occur anywhere; in emails, letters, during discussions or in meetings with clients or in social settings after work. Creating a culture where each issue is handled sensitively and professionally - but leaving no doubt in the offender’s mind that they have caused offence - can feel tricky.

Most workplaces want to create a culture where issues are handled head on, on the ground without the need for HR - or even manager - intervention, however one mistake employers often make is to assume that all employees know how to approach difficult conversations already. Our Powered By Diversity Collective data tells us that they may not; 45% of employees would like training on how to have difficult conversations. Even if employees do know how to approach difficult conversations already, they may not feel safe or comfortable having them, for various reasons.

Difficult or “awkward” conversations are called this for a reason - people don’t enjoy them and many people will naturally try to avoid having to have them. One of the most important things great managers do is cultivate a safe environment for these types of chats.

In this 10 step Playbook, we will talk about:

• How to create a culture where employees feel empowered and equipped to tackle challenging conversations head on

• How to weave improved conversations into your workplace

• How to train your teams in the art of conversation

1. Do your employees feel safe to speak up?

First off we need to be mindful of the psychological barriers that make people uncomfortable and afraid to challenge. In a nutshell: If people don’t feel safe to speak up, they won’t do so.

It is important to recognise that it can feel dangerous to speak up. Sticking with the status quo is the easy option - but it isn’t going to close gaps or create an inclusive environment. It can feel especially dangerous for new colleagues to challenge established colleagues, and even established employees might not feel comfortable challenging their peers or supervisors.

We advise not wasting resources on training staff how to challenge, without first acknowledging that certain conditions and cultures make speaking up more difficult - or even impossible.

Here are some tips on creating a culture where employees feel safe to speak up:

You’ve heard it before—treat others as you’d like to be treated. When it comes to psychological safety, the opposite is true. Treat others as they’d like to be treated. Take the time to ask your team members and direct reports what they’d prefer regarding things like frequency of check-ins, style of communication, type of feedback, etc.

Bev Attfield host of the Jostle People at Work podcast

Be clear on how you want employees to go about interrupting/challenging things that they believe may be barriers to inclusion. How to go about challenging things is a very cultural thing - think carefully about whether you want employees to fit into an existing workplace culture of “how we challenge” or whether the culture itself needs a refresh.

Cat Wildman, Founder of Powered By Diversity

I have found that safe environments are almost always the ones with the most laughter. Groups that have a strong culture of acceptance for new ideas often find themselves in funny and amusing places.

Scott Moe, Entrepreneur

If you’re serious about creating a culture where people feel safe to input ideas and challenge each other - and you - then it’s a good idea to invest in setting this culture up properly. Creating an inclusive culture has many benefits, but it doesn’t happen overnight.

Some organisations like Harvard University put a non-retaliation policy in place. The policy usually includes examples of what retaliation looks like, as well as what the organisation’s view will be if someone retaliates against another for speaking up.

Training people on what makes an inclusive culture is key.

Psychological safety can be defined as a belief that you will not be humiliated (or otherwise punished) for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. It sounds simple enough, but psychological safety can be open to misinterpretation.

Jacey, an HR Director told us:

Getting your organisation properly educated on psychological safety is important - leaving it open to each individual’s interpretation can lead to numerous problems.

I have seen Psychological Safety used as an excuse too many times to mention. On one end of the scale, I’ve seen employees use it as a cover to ask toe-curlingly inappropriate questions at all-hands meetings. On the other end of the scale I’ve seen people use it as a shield to protect against being given important feedback.

Psychological Safety isn’t a license to say whatever you want to whomever you want, whenever you want. It definitely isn’t a forcefield that should keep you from ever hearing anything negative about yourself. Psychological Safety is a belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, raising concerns or pointing out (or admitting) mistakes."

Appropriate use of Psychological Safety comes as much from within each individual, as it does from the organisation. The organisation has a responsibility to create a culture where everyone's opinions are valid, and can be heard - but normal rules of behaviour should still apply around giving those opinions.

It’s the individual’s responsibility to inject their own wisdom and common sense into how they deliver their feedback and challenges.

The individual also needs to understand that Psychological Safety doesn’t mean feeling happy and comfortable all the time, sometimes in a psychologically safe environment you will get feedback that you don’t like - or don’t agree with. It might feel very personal, however the point is that reacting to this 'badly' can have the effect of removing the feeling of psychological safety from the person giving the feedback.

2. Empower Your Employees to Have Conversations

Employees need to be empowered with the toolsets to be able to deal with minor incidents themselves, safe in the knowledge that they have you, the leadership of the organisation, in their corner.

Creating a feeling of “safety to speak” isn’t just for huge, uncomfortable callouts - in fact if you do it right, it might never even have to get to that. That sort of safe, mutually trusting environment can create a workplace where one colleague can approach another in private and say “hey, you said this just now, and you maybe didn’t mean it like this - but this is the way it came across to me.

Karim, Talent Manager

ACTIVITY

Open the conversation up on the ground.

Ask your teams to take some time to reflect, together, on the way they talk to one another. Get them to talk between themselves, not just about the content of their conversations, but their tone of voice, their body language and the means they are using to communicate (email, telephone, IM, in person, on a conference-call).

This topic is very personal and one person’s ‘joke’ can be another person’s ‘joke’ - but it can just as easily make another person feel excluded or even offended.

Tackling this issue can be as easy as creating an environment of high mutual trust (which yields psychological safety) and asking your teams to commit to discussing this as a topic.

An inclusive culture starts with leadership and works through the company - it is important that all of your organisation’s leaders are the role models for change here.

Teasing and banter based on gender, race, disability, LGBTQ+ or any other protected characteristic can and should be highlighted as not acceptable within the organisation. It goes without saying that the management and leadership of the organisation should absolutely tow this line.

Many organisations will have policies for professionalism when it comes to communication; ensuring that tone is always clear and professional is a given, but we can very often forget to include the ‘little’ every-day things, when often these are the biggest issue.

When it comes to tone of voice - or jokes - make sure your employees understand that they are accountable for their communication and that ‘banter’ or teasing which excludes or offends others simply isn’t acceptable.

ACTIVITY

Creating a Team Pact.

Task your teams with getting together to create a Team Pact: What terms, jokes, banter do they find acceptable - and what don’t they?

This can be done in the form of a facilitated workshop with post-its, or just a chat. You could get them to present their pact to other teams or put it somewhere prominent for others to see, but you might just find that the true value is in having had the conversation, openly, as a team.

3. Navigating Banter

There is a very deeply embedded folk culture in the UK of public ribaldry, extreme sarcasm, facetiousness – in other words, of laddishness. What you might think of as banter now is rooted in that tradition.

Tony Thorne, linguist and cultural historian. From The Age of Banter by Archie Bland

Banter happens. Trying to eradicate it from an organisation is not a tenable solution - nor may we want to.

However there is a fine line between banter and bullying - and it’s all about perceptions. Leaders need to be acutely aware of the organisation’s stance on where that line between banter and bullying is, and how crossing the line will be handled.

Ensure that employees are clear that any workplace humour or office banter must not offend or isolate members of staff and emphasise that any jokes, nicknames or conversations must not relate to any protected characteristic.

Ensure that employees understand how complaints will be handled, and stick to this; actively investigate any complaints and take appropriate action. Being seen to stand by and tolerate offensive conduct will undermine any efforts being made elsewhere in the organisation to tackle it.

“Banter emerges as this relentless gloss of irony over everything. The constant excusing of sexist or homophobic sentiments with this wink that says you don’t really mean it.”

Bethan Benwell, senior lecturer in language and linguistics at the University of Stirling. From The Age of Banter by Archie Bland.

Some banter is immediately obvious as offensive - and some is widely agreed as harmless. But between these extremes is an enormous grey area, and where this falls is a matter of individual opinion. One group might use “affectionate teasing” to create a strong feeling of camaraderie between them, and be brought closer together by the use of this sort of “light hearted banter” - but another might be torn apart by the very same thing.

One of the anti-bullying alliance’s lines across which banter becomes bullying is “if it’s hurtful”. At first glance that line seems to rule out any banter at all when you don’t know what’s hurtful to another - but that’s the point. The message being that if you don’t know the person well enough, you don’t know what’s hurtful. That’s why encouraging these conversations within teams at work is so important - not just as a one-off, but all the time.

Under the umbrella of openly being an organisation which doesn’t tolerate discriminatory or exclusionary behaviour, one solution is to create an environment in which employees feel comfortable and equipped enough to address incidents of “sketchy banter” themselves.

Giving your employees ownership of the topic of “banter” and their conversations around it is important. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of just a single person or a small group to be the “banter police”. It should also be the shared responsibility of the entire organisation to figure out what is and isn’t appropriate “banter” at work - at policy level, at team level and at an individual level, and how you will work together as an organisation to weave these beliefs into an “inclusive banter” culture.

WATCH: How to speak up when you feel like you can’t Adam Galinsky

READ: The Age of Banter Archie Bland, The Guardian

4. Navigating Callout Culture

Also on the “outspoken spectrum” with banter culture, is its cousin callout culture.

Navigating callout culture is as tricky as navigating banter. There are widely recognised and accepted times where a call out is appropriate - and there are times when it’s not. In between, there’s a vast grey area which is very much down to individual interpretation. Modern callout culture is the subject of much debate.

A callout is when a comment or behaviour, that is believed to be oppressive, is called attention to, usually in public (including online and social media).

It’s undeniable that callouts have their place in activism - they have catapulted movements into a new phase and have done a huge amount of good for marginalised groups. But where does callout culture fit into an organisation?

REFLECTION

Consider the following situations:

1 The CEO is making an all-hands announcement about their new shared parental leave and flexible working policy. She says “we strongly believe in equal parenting and are launching a more flexible approach to work for all parents: if a father wants flexibility he can ask his manager”.
A member of the audience puts their hand up and when the microphone arrives with her, she points out that as a female employee without kids, this initiative is making her feel excluded.

2 An external speaker who is known to be a close associate of one of the board of directors, delivers a speech at a company off-site. In the speech he makes a joke about when his wife was pregnant “she couldn’t remember a thing, she had complete baby brain”.
A pregnant member of staff gets up, says “that is disgusting” and walks out of the room.

3 A diversity and inclusion champion of the organisation has won an award for their extensive progress in the past year, they post a gender diverse photograph showing all the individuals involved on the company intranet with the caption “This is not my award it's ours - well done guys - this is ALL down to your hard work!”.
An employee comments below the photograph “Very inclusive. Your use of the word “guys” has just alienated your entire female audience”.

4 An MD is addressing the organisation about their gender pay gap. An anonymous comments app is being used to take questions from the audience. The first question he reads out is "if you care so much about gender equality, why don't you step aside and let a woman lead the business?".

• What is your own personal opinion on each of the examples of callouts above?

• Would your opinion be shared by everyone in your organisation, or would some people have a different view?

• How would each of those situations be viewed/ handled at your organisation?

With callouts, the key generally lies in understanding the intention of the “caller”. If their intention is to air their own frustrations and grievances, or to publicly humiliate somebody, although they feel passionately about the topic, a public callout may not help their cause. It may even result in harming their own reputation more than that of the person on the receiving end of the callout.

A callout like this could be a symptom of a simmering cultural issue; inviting the speaker to tell you more about their feelings, in private and really listening to them to understand, could lead to uncovering the root cause of the frustration and help to shine a light on a previously unnoticed issue.

Callouts can be made under the heading of “psychological safety” but they are not the same thing. Creating an environment where employees feel safe to be vulnerable and confident that no one on the team will embarrass, humiliate or punish them for offering a new idea is not the same as a culture whereby any employee can say anything to anyone, at any time.

A psychologically safe environment where everyone’s opinion is valid, does not automatically grant license to everyone to speak those opinions how and whenever they like, regardless of the consequences.

Creating your own culture around this is important. It might be that you feel that callouts aren't appropriate in some contexts, or it might be that you feel they are always appropriate, no matter what.

Making your stance clear on callouts as an organisation is important; clearly stating what is and isn’t considered appropriate workplace behaviour and give employees all the options available to them in terms of getting their voice heard.

5. Prepare Employees on How to Lead Difficult Conversations

WATCH: In the embedded video below, Powered By Diversity meets Best Selling Author and Coach Susie Ramroop to discuss Difficult Conversations:

• Who or what makes certain conversations difficult?

• How can we manage (ours or others) emotions in conversations?

• How to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

The organisation’s leadership should clearly signpost to employees which types of conversations can and should be had between peers and colleagues, and outside of these types, who they should talk to for advice or assistance.

Difficult conversations can be awkward for all parties involved but they are necessary, equipping and empowering teams to hold these conversations is essential if you are serious about effecting change.

Here is our Collective's top 10 points on how to hold difficult conversations.

WATCH How to train employees to have difficult conversations Tamekia MizLadi Smith

6. Prepare employees on how to receive difficult conversations

The truth will set you free, but it’s gonna piss you off first.

Gloria Steinem, 1999, Illinois Wesleyan University

Realising you’re being approached about having made a transgression or having caused offence is rarely easy to hear. Training your workforce on how to receive feedback and hear those messages is as important as training them on how to give them. This is such a crucial topic that we cover it separately! Here is our collective's top 10 points on How to receive difficult conversations

7. Safe Spaces Versus Echo Chambers

The Powered By Diversity Collective meets "Dare To Disagree" Podcast host and Powered By Diversity Collective member Tony Koutsoumbos to discuss Difficult Conversations.

• When does a debate turn into an argument?

• How can we create a workplace culture of constructive disagreement?

• How to approach disagreeing on extremely sensitive topics.

Especially amongst younger employees the phenomenon of "safe spaces" is one of contention. It's especially relevant for discussions of diversity - especially cognitive diversity.

A safe space is a place where people can share their ideas without fear of repercussions, and live their identity without facing discrimination or harm.

An echo chamber is an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not generally considered.

Some people think that safe spaces are places to hide from hearing any ideas which counter their ideals. These can quickly become echo chambers that people use to reinforce their own beliefs, as well as places where outside opinions are not welcome.

Progressive activists like Van Jones argue that ideological challenge is essential in order to strengthen one's ideals and develop the skills necessary to defend them - and this in itself is an important debate to have in your workplace. Diversity doesn't just include external or visible differences. True diversity should extend to all types of difference - including cognitive diversity and within that, ideological diversity.

It's a tricky path to navigate as an organisation.

REFLECTION

• Cognitive diversity is great for keeping your business fresh, competitive and innovative, but is there a type of diversity of thought that is (or would be) excluded in your organisation?

• If everyone within an organisation thinks the same way about one particular area, is this believing in the same values - or is it just another form of group-think?

• Do we need people who disagree with our ideals in order to keep our thinking on its toes and inject new perspectives - or do we exclude them to preserve our values, and risk creating a closed echo chamber?

• Every organisation should aim to be a safe space (to disagree), but work hard to avoid the echo chamber effect. How will you monitor this balance at your organisation?

8. Discussions With Employees About Equality

Here are several ways that you can open up discussion with your staff about equality, equity and the conversations around it:

1 Create a networking or diversity and inclusion groups in your workplace. Act on the concerns, comments, and recommendations that employees discuss in these meetings.

2 Use the results of your Powered By Diversity Employee Assessment to choose topics for your organisation to form groups around, and work together on to improve.

3 Welcome the debate. Use debate as a way to get people talking. Choose a topic and arrange to have it discussed in front of your organisation - or with them participating.

Tony Koutsoumbos Founder and Director of The Great Debaters Club says:

Debate is a valuable skill that helps us make better decisions. The competencies it brings together, such as public speaking, critical thinking, and conflict resolution, are all vital to the success of our careers.

Exploring issues that divide opinion helps us to test and refine ideas that challenge the status quo, to work out not just where we stand, but why, and to make difficult decisions under pressure when pleasing everyone is not an option.

The aim of a great debate is not for everyone to agree, but for everyone to accept and understand the final decision, even when they disagree with it.

Be mindful of discomfort levels

Discussing topics of diversity and inclusion can be an uncomfortable topic for anyone not part of the group in question. However for some who are part of the group, it might go beyond being ‘uncomfortable’.

Conversations around sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and religious hate and fear such as islamophobia or antisemitism might mean that some employees recount some previous trauma around this.

Some of your employees may have experienced chronic issues with these which could even have extended to violence, discrimination, harassment or abuse. Be mindful and always consider using trigger, or content warnings, before meetings where these topics will be discussed.

9. Involve Employees in Finding Solutions

Devolving the power and responsibility to teams and imbuing them with the freedom and trust to solve problems themselves, is a hugely powerful tool not just for equality, diversity and inclusion - but for all round engagement and productivity.

Powered By Diversity's recommended approach for optimal change recommends recruiting Change Makers from around the business to take your equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives forward.

Attitude is everything when working with change, especially if you are leading a change that you’re not yet an expert in. We recommend taking a “learn together” approach:

• Facilitate rather than teach

• Seek to understand rather than defend

• Ask rather than tell

Educate yourself as much as you can first - but don't feel that you need to be a published expert before you begin to draw in others in the wider organisation.

Get comfortable with expressing your own vulnerabilities and knowledge gaps to your fellow Champions and Change makers.

Be ready to express your personal viewpoint on topics, and join in the debate where appropriate. As long as it's an educated standpoint and you can articulate it, your reasons for it, you're perfectly valid in having your own standpoint on a topic. Be prepared to have your personal viewpoint on topics challenged though!

Discussion and debate will help you to firm up your stance on a topic, and will also help others to firm up theirs. Even after you have been educated and have formed your own point of view on a topic, be open to change and further learning.

Above all, don't be afraid of messing up; adopt a pioneering mindset and be resilient in the face of failure.

10. Prevention is Better Than Cure

In Racism Ruins Lives An analysis of the 2016-2017 Trade Union Congress Racism at Work Survey around 60% of Asian and Black workers, and almost 40% of participants from a Mixed heritage background reported that they had been subjected to unfair treatment by their employer because of their race.

46% of respondents from a Black, Asian and Mixed heritage background reported that they had been subjected to verbal abuse and racist jokes.

One-third of employees from a Black, Asian and Mixed heritage background reported that they had been bullied and/or subjected to ignorant or insensitive questioning, while 11% of Black, Asian and Mixed heritage employees also stated that they had been experienced racist violence at work.

A TUC survey found that over half of women and nearly 7 out of 10 LGBT workers have been sexually harassed in the workplace. In their report Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, the TUC call for a new, easily enforceable legal duty that would require employers to take all reasonable steps to protect workers from sexual harassment and victimisation. They say:

"The current legal framework has influenced an approach in which employers view sexual harassment as an individual matter rather than a workplace issue, where action is focused on responding to complaints rather than preventing them.

As a result, employers often adopt a defensive stance, responding to reports of sexual harassment with organisational indifference or even outright hostility, compounding the trauma faced by victims of workplace sexual harassment.”

Equality, diversity and inclusion is complex and riddled with “fine lines”.

There is a fine line between a safe space and an echo chamber, just like there is a fine line between banter and bullying or harassment. There’s a fine line between being an organisation that “believes in meritocracy”, and one where the judges of said merit are propagating imbalance unconsciously.

Leaders need to be acutely aware of the organisation’s stance on where all of those lines are, and how crossing them will be handled, in order to be able to take the stance forward as a united team.

Ensure that employees are clear that the crossing of the lines you draw will not be tolerated.

Also ensure that employees understand how complaints will be handled, and stick to this; actively investigate any complaints and take appropriate action. Being seen to stand by and tolerate harassment or exclusion will undermine any efforts being made elsewhere in the organisation to tackle it.