Defending Democracy: Beyond the Business Case for DEI
“Human rights are inseparable from organizations because we live in a society of organizations — we are employed by organizations, consume the products and services of organizations, and are ruled by organizations.” — Matthew Lee (2023). “Making a Movement: The History and Future of Human Rights”
During the last weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have joined large demonstrations across Germany to defend democracy. Maybe you were among them?
A sense of urgency is palpable in the streets, as well as in conversations around the dinner table and office meeting spaces. Yet the pragmatic realities of needing to earn a living, and put food on the table are real and can sometimes feel irreconcilable with the pressure to help safeguard democracy, our society, and our planet against their destruction.
I want to offer a perspective that brings these seemingly divided realities closer together. I invite you to come on a little journey of hope with me and re-imagine the work we do inside of our organizations as integral to the goal of positive social and planetary change.
I invite you to imagine (a) possible future(s) guided by principles of care and empathy and join me in charting a way for organizations to become one parcel of the fertile grounds on which this re-imagined future is cultivated.
Our guiding questions will be these:
What if our workplaces could be(come) sanctuary spaces where we can all practice relating to one another, in our uniqueness and differences, in such a way that we become experts at bridging?
What if the practices of bridging are the essential tools to counteract polarization, othering, and exclusion?
“[…] what changes the world in the end is the generative ideas, not the detailed blueprints.” - Geoff Mulgan (2022), Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Demonstrations in the street are important. They serve to connect people to each other and to a bigger purpose; in this case, the common goal of defending democracy. They send an important message into society and act as a visual representation that the loudest voices most often represented in the media don’t necessarily speak for the (thus far silent) majority.
However, to protect democracy and counteract authoritarian and exclusionary tendencies, more is needed.
The workplace is a relational space. Inside our organizations, we are in contact with different people, some of whom we might not necessarily encounter in our private lives. And we spend a considerable amount of our waking hours at work. How we interact with and relate to one another here can be an active training ground for how we want to interact in other social spaces.
This is where the effort of building inclusive workplaces that are designed for belonging comes in.
“Belonging is a multi-faceted and beautiful experience, differentiated from diversity or inclusion in that it is something we can all contribute to — a collaborative effort requiring a whole society approach. By definition, belonging includes the agency to contribute to the evolution or definition of that to which we belong or seek to belong.” — Míriam Juan-Torres González, Democracy and Belonging Forum
Change-makers in and outside of organizations must have the resources, and support to positively influence sustainable and inclusive social change. After all, the spheres of influence of people inside organizations reach beyond the workplace, into the communities they belong to.
If we can practice listening to each other, treating everyone with dignity and respect, even if we might not agree with one another, or understand the specifics of another person’s lived experience, this “training” will translate into other spheres of our lives.
Why should we discount one of the spaces in which we spend much time relating to other people — the workplace — as a practice ground for important relational skills?
Cognitive neuroscience and behavioral psychology have taught us that our behavioral skills are malleable — they can change and are trained through the interactions we have with other people [1,2,3], and to a certain extent also through our imaginings of those interactions, and our perception of the fictional depiction of interaction in popular media, i.e. books, TV series, movies, etc. [4]
In the neuroscience research I conducted for my PhD, I found that our perceptual experiences strongly influence our social judgments and the systems we rely on to make those judgments [5].
Let’s break this down from a conceptual level to practical examples:
If we tolerate sexist jokes at work, we are less likely to speak up when we hear them at a bar, or in the locker room
If we ignore racial slurs or other racist behavior in our interactions with co-workers, we become (even) less likely to speak up when we witness racist harassment or violence in the street.
If we don’t make an effort to use our nonbinary colleague’s correct pronouns, we are less likely to interfere when we witness anti-queer violence on the bus or in the restaurant.
We can learn to behave differently. And we can un-learn harmful behavioral patterns.
So let’s not waste the opportunity of learning and practicing at work!
While I in no way want to discourage you from joining the demonstrations in the street, I invite you to consider that we don’t need to wait for the Pro-Democracy demonstrations on the weekend to showcase our support.
We can walk this journey every day, by choosing to practice the relational skills of empathy, openness, and generosity that go along with bridging differences right inside our places of work.
And watch the effects of this practice ripple out into the other spheres of our life.
This article is the first in a series on the re-imagination of organizations as integral spaces for the protection of human rights, and practicing the skills needed to defend democracy and bridge differences. If you would like to receive the next installment directly in your inbox, you can subscribe to my newsletter.
References:
[1] Carr, Priyanka B., Carol S. Dweck, and Kristin Pauker. “Prejudiced” behavior without prejudice? Beliefs about the malleability of prejudice affect interracial interactions.” Journal of personality and social psychology 103.3 (2012): 452.
[2] Yeager, D. S., Johnson, R., Spitzer, B. J., Trzesniewski, K. H., Powers, J., & Dweck, C. S. (2014). The far-reaching effects of believing people can change: Implicit theories of personality shape stress, health, and achievement during adolescence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(6), 867–884. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036335
[3] Halperin, E., Crisp, R. J., Husnu, S., Trzesniewski, K. H., Dweck, C. S., & Gross, J. J. (2012). Promoting intergroup contact by changing beliefs: Group malleability, intergroup anxiety, and contact motivation. Emotion, 12(6), 1192–1195. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028620
[4] Femmie Juffer & Miriam Steele (2014) What words cannot say: the telling story of video in attachment-based interventions, Attachment & Human Development, 16:4, 307–314, DOI: 10.1080/14616734.2014.912484
[5] Mega, L. F. (2017). Facing Intuition: A functional characterization of intuitive judgment in the context of face perception (Doctoral dissertation, Universität Tübingen).