Features
The Faulty Paradigm of Tolerance
Andrés T. Tapia, 03-14-2010
How could I have missed it? I really thought I had agreement from the group.
After all, one of the team members had even said, “Andrés, I agree with you 100 percent.” Yet when I started acting on the so-called agreement, e-mails and voice mails started flying in: “What are you doing? This is not something we agreed to!” Confused, I replied, “What part of 100 percent didn’t I understand?”
As a Latino in corporate America, I once again had broken some unspoken rule, missed some commonly understood signal, and a foul was called. I was yellow-carded. But unlike on the soccer field where I know the reasons why, on the corporate field I had no idea. Making things even more difficult: My colleagues weren’t even aware I did not know what had gone amiss.
I was to learn through much trial and error — and observation of the Midwestern, European-American corporate culture — that I was a middle-class Latin American guy with a direct style of communication inside an indirect-communication-style corporate environment. I missed the body language and code words signaling disagreement that people with similar cultural backgrounds would intuitively interpret. And I had my own body language and code words that other Latin Americans would likely interpret correctly, but that my European-American colleagues had missed or misinterpreted.
And so it went. They thought I was confrontational. I thought they were duplicitous. They thought I was disruptive. I thought they were inefficient.
Every minute, somewhere in the corporate world, someone who is different from the mainstream, someone whom the corporation wants in its midst because diversity is a business imperative, is not feeling included. We’re making missteps that lead to raised eyebrows, sidelong glances and the “tsk, tsk” of “Doesn’t she have a clue?”
We must not only acknowledge we’re different from one another in vital ways, but also be able to skillfully navigate these differences to succeed together. This is a must-have skill in the Obama era. Whether in government, academia or the corporate world, never before have we seen such an intersection of powerful, competent and ambitious talent working together on behalf of common organizational missions — but with wildly differing ways of going about it.
Human resources consultancy Hewitt Associates defines cross-cultural competence as “the ability to discern and take into account one’s own and others’ worldviews, to be able to solve problems, make decisions and resolve conflicts in ways that optimize cultural differences for better, longer lasting, and more creative solutions.”
Most companies’ efforts to bulk up cross-cultural competence veer toward training. In these transformational times, however, pinpoint solutions will not be enough. Building cross-cultural competence is a developmental task similar to building great managers and leaders. One classroom or online learning experience won’t do the trick. It requires a systemic approach that changes underlying assumptions about how we manage differences; how we assess and reward people; the kind of talent we hire; the structures and processes we put in place to get things done; and, yes, the learning we provide. The learning must be staged with the realism and respect this competence demands, however. In the same way that most of us would not be able to handle algebra without first learning basic arithmetic, so it is with learning how to navigate our differences.
Since more than $8 billion has been spent on diversity learning in the past decade, let’s start by examining the ROI.
The Faulty Paradigm of Tolerance and Sensitivity
Say “diversity training” and many people will immediately think about learning experiences based on a paradigm of tolerance and sensitivity. This approach made sense 25 years ago when more women and racial and ethnic minorities began to enter sectors of the U.S. workforce once dominated by white males. As they did, they encountered intolerance and insensitivity. Hence the birth of “sensitivity training,” which was aimed at teaching workers how to be tolerant of differences. It was appropriate for the first generation of diversity work.
A generation later, tolerance and sensitivity work has established mechanisms for addressing the “-isms.” Tolerance is a good antidote to resistance and defensiveness on the part of majorities toward those who are different. It’s a place of truce rather than truth. It’s manifested in statements such as: “I won’t resist you anymore.” “I’ll tolerate that you’re here.” “I’m OK, you’re OK.” “We’ll agree to disagree.” “Live and let live.”
Sensitivity takes it further. It finds its voice in statements such as: “I will work at understanding that you have unique needs and preferences.” “When you say something bothers you and it doesn’t make sense to me, I accept that it is important to you.” “I won’t question your views.” In between the lines it says, “I’ll let you have that gimme.”
As a result of this approach, much explicit prejudice in the workplace has subsided or gone underground. Unfortunately, this paradigm has spent itself. It has taken us as far as it can, and it will not be enough to enable the transformation of global diversity.
This paradigm ran out of juice for a few reasons:
- Paralysis: Regardless of their opinions, employees generally know what is and is not appropriate to say. Political correctness has paralyzed us from talking in constructive ways about the true differences between us.
- Impractical: Tolerance and sensitivity aren’t very helpful when facing a colleague whose mother taught him or her the exact opposite of what yours taught you. It’s an attitude, not a skill, that’s condescending at worst or superficial at best, as we sponsor international and ethnic food potlucks and teach each other our cultures’ dance steps.
- U.S.-centric: Tolerance and sensitivity do not serve us well in developing a platform for global diversity. It’s a construct that flows out of the civil rights movement and gets sniffed out as “too American” as soon as it crosses the border.
- Finger-pointing: Tolerance and sensitivity undermine inclusion because of its implied audience. Who is it that needs to be more tolerant and sensitive? The white heterosexual male, of course. He’s in the audience, thinking, “OK, I get this. This is all about me, but I’m not part of it.” Right there in inclusion training, an important part of the community is excluded.
It’s time for more powerful concepts that go beyond, “You’ve got yours and I’ve got mine.” We need to create a voice that asks, “What is ours — together? Out of our differences, what new progress can we create — together?”
Today’s global world requires a shift toward the paradigm of cross-cultural competence. The benefits are many and they are:
