4.2 Fear of saying the wrong thing

Fear of saying the wrong thing, of upsetting someone, of making a fool of ourselves, can often stop us from doing things. But not doing anything at all is not going to encourage and nurture diversity, in fact it will perpetuate inequality.

Watch this short video, in which Aggie Mutuma, CEO of Mahogany Partners, talks about getting over the fear of talking about diversity:

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Transcript: Video 6: How to get over your fear of talking about diversity

AGGIE MUTUMA:

Yes. So overcoming the fear, especially for leaders-- a really good question-- so I, in my coaching-- I do quite a bit of executive coaching-- come across a lot of leaders who happen to be white males of a certain age who’ve done really well in their career. And when you discuss inclusion, there is a real reticence for them to engage in it, and that comes from fear-- fear of potentially being seen as sexist, or racist, or homophobic if they express what they’re thinking.

And there’s also this piece around feeling as though inclusion is a conversation about everybody who is not them. The conversation is about women. The conversation is about people of color. The conversation is about people in the LGBTQY community, people with disabilities-- so everyone who is not them.

So there’s this also reticence around, actually, it’s not about me. Should I be talking about this? Do I have the qualifications or the right to talk about this? And what I will say, in terms of my response, is that inclusion is about absolutely everybody. It’s about everyone. It is about women. It is about people of color. It is about people with disabilities, the LGBTQ community, everybody.

It is also about the white man as well. And a recent study was done by MindGem And it looked at organisations that were exclusive, so not inclusive, and they found that a large proportion of people felt like they had to cover and couldn’t be who they are at work and had to hide certain elements of who they are.

They also found that 45% of white men also felt like they couldn’t be themselves. So where an organisation is exclusive to people who are in there who are less represented, it is also exclusive to people who are represented. So inclusion is about absolutely everybody.

And then the second piece around engaging in the conversation and potentially feeling like you don’t have the right to speak about it, or feeling as though you may get it wrong, or you may upset someone-- the answer to that is that you probably will get it wrong. And you probably will at some point in time make mistakes. We all do. We all do. These are complex issues. These are individual issues. They’re different for different people, aren’t they? So you probably will make some errors and some mistakes.

What I would suggest, though, is you still go ahead, and you have the conversations, and you learn. Do some research first-- Google’s your friend. Your HR team is your friend. You can work with consultants, whatever you need to do. Do some preliminary work to understand some of the language and to understand some of the challenges, maybe, but definitely go into the conversations and if you need them to be facilitated for you, that’s absolutely fine.

But the worst thing I would suggest that you can do is to say nothing. The worst thing that you can do is to do nothing. Because, firstly, you stay in ignorance because you don’t learn. The world moves on, and you’re still in where you are. So you become less, and less, and less aware about what the conversations are. That’s the first thing.

And then secondly, your people think you don’t care. Your teams think you don’t care about them, their experiences, and you don’t care about making your organisation inclusive. So definitely the worst thing you can do is to not say anything. So please do speak up. Do engage in the conversations. Do some prework first so you don’t go in completely blind, but you are going to make mistakes. That is part of the process, so just go ahead and dive in.

End transcript: Video 6: How to get over your fear of talking about diversity

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Video 6: How to get over your fear of talking about diversity

Another common experience is fear of using the wrong language. As you’ll already have seen, the terminology in some areas of diversity changes quickly so if you are unsure, it is usually best to ask the individual which words they would prefer you to use. If they don’t wish to engage with you in that moment, you could suggest another time to speak.

There are also useful glossaries available for further research. See Further reading for a list.