An environment, where you can’t be yourself and must contort your hair, body, clothing, your past history, your family background and personality in order to fit a mono-culture, can be very suffocating and counter productive. While discussions of diversity are usually focussed on the legitimate topics of social justice, economic equality and diversity of ideas, the negative effects of forced personality change is rarely mentioned despite the negative impacts on organizational performance. It’s an area of opportunity that deserves more attention.

When I started my career 30 years ago, I worked for a pharmaceutical company where the entire board, executive team and everyone above a manager level was white and male. This was in West Orange NJ where the local demographics were quite diverse. So what? We did OK. Well, even as a white male, the challenge that I faced was being forced to fit into a specific culture that walked, talked, interacted, related and shared common lifestyles and cultural norms. The leadership mainly adopted a similar traditional lifestyle of: Go to college, meet your sweetheart, get married, have kids, move to the suburbs, play golf and watch sports which they insistently discussed during the week (in that specific order). They also basically wore similar clothing, the same hairstyle and carried a “preppy” manner of speaking and body language. What happens if you didn’t fit the norm?

Perhaps you:

• have family members with a troubled past or in jail
• have a child before or without marriage
• have no kids and no spouse of the opposite sex
• can’t relate to the cultural references (different childhood background)
• originated from a country or a region that is in conflict with the USA
• prefer to dress in clothing that is not traditionally associated with your gender
• are a person of color
• have a hard-to-pronounce ethnic name

The list goes on, but the results are the same. I can tell you from personal experience, such people are usually cut out of casual conversation and cut out of outside-of-work friendships and activities (often voluntarily to avoid the discomfort of knowing that you can’t fit in or share common experiences). People reasonably cooperate at work, but for those on the outside, everything is harder. Only the most gifted and determined people can overcome the obstacles, and only to a point. Therefore, many end up trying to adopt the mono-culture. I’ve seen petite black women having to over dress and maintain strict body and voice control so as not to appear “threatening”.

The solution: Intentionally build an internal demographic that allows everyone to feel comfortable being themselves which then leads to not only better personal performance, but better organization outcomes. This is not a numbers game which is too easy to beat, it requires an anti-racist approach where positions are intentionally filled to include under-represented groups as demonstrated by the following example:

Global Blood Therapeutics (GBT)

In a recent discussion¹ on the subject of diversity and inclusion, Dr. Ted Love had the opportunity to discuss the cultural dynamics at GBT. GBT is a small Pharma in the SF Bay Area that discovers, develops and delivers therapies for blood-based disorders, starting with sickle cell disease which predominantly affects Black people. GBT has a strong diverse culture, not only in terms of race and ethnicity, but also sexual orientation and personality. The diverse culture was intentionally built to be comprised of a significant proportion of people of color because the patient base population of their products are people of color. During the discussion, Dr. Love shared how the company demographics positively impacted employee performance and psychological well being. For instance, in response to an internal corporate discussion regarding the murder of George Floyd, Dr. Love said that he actually received messages from his Black employees such as; “I’ve never been in an environment where I can truly act like I’m a black person without any fear of retribution or concern”. It’s admittedly very uncomfortable hearing those words and knowing that your colleagues of color probably can’t be themselves or feel safe, yet still need to perform regardless of this disadvantage. However, it’s not just Black people at GBT that provided such feedback. People of diverse backgrounds report comfort levels that allow them to be themselves. The results speak for themselves; GBT’s demographic and culture is not a compromise of performance for social justice, it’s actually the opposite. The company is doing very well and just recently launched its first product, Oxbryta for the treatment of sickle cell anemia.

Conclusion

While diversifying our corporate environments is not only a must from a social and economic equity perspective, it also creates relaxed corporate atmospheres where everyone can feel comfortable being themselves. As we see with the example mentioned in this article, and will probably see more of as other companies adopt similar strategies, we should welcome the opportunity for such changes because we all stand to benefit from such corporate environments.

¹ “Leading Through Crises: Speaking Up and Out on Equity. Diversity, and Inclusion Issues Impacting our World” moderated by Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath (June-2020)