Why it’s hard to talk about difference at work.
And what you can do about it.
“Myths constitute the world!”
I still hear it in Mark’s booming voice. It was the first sentence of my first college lecture, part of Stanford’s Structured Liberal Education, an academic program for first-year students which Mancall founded in the early 1970s and has left an indelible impact on a slew of Stanford alumni. We would explore various influential works in literature, philosophy, and the arts, but I kept coming back to that first sentence. How do myths constitute the world? And why does it matter when talking about difference?
The word “myth,” as I would come to learn, really meant something more like “mental model” or “intellectual framework” or “heuristic” (if you’re fancy). We rely on them all the time, and they have a genuine material impact on the world around us, despite being immaterial. For example, the concept of “professionalism” has embedded in it a world of ideas on which we rely to guide our behavior at work. That’s why I can say, “They were unprofessional.” and it gives you a rough sense (intuition?) for how they were behaving. Myths are shared shortcuts in our thinking.
Notably, the details of the myths, the stories that inform our beliefs and subsequent actions, are often held implicitly, not explicitly. You have a sense of what “unprofessional” looks and sounds like, but you may, or may not, agree with my particular judgment about the situation. Thus, we use myths to form our judgments, to interpret the world around us. At the same time, we take this largely subconscious process for granted. By design, myths inform our behaviors without us realizing what’s really going on. Thus, the goal of a liberal education is, in part, to make us aware of these unconscious myths and, by extension, free to choose whether or not, to believe them.
There are three myths related to the concept of professionalism that I think make conversations about difference at work extremely difficult. I present them below. I hope to make an implicit process more explicit to understand better what’s going on.
The Myth of Control
We want to believe that our efforts have a direct and proportional impact on the rewards we reap, that we have control over our professional lives. This is why few topics get folks squirming at work, like the topic of meritocracy. We want to believe that we live in a just world, where people generally “get what they deserve,” so conversations that might remind us otherwise make us feel uncomfortable. If two people have the same job, with the same title and responsibilities, they should be paid the same, no? The inputs should match the outputs. That’s basic cause and effect. To report, or even imply, that this is systematically not the case makes folks start to shift around in their seats. We want things to be fair at work. We want to feel like we’ve earned what we’re getting like we’re in control.
Yet most people describe themselves using facts/traits/characteristics, which they in no way “earned” and have an uneven material impact on professional outcomes. As an obvious example, your place of birth has significant material consequences, which are not “fair,” especially in a world carved into sovereign states with only semi-permeable borders. Add to that the impact of when you were born or to whom you were born, and the notion of meritocracy starts to crumble. No one chooses the family into which they were born. No one chooses the time or place. But these things play a significant role in our “station in life,” including (especially?) where we work and what we do for a living.
“Hi, my name is John. I’m from Connecticut. My parents are from New York. I’m a manager in the business development group.”
We’re four sentences into the conversation, and some folks might already be feeling uncomfortable. It’s difficult to talk about difference at work because we live in an unjust world, where people don’t always get what they deserve. At work, we like to act as if everyone’s getting exactly what they deserve as if we live in a meritocracy. When we start talking about identity, we begin to see we’re only partially responsible for where we are. Still, we want to simultaneously believe that the lower-paying jobs go to the “less skilled” labor because it’s “fair,” while knowing that no one chose where or to whom they were born and that these things are all related.
In short, we don’t know how to talk about our privilege, about how we’re lucky or how we’re unlucky, about how unchosen elements of our past have impacted where we are today. Work asserts that John deserves his role as a manager and, by extension, his pay. We don’t know how to acknowledge the randomness baked into our social structures. Would John have become a manager if his parents were from Guatemala instead of New York? Maybe. We want to believe that we deserve what we have, but conversations about difference remind us that we are only somewhat in control. The “Maybe” makes us squeamish. We would rather believe in an orderly universe.
The Myth of Order
At work, we like things to fit into neatly organized systems and protocols. We like it when things are orderly and under control. I have my duties, and you have yours. It’s clear to see where things begin and end. It’s clear what I’m supposed to do. We like these systems and protocols so much that we are willing to pay large sums of money for third-party consultants to help us “make sense” of our work. There’s a calming reassurance that comes with seeing what you do organized using two-by-two or three-by-three grids if it’s really complicated. Consultants, for their part, almost religiously shoot for what they call “MECE” (pronounced “mee-see”) explanations. Here’s an example of a very popular “mutually exclusive and comprehensively exhaustive” framework (SWOT):
Unfortunately, conversations about difference are rarely orderly. While at work, we want neatly organized grids. When it comes to who we are, it’s really all about intersectionality. This means trying to make sense of our gender, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion, disability, and physical appearance, AND understanding the way that these components interact with one another. While work prefers columns and rows, conversations about identity lend themselves to something closer to overlapping, roughly defined, multi-colored ovals like the one below that typifies an “intersectional analysis.”
“Hi, my name is Kimberlé. I am black. I am woman. AND I am the combination of both.”
Here, some might recognize a famous mathematical problem — the problem of squaring the circle. Interestingly, while this problem was literally proven impossible to solve, it’s only a problem in as much as we want to make the two worlds (work and identity) identical to one another.
In truth, we seek order in our professional lives because things tend towards chaos, not neatly organized grids. It’s difficult to talk about difference at work because we don’t know how to manage the conversation, and we’re afraid of the resulting ambiguity. We don’t know what to say or what not to say. We have helpful scripts when it comes to small talk, but not when it comes to identity. Things don’t always “make sense” when it comes to identity.
The Myth of Rationality
Our professional lives are full of choices — “Yes or No,” “Make or Buy,” “Go, No Go.” Given our preference for order as described above, we lean heavily on logic to guide our decision-making (i.e., the “mutually exclusive” in MECE). Professionally, we want to be rational about things. We want to analyze, weigh the pros/cons, back out the solution, and move forward accordingly.
Again, this habit of our “professional mind” makes conversations about difference more difficult. It’s not that identity conversations are nonsensical. It’s more that we are full of contradictions and irrational thoughts about ourselves. We simultaneously want and don’t want things. We simultaneously agree and disagree. We simultaneously know and don’t know. We’re impetuous. We’re motivated by non-rational drives. We feel our way through things just as much as we think our way through them. In short, we’re not ONLY rational.
So, identity conversations sometimes get emotional; they can get personal. “Too much” of either, and you are labeled “unprofessional.” At work, you’re supposed to be composed. You’re supposed to be “put together.” At the same time, talking about injustice is frustrating and talking about painful past experiences is sad. The current professional expectation seems to be to engage in the conversation with an expressionless face, present your point-of-view strictly “rationally,” or intellectualize rather than have your experience. It is difficult to talk about difference at work because most of us can’t be our whole selves at work. Professional norms ask us to check our emotions and “personal lives” at the door.
So, what can we do?
Clearly, we need to stop being rational, organized, and giving people what they deserve. I’m kidding, though my observations above could be misinterpreted in this way, so let me be explicit here — there’s no path forward that “ditches” the myths above. They’ve become a part of how we work and how we think. Plainly, they’ve become a part of who we are.
In my experience, the best conversations are additive, not exclusive (mutually or otherwise). While we won’t ditch the myths above, I think we can acknowledge them for what they are (mental models! myths!) and learn when/how to “use” them. To be blunt, I think the most significant hazard is to believe that the myths above are the only way of seeing things or the way things should be seen. In other words, there are alternative myths!
Be generous.
For example, instead of being focused on meritocracy founded on a kind of transactional logic (“You get X because you did Y”), what would it be like if we focused on generosity? Instead of being concerned with people “getting what they deserve,” what would the world look like if we concerned ourselves with giving generously to one another?
I want you to have enough food to eat regardless of where you born. I want you to have shelter regardless of to whom you were born. I want you to feel good about what you do regardless of... I want you to feel a sense of purpose regardless of... I want you to thrive regardless of...
A conversation rooted in generosity takes on a different tone, no?
What are you not saying for fear of incurring the costs? What would you say if you knew it would be received generously?
Be curious.
Moreover, for the myth of order, what if, instead of trying to fit things into MECE frameworks, we tried to lean into the ambiguity? Looking for mutually exclusive categories might help us come to more conclusive judgments, but it also stifles curiosity. Conversations about identity rooted in curiosity don’t try to label/organize facts so much as they try to apprehend a vivid understanding of the other person's experience. While MECE frameworks are concerned with finding the correct answers, curiosity is focused on asking the right questions. MECE frameworks categorize and close, while curiosity appreciates and opens.
What would you ask if you could ask anything? How would you reply to someone who was genuinely curious about your experience?
Be open-minded AND open-hearted.
Finally, what are we to do about the most dominant myth of them all? The worshipping of rationality essentially defines modernity and the Age of Enlightenment. It may be blasphemous to say, but it’s not the only way to approach conversations. Why can’t things be absurd? Why can’t they be ironic, sarcastic, or contradictory? Why can’t they be interpreted and re-interpreted, both together and apart? Does everything have to follow a strict, logical sequence? I understand the advantages of systematic thinking, but what are the disadvantages? Our computers can’t simultaneously hold a value of “0” and a value of “1” (at least not yet), but do our conversations need to be all or nothing too?
We are complicated creatures, nuanced and contradictory. We’re multifaceted and dynamic. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it:
We are all masterpieces in the making.
It’s hard to have conversations at work about difference because they go against our professional norms: they remind us that we don’t live in a perfect meritocracy, that our identities are messy and complicated. We don’t always make perfect sense. But having these kinds of conversations isn’t like trying to square the circle. They don’t have to be impossible. We can be generous in our approach and interpretations. We can be curious, lean into the ambiguity, and gain access to fascinating new points of view. Perhaps most of all, we can take a moment to sit back and appreciate the passionate, irrational masterpieces all around us — as they are and as they change.
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