As the clock struck midnight on December 31st and we said a weary goodbye to the chaos of 2020, many of us kicked off the year ahead with the ritual of stating resolutions and goals for the new year.
I love the structure and focus that rituals bring to marking life’s big moments. And while once I embraced the tradition of the New Year’s resolution, after too many that didn’t make it past Valentine’s day, I ditched the practice in favour of setting intentions for the upcoming year. To me, intentions feel more sustainable than succeed-or-fail goals. Where goals tend to be future-focused and measurable, intentions are a commitment to align our actions with a value or purpose. They are lived with a focus on day-to-day actions. They require attention, the willingness to remain alert to what might have previously gone unnoticed.
In looking back over 2020, I’ve been considering how this shift from hard and fast goals to a more intentional commitment to change has emerged in our work in diversity, equity and inclusion.
For many organizations, when it comes to diversity, meeting goals has been key: achieve better representation in the workforce and remove barriers for underrepresented groups. Representation is measurable, and what gets measured is a lot more likely to get done. When it comes to training, much of the work that we’ve been asked to do has focused on “awareness-building”. We’ve helped to foster an understanding of the difference between diversity and inclusion, the nature of unconscious bias and the components of a culture of belonging and respect. This is important, foundational work. Goals of improving representation and running “diversity training” are easy to quantify, see, and measure.
But since the murder of George Floyd and the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S and around the world, many organizations are seeking to move beyond the goals inherent in metrics, to examining intentions. Intentions are demonstrated in how leaders relate to employees, and how all workers relate to each other. Many have held listening circles to give space and voice to the experience of BIPOC employees. And many more have been seeking ways to engage in the often-uncomfortable conversations about racism, exclusion and discrimination.
We’ve been seeing the D&I work that we do, most often focused on awareness, now dovetailing smoothly with the solid work we’ve been doing for years in engaging in Difficult Conversations. We’ve been developing new experiential, practice-based programs in Stepping In and Speaking Up as an ally, to help leaders engage with confidence in the often-uncomfortable conversations about discrimination, exclusion and harassment.
A shift in focus from outcomes to intentions doesn’t mean giving up on the idea of goals. Rather, it means going deeper than hitting targets or ticking boxes. It means consciously opening our eyes to the bias inherent in our systems and in our interactions. It means attuning our ears to the experience of others. A focus on intentions requires a courageous and deliberate scrutiny of everyday conduct. And as we align our actions to our values, we may find that we’re meeting diversity and inclusion goals in a much more meaningful and satisfying way.
Recent Comments