Good one....
Rethinking Political Correctness
A white manager fears she will be perceived as racist if she gives critical feedback to her Latino subordinate. A black engineer passed over for promotion wonders whether his race has anything to do with it, but he’s reluctant to raise this concern lest he be seen as “playing the race card.” A woman associate who wants to make partner in an accounting firm resists seeking coaching on her leadership style; she worries that doing so would confirm the notion that women don’t have what it takes to make partner.
These types of events occur daily in politically correct (PC) cultures, where unspoken canons of propriety govern behavior in cross-cultural interactions—that is, interactions among people of different races, genders, religions, and other potentially charged social identity groups. We embrace the commitment to equity that underlies political correctness, and we applaud the shifts in norms wrought by that commitment. We are troubled, however, by the barriers that political correctness can pose to developing constructive, engaged relationships at work. In cultures regulated by political correctness, people feel judged and fear being blamed. They worry about how others view them as representatives of their social identity groups. They feel inhibited and afraid to address even the most banal issues directly. People draw private conclusions; untested, their conclusions become immutable. Resentments build, relationships fray, and performance suffers.
Legal and cultural changes over the past 40 years ushered unprecedented numbers of women and people of color into companies’ professional and managerial ranks. Overt prejudice and discrimination in the workplace, historically sanctioned by society, are far less acceptable today. Laws now protect traditionally underrepresented groups from blatant discrimination in hiring and promotion, and political correctness has reset the standards for civility and respect in people’s day-to-day interactions.
Despite this obvious progress, we believe that political correctness is a double-edged sword. While it has helped many traditionally underrepresented employees to experience their workplace as more inclusive, the PC rule book can hinder employees’ ability to develop effective relationships across potentially divisive group differences. Companies need to equip workers with skills—not rules—for building these relationships.
Our work suggests that high-quality relationships cannot be mandated. Sensitivity training and zero-tolerance policies at best impart some useful cultural knowledge or indicate that a company is serious about eliminating bias. At worst, such practices undermine relationships by reinforcing a restrictive and fearful atmosphere. Those to whom corrective actions are directed—men and whites, for example—walk on eggshells for fear of unwittingly transgressing the rules of political correctness.
We have found that political correctness does not only pose problems for those in the “majority.” When majority members cannot speak candidly, members of under-represented groups also suffer: “Minorities” can’t discuss their concerns about fairness and fears about feeding into negative stereotypes, and that adds to an atmosphere in which people tiptoe around the issues and one another. These dynamics breed misunderstanding, conflict, and mistrust, corroding both managerial and team effectiveness.
Constructive engagement of differences—and, therefore, effective leadership in culturally diverse contexts—requires majority and minority individuals to develop a mind-set and skills that all parties currently lack. This article proposes how managers and employees can engage with one another to reap the benefits cultural diversity has to offer. It represents our collective insights from research, teaching, and consulting over the past 15 years in the areas of race and gender relations, diversity, and organizational change. It also incorporates findings from our research with Learning as Leadership, a San Rafael, California–based leadership development organization, in whose seminars we have observed dozens of managers and executives grappling with unproductive behavior patterns and experimenting with new ones. Applying our insights about these processes to classic diversity-related dilemmas, we have developed the following principles to guide people seeking a healthy approach to the tensions that commonly arise over difference:
•Pause to short-circuit the emotion and reflect.
•Connect with others in ways that affirm the importance of relationships.
•Question yourself to help identify your blind spots and discover what makes you defensive.
•Get genuine support that doesn’t necessarily validate your point of view but, rather, helps you gain a broader perspective.
•Shift your mind-set from “You need to change” to “What can I change?”
These five principles require that all parties adopt a learning orientation in cross-cultural interactions. In this article, we spell out the challenges—and opportunities—of adopting such an orientation and offer some guidelines for leaders. First, though, let’s explore the negative dynamics that result when open discussion is repressed and people fail to learn.
https://hbr.org/2006/09/rethinking-political-correctness
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