Leadership and the Diversity
Continuum
EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) is the law, while diversity is more
of a mindset. That is, with EEO, I cannot discriminate towards certain
groups; however, I still might not tolerate these same groups. But when
I start valuing diverse groups and cultures, I start moving along
the diversity continuum.
Nazism
Archie Bunker
Martin Luther King
Hate <--|---|-----------|-----------------|-------|----------> Diversity
White supremacy
John Griffin
Towards the non-diversity (hate) side of the continuum is racism, such
as white supremacy and Nazism. On the other end of the scale are
people such as Martin Luther King and John Howard Griffin, who
wrote Black Like Me.
Towards the middle are characters such as Archie Bunker, who was
probably right smack dab in the middle of the continuum as he was
continually being pushed and pulled by various forces from both sides,
e.g., his wife Edith would try to pull him towards the diversity side, while
his upbringing would push him in the opposite direction.
Since this continuum contains a wide variety of people, then
development programs, such as education and training do help;
however, depending upon the location that someone is initially located
on the continuum, will determine the effectiveness of that development
program for the person. There are many training and development
programs that will help to move the center group towards the diversity
side of the continuum. However, such programs will probably not move
a person all the way towards the end of the diversity side (after all, it is
a continuum). So instead of picturing diversity training as a one-shot
affair that is done in hours or days, we need to picture diversity training
as being continuous with the goal being to steadily move along the
continuum. This means if someone is more towards the hate side of the
continuum, such as a white supremacist, then it is going to take a
greater initial push and a whole lot more training, development,
coaching, etc. to get him or her moving towards the diversity side of the
continuum.
Group and Individual Locators
A white male might be straight, Jewish, sexually abused as a child, and
a former P.O.W. Thus, a gay black female who had a happy childhood
and was never in a war might not be able to fully understand him and
vice-versa.
In addition, a gay man does not mean that he knows what all other gay
men are going through; just as an old white man does not mean that he
knows what all other old white men are going through. This is because
there are two major placements that show where a person is located on
the diversity continuum:
1. The group placement is composed of race, religion, cultural and other factors
that place the person within a group. The group locator normally remains
stable and it is only through great paradigm shifts that it moves up or down
the continuum or scale. For example, the civil war changed both black and
white group positions on the continuum. Later, the civil right movement again
changed the positions.
2. The individual locator is composed of a person's personal life experiences. So
while a person might be black, which is a group locator, her personal life
experiences that make her an individual determine her actual individual
placement upon the continuum.
Thus, while we might be able to relate to others in general by sharing
group locators, we can never fully relate to others because of the wide
variety of individual differences. However, we can certainly relate,
learn, and empathize with others due to the wide variety of trials and
hardships that we have all faced and shared.
If we only limit diversity to certain “group placement” factors, then we
start assuming that some groups have diversity and others do not —
those that have it are in the right and those that do not have it are in
the wrong. Yet, true diversity is on a continuum, so while everyone has
various portions of it, no one has all of it. While a person's group
placement tends to place him or her somewhere on the continuum (and
continues to try to push or pull him or her across the continuum, it is
the individual uniqueness of each person that gives diversity its
greatest strength — the power for each individual to learn and grow,
which in turn allows him or her to determine their rightful positio n
on the continuum.
Ref.: “ Big Dog and Little Dog’s Performance Juxtaposition”, http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/continuum.html