How Talent Development Pros Deliver Equitable Development

“The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules
will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future
for their children faces assault from just about every direction.
That great enemy of democratic capitalism — economic inequality — is real and growing”

— Jon Meacham, Historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author

Has anyone else noticed the palpable decline in the work around diversity, equity and inclusion? To borrow a dating app term, it’s as if DEI has been “ghosted,” but I’m not exactly sure by whom. For the last two decades, DEI was a centerpiece to talent strategy discussions. Today, it feels — best case — blasé. Perhaps businesses are focused on other priorities. Maybe we’ve become desensitized to the topic. Regardless of the reason, we as talent professionals can help our organizations and our employees thrive through purposeful development efforts.

If you don’t know Jon Meacham’s work, I highly recommend it. He’d be the first to tell you that he has inherent, systemic advantages based on his demographics: white, male, straight, married, college-educated, Christian. To paraphrase his words, life is predisposed to fall in his favor. As a historian, he recognizes the patterns of societies, cultures and political influences. At his core, he is an optimist, a patriot and believes in the founding principles of the United States. His observations about the decline of the middle class and growing economic inequalities speak volumes to the role of capitalism and the societal need to mitigate the gaps.

The social science research is clear: the opportunity to grow and develop is a great economic equalizer, and purposeful investments in underrepresented talent benefit the individual, the enterprise and society at large. Organizations like OneTen and OutLEADERSHIP have formed alliances to take a more deliberate approach to developing underrepresented talent. The leadership rosters for these organization are impressive, and the hope is the public commitments become tangible programs inside the firms these executives lead.

Related Article: Interrupting Biases Beneath the Surface

What Is the Opportunity for Talent Development Professionals?

First and foremost, learn to talk about bias as a natural occurrence. Acknowledge that the world of work is not a level playing field and likely never will be. The underlying culprit are our innate biases that are part of our brain’s biology. There are well over 150 cognitive biases that hijack our thinking and interfere with our decision making, so accepting that these biases exist is a huge step forward towards mitigating their impact. If you have a brain, you have bias. Having biases doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you normal.

Second, leverage your company data to guide your talent development investments. For the last two decades, the representation stats in aggregate have shown progressive improvement, but the numbers decline when you look closely at advancement. The further up the organizational structure you go, the less diverse the talent becomes. Know your data and advocate for investments that advance your talent strategies (assuming they exist).

Third, be transparent with your workforce about your talent development portfolio. Like any other set of investment strategies, it’s important to diversify your initiatives and link them to your investment goals. Sharing those commitments helps align the expectations of employees with the organization overall. It also sends a clear signal to people managers who enable development about the importance of their support.

Fourth, foster purposeful development for underrepresented talent to counter-balance the organic developmental opportunities afforded to “the usual suspects.” This is a strong bias-mitigation strategy. When unchecked, our natural instincts are to give those high-value, special assignments to people whom we know, who are physically closest to us, and seem the least risky due to our previous experience. Totally logical, just not particularly helpful when trying to expand the capabilities of your workforce.

Fifth, shift your focus to skills development tied to roles. Given the speed of technology innovation (particularly generative AI), traditional approaches to career progression are no longer viable. Businesses are more interested in who has the required skills to do the work, and less interested in the formal path for how those skills were acquired. Developmental programs that are designed to accelerate existing talent without college degrees are rapidly on the rise.

Lastly, promote growth mindset as an organizational value. Developing diverse talent is not a reason or excuse to not develop all your workforce. Carol Dweck at Stanford is the preeminent researcher in this space and has deeply impacted the field of education. On the corporate front, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has transformed the company over the last near-decade by integrating growth mindset into the fabric of the firm. His core belief is the ability to continuously learn is positively correlated to innovation and business performance. As he puts it, "The learn-it-all does better than the know-it-all."

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