Arkansas Bar Building A Diverse Workplace June 2010 Rev

BUILDING A DIVERSE WORKPLACE

Arkansas Bar AssociationAnnual Meeting

June 10, 2010

Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., CMCLawyers Life Coach LLC

WHY DIVERSITY?• Values of justice and

fairness• Better problem

solving• Greater creativity,

innovation• Market

competitiveness• Greater access to

talent pool

2 Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., CMC © 2010 Lawyers Life Coach LLC

Patterns of white male dominance inherent in structure of law firms reproduce themselves

again and again.


ADVANCEMENT Attorneys of color = 4.32% partners 15.06% associates Women = 17.06% partners 47.74% associates Nationwide 41% of law offices have no partners of

color. 10% of law offices have no women partners

NALP 2004


Percent of Positions at Law Firms, by Gender

1st & 2nd Ye

ar Asso

ciates

Mid-Leve

l Asso

ciates

7th Year

Associa

tes

Of-Counsel

Non-Equity

Partners

Equity

Partners

Manag

ing

0102030405060708090

100

WomenMen


Where are Women of Color?

% Minority Women After 5 Years

Remaining at first firmLeaving first firm

Attrition Rate for Minority Women by 8th Year

Left first firmRemaining at firm


Barriers to Advancement• Toxic organizational culture• Ethnocentrism• Emphasis on assimilation vs.

multiculturalism• Absence of diversity competence• Unconscious/unintentional bias• Lack of mentoring• Exclusion from informal networks• Lack of opportunities for

advancement• Work/family conflict• Stigmatized reduced-hours

policies



PRESSURE to Assimilate


Imagine a world made by and for short people. In this world everyone is under 5’5,” and the most powerful are rarely taller than 5’3.” After years of discrimination, tall people finally call for change and short people agree that the current world is unfair and amends should be made.

Short people first try to correct things by teaching tall people to act like short people – to minimize their differences by stooping to fit in the doorways or by hunching over to fit in the small chairs. Short people insist that once tall people learn these behaviors they will fit right in.

Tall People in a Short World

Being John Malkovich, 1999


Some short people take another approach to routing discrimination: trying to make their world more accommodating to tall people by fixing some of the structural barriers that get in their way. They build six-foot high doors in the back of the building and purchase desks that don’t knock tall people’s knees. They even create some less demanding career paths – tall-people tracks – for those who are unwilling or unable to put up with the many realities of the short world that just can’t be changed.

Being John Malkovich, 1999


Other short people take a third approach: they celebrate the differences of their tall associates. Tall people stand out in a crowd and they can reach things on high shelves. Let’s recognize the worth of those skills and put them to good use! And so the short people “create equity” by putting tall people in jobs where their height is an advantage, like designing brand extensions targeted to tall people.

Debra E. Meyerson & Joyce K. Fletcher, (2000) “A Modest Manifesto for Shattering the Glass Ceiling,” Harvard Business Review.


Faulty Assumptions about Meritocracy

The most qualified person for a job can be clearly determined.

Objective performance criteria can be established for a legal job.

Evaluators are free of bias.

Once a person is hired, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, limited only be individual abilities.

If a person works hard enough, s/he will be recognized and rewarded.


What's the First Thing You See?• Race, gender and age

are cues• Perceptually salient• Among first social

categories that children learn

• Lead to automatic categorization

• Hard if not impossible to inhibit


STEREOTYPES• Our brain’s tend to categorize

and to connect social categories with characteristics (stereotypes)

• These stereotypes exert a significant influence on our perceptions, memories, explanations for things that happen and behaviors – often without our awareness.

• Stereotype-driven cognitive and behavioral events create an uneven playing field for minority members in a majority culture.


Stereotypes…

• allow efficient, if sometimes inaccurate, processing of information.

• often conflict with consciously held or “explicit” attitudes.

Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002


Stereotypes are Self-Confirming

Expectations can effect which information attended to and remembered as well as how we engage in interactions – often in a manner that reinforces expectations


Minorities and women are often held to higher standards regarding their credibility and intelligence by supervisors and clientele, and their missteps are often more damaging to their reputations than would be the same missteps by majority colleagues who are not saddled by stereotypes that they are less capable.” MCCA Creating Pathways to Diversity, White Men and Diversity – A Closer Look p.


“I have been told on more than oneoccasion, when I asked others forwork, that a case was not the “right”one for me, but that I would be keptin mind for future assignments.I also have been asked to becomeinvolved in a matter that was deemedto be right for me — either becausethe presiding judge was black, thejury pool included significant minorityrepresentation, or the client wasblack.This raises a much larger questionthat I cannot answer: namely, do thesesame people believe a case is not agood fit for me or other black partnerswhen the judge is white, the jury poolnon-diverse, or the client is thought toprefer a white attorney?”

Phillip L. Harris, Confronting Race, Chicago Lawyer, July 2007


Glass Ceiling Penalizes Women Through Two Distinct Patterns

Harder for women to be seen as competent – must demonstrate higher level of competence or demonstrate competence over and over again (descriptive stereotype)

Women penalized for being too competent (prescriptive stereotype)


What is assertive orambitious in a man

is aggressive in awoman.


He’s smartand talented; she’s lucky.


WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT


Resumes of childless women received

twice as many call backs as those of mothers.

There were no differences in call backs for

men with or without children.

Correll, et. al. 2007

THE MATERNAL WALL


Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lashika and Jamal?

White-sounding names received 50% more callbacks.

Amount of discrimination uniform across occupations, industries.

Equal Opportunity Employers and federal contractors discriminate as much as other employers.

M.Bertrand & S. Mullainathan (2003) Poverty Action Lab, 3, 1-27.


100s of 1000s of experiments across the globe over the last 14 years, many different methods, many different populations

Powerful tool for revealing unconscious bias

Unconscious bias - judgments and thoughts that, if unexamined, remain outside of conscious awareness or conscious control (e.g., stereotypes that one does not endorse, but may still influence one’s judgments or behaviors).

Unconscious bias-related tools and concepts can be used as a means of furthering workplace diversity efforts

Fairness in the workplace can only be achieved when blatant, obvious obstacles (e.g., sexual harassment and race discrimination) AND subtle, hidden barriers (e.g., stereotyping and unconscious bias) are addressed.

Implicit Association Test

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit


https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit

Behavior Predicted by IAT

Individual showing pro-white pattern on IAT will do the following when in the presence of a black person:▪ Lean forward less▪ Turn away slightly▪ Close his/her body▪ Less expressive▪ Less eye contact▪ Stand further away▪ Smile less▪ Hesitate and stumble over words▪ Laugh at jokes less▪ Will not affect what person consciously chooses to say or feel or do▪ Individual is unlikely to be aware of changes in behavior


Stereotypes are…

Applied more under circumstances of:

Time pressure Ambiguity, lack of

information Stress from competing

tasks Lack of critical mass


Barriers to Equality and Inclusion• Words mean little in terms of the real

messages that we send and receive. • The meaning of our messages is frequently

delivered through subtle micromessages. • Subtle, often subconscious signals represent

core of the messages we send, and can either demonstrate inclusion or exclusion.

• Micro-inequities – apparently small events which are often ephemeral, hard to prove, covert, often unintentional, frequently unrecognized by perpetrator

• Occur wherever people are seen to be different: African Americans in a white firm, women in traditionally male environment

• Micro-inequities – usually small in nature but not trivial in effect


How Stereotypes and DominanceAre Maintained


Diversity is Opportunity• Diversity can be drawn on as a

resource for building on employees’ strengths

• Allows individuals to be freed from concerns about inclusion – more able to innovate, reach potential

• Enables diverse employees to bring viewpoints of their distinctive social group memberships to generating solutions for clients and the firm

• Interactions across difference are opportunities for learning

• Fostering supportive, resilient relationships promotes individual and organizational thriving

• Because no one group valued more than another no one is marginalized – employees free to engage, challenge and support one another

• Creating an inclusive work environment is essentially about cultivating a climate of respect, compassion, openness


ALIGNMENT

POLICIES

PRACTICES


Creating an Inclusive Organization

Recruitment

Development

Assignments

Evaluation

Promotion

Compensation


Path to a Diverse Firm

Commit to Long Term

Measure

Education

Define Diversity Competencies

Integrate with Firm’s Strategic Goals

Assessment

Diversity Committee

Leadership – vision, model


COMMUNICATION

CONSTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT


CONTACT INFORMATION

Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., CMCLawyers Life Coach LLC

910 17th Street, N.W.Suite 306

Washington, DC 20006Phone: 202-595-3108

Email: [email protected]: http://LawyersLifeCoach.com

To subscribe to our free ezine, “Beyond the Billable Hour,”

go to http://LawyersLifeCoach.com

mailto:[email protected]

http://lawyerslifecoach.com/

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