Is Racism an Adaptive Challenge?
By Jared R. Francis | @jaredrfrancis | Reading Time: 7 mins
Ron Heiftez and Marty Linsky describe a problem as adaptive when its solutions are not readily knowable or existing within our current capacity. True adaptive challenges require people and organizations to adopt new modes of thinking and action, or as Heifetz and Linsky put it, in adaptive challenges “the people are the problem.” To the extent that the change that is required is systemic, it will require changes in the people who constitute, enact, and maintain the system.
How does racism manifest as an adaptive challenge in our organizations? To ignore the persistence of racism and bias in our organizations, and their deleterious impact on people of color, is to be willfully blind to the clearest reading of America’s past and present reality.
For leaders of color, framing our encounters with racism as an ongoing and unique adaptive challenge offers leaders a powerful lens and tool for survival and success.
Racism is an adaptive challenge
At times, some may reduce racism to individual acts of bigotry or bias. A better definition, pushes us to understand racism as a system designed to perpetuate racial inequalities. Ibram X. Kendi describes how racism produces ongoing racial inequity in society:
What is racism? Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities...A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”
To the extent that any organization reproduces and sustains a culture that disproportionately concentrates power in white leaders over time, we must acknowledge that the systemic racism that permeates our society is actively at work within the organization.
There is nothing wrong with leaders of color
"There is nothing wrong with black people," has been the opening refrain at Dr. Kendi's recent public speaking engagements. This seemingly banal statement disabuses us of the stories we concoct to explain the persistence of racial inequity in our society. If we truly believe there is nothing wrong with any racial group, we can only explain racial inequities as a result of larger structures that shape the experiences and outcomes for individuals within racial groups.
I want to join Kendi, in saying that there is nothing wrong with the leaders of color in our organizations. Therefore when we observe ongoing racial inequity on leadership teams, in promotions, salaries, and other metrics, the only conclusion we can reach is that there are systemic dynamics at play within the organizations that are sustaining racial inequity and protecting whiteness. This only changes if leaders of all races join together to challenge and shift the mindsets and actions of the people we lead.
White Fragility as a form of resistance
White fragility is a common response to attempts to disrupt racial inequity and biased practices. The concept of white fragility has been recently popularized by Robin DiAngelo. White fragility and its associated behaviors protect and sustain racial inequities within our organizations by shutting down attempts to name or change how racism is operationalized within our relationships, organizational culture, and practices. Given this, how should leaders of color engage white fragility?
Adaptive thinking primes us to expect, prepare and succeed as resistance arises in the change process. People resist change even when the status quo has not met their goals or ideals. Those seeking to change the status quo in regards to race in their organizations will inevitably encounter resistance, hence the centrality of adaptive thinking to the leadership in color framework.
Resistance can be particularly hostile when the status quo works for a select group of people, regardless of the positive impact that change would bring to others or the organization's goals writ large. This danger is especially salient when leaders confront the manifestations of racism within our organizations.
Leaders of color must plan for the emergence of white fragility. First, white fragility can be triggered by the mere existence of a person of color in a leadership role, even before any specific actions to remedy the causes of racial inequity are implemented. White fragility is a defensive countermeasure--it is a weapon to resist change and defend the status quo. As an active measure of resistance, leaders must deploy more proactive measures to neutralize the impact of white fragility.
The concept of "temperature regulation," from adaptive thinking, can be of use when challenging racism in organizational settings. When leading adaptive change, leaders must know when to “turn up the heat”—i.e., bring conflicts to the forefront and push for dramatic changes. These are moments when challenging beliefs, behaviors, and structures that perpetuate the status quo are likely to make stakeholders uncomfortable, off-balance, and uneasy. Inducing periods of disequilibrium is a necessity in the change process, as it creates opportunities to disrupt and rethink ingrained ways of doing business. Adaptive thinking also teaches us that we must, at times, “turn down the heat”, by focusing on technical parts of the problem or slowing the pace of change--turn up the heat too much or too fast, and the resistance to change can "take out" a leader or their agenda. What does this look like in practice, and in the context of confronting white fragility? Consider the following scenario:
After a recent round of performance reviews, you notice that people of color were less likely to be moved into more senior management roles or received smaller raises than their white counterparts. You decide to “turn up the heat.” In a meeting with other leaders, you present data that highlights your findings of racial disparities in promotion and salaries, as well as ways in which white managers may be engaging in bias when reviewing talent. After the meetings, you begin working with a group of managers tasked with recommending changes in promotion and talent review processes. Meanwhile, you start engaging white co-workers in conversations about how the attributes they praise in “high performs” align with white cultural values, while areas of growth for people of color are often framed in language grounded in stereotypes. At this moment, you are both pushing for systemic policy changes and creating opportunities for team members to shift their mindsets. The inevitable resistance begins to emerge: some of white co-workers you've engaged about their mindsets cry in meetings. At the same time, other recently promoted managers say that the recent policy review has led others to question if they “deserved” their promotions. However, the initiative moves forward because you’ve built a strong coalition for change.
Meanwhile, you become aware of practices in hiring that are limiting the number of candidates of color entering the talent pipeline. You consider adding this to the scope of policy recommendations, but chose to “turn the heat down.” Instead, you decide to bring talent pipeline issues to the forefront after the committee's recommendations are widely adopted across the organization. Is this the right call? Are you now protecting whiteness? You don’t feel totally right about it, but decide to prioritize holding together the coalition of stakeholders you've built to tackle the promotion policy. You conclude that there is risk in turning up the heat too soon, as those resisting the initiatives will weaponize a push for additional policy changes as opportunity to argue that revisions to the talent sourcing will create “too many priorities” for the Human Resources department to tackle this year. They will use this narrative to undercut and derail any policy actions from taking hold.
The adaptive mindset as a tool for survival
The leadership in color framework embraces adaptive thinking, as a critical component for leadership seeking equity in our organizations and communities. Adaptive thinking allows us to reframe how we view racism and bias in organizations and complements the power of our personal narratives as tools for survival and change. In some cases, adaptive thinking gives us the ability to transition from being recipients of the weak sauce that is white fragility towards an orientation of orchestrating and planning for the predictable acts of resistance to challenges to racial inequities. When we claim this position, leaders of color are more likely to survive attacks on our leadership and lead our organizations away from practices like white fragility that sustain racial inequity, both internally and the world at large.
The work of becoming an anti-racist organization--as well as an environment where leaders of color will thrive--requires an approach that recognizes that what matters most are not diversity metrics, but the hearts, minds, and relationships of the people in your organization. The change many organizations seek is a transformation of culture, not an improvement in metrics--it is truly adaptive.
