Applying Positive Psychology to Race Work

“If we are basically all the same, isn’t our work done?” That was the question a senior leader at a U.S. wealth management firm (we’ll call her Joan) asked us. Joan had offered to read an early draft of our book, The Business of Race*, and provide constructive feedback before we hit the send button to our publisher. Her question stopped us in our tracks, particularly when she added, “Serious question, not snarky.”

Joan had typed her question into the margin. It appeared just after reading the chapter “Shared Context: The Evolution of Race” in a section of the book we call “The Work Before the Work.” Like learning anything new, it’s important to understand what has come before. Race, racism, and racial equity are no different. Our goal in writing this section was to inform readers, who may have never taken a genetics or anthropology course, that visible differences in our appearance are a function of geography, not genetics.

Humans are 99.9% genetically the same. The superficial variations in our appearance of skin color, eye color, and hair form were used to create a narrative of inherent superiority of White people, the dominant group in Western nations, and fundamental deficiency in abilities and humanity of non-White groups. What’s different are the lived experiences created from this comparative superiority/inferiority narrative. Regardless of skin color, these classifications shape many aspects of lived experiences, including how we self-identify.

So we had to unpack Joan’s question - If we are all basically the same, isn’t our work done?

Four Tools to Enable Conversations

Let’s take a look at four positive psychology tools we write about in The Business of Race and see how they play out in Joan’s scenario in particular and in conversations about race and racism in the workplace more generally:

1. Broaden and Build Theory - Research by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, has found when we are in a positive emotional state we are more creative and open to possibilities. When we are in a negative mood, the opposite is true. Have you ever tried to brainstorm with a friend or colleague who is in a negative mood? It can’t be done (Greenberg & Greenlee, 2021).

When we first read Joan’s question, it was late in the afternoon. We both had already worked our day jobs. We were tired. Our first inclination was, “Didn’t we just devote the last twenty pages explaining this?” We had no patience to explore how to best answer her question. We decided to table it until our weekly Friday morning meeting when we felt more rested and were able to think creatively about how we would address it. If Joan had this question, so would others.

2. Psychological Safety - Research by Dr. Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School has found that psychological safety must be present, especially when grappling with emotionally charged topics such as race and racism, because it insists on vulnerability (Edmonson 2018). Before you can make yourself vulnerable, you must first feel safe.

Joan felt safe enough with us to ask that question. One of the reasons we wrote The Business of Race was to create a safe space within the context of the business community to discuss this undiscussable. It’s a question that many people may want to ask in the workplace, but are afraid to. Afraid of looking stupid. Afraid of looking naive. Afraid of looking racist. Had Joan asked her question in a work environment where psychological safety isn’t a valued norm, she may have been “called-out”, rather than “called-in” to the conversation. We call those seemingly small, everyday actions micro-opportunities; most often carried out by individuals, they move us closer to creating a racially equitable and inclusive workplace.

3. Empathy - Empathy is one of the thirty-four strengths identified in the StrengthsFinder assessment, and one of the nine strengths included in the Relationship Building domain (Rath & Conchie, 2008). Dr. Jane Dutton, University of Michigan Distinguished Professor Emerita and co-author with Dr. Monica Worline of the book Awakening Compassion at Work, defines empathy this way: “Empathy is feeling what another feels; imagining oneself in another person’s circumstances; feeling concern for another person’s suffering” (Worline & Dutton, 2017).

Effective relationships, both inside and outside of work, require empathy. When it comes to productive race work, building your empathy muscle is critical. We cannot expect to understand and grow from each other’s lived experiences if we cannot listen and communicate with empathy. The good news is that empathy can be learned. (For those looking to grow their empathy, we recommend The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences [Riess & Neporent, 2018].)

We stood in Joan’s shoes. She is a smart, thoughtful business leader who genuinely wanted to learn more about race and racism. She would not have offered to read an early version of the manuscript if she didn’t. By standing in Joan’s shoes we were able to see the challenge with our narrative and not view her feedback negatively. We also didn’t shame or blame her for asking her question.

4. Growth Mindset - Stanford University psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck has spent thirty-plus years researching how people face challenges. Dweck found, in more than one hundred studies replicated in both sports and business, that how we perceive challenges, mistakes, set-backs, and risks determines if we will persist or give-up (Dweck 2017). We face these dynamics nearly every day in life and in our jobs. When engaging in race work they will only multiply. People who have what Dweck calls a fixed mindset believe their abilities to be unchangeable traits – that we are born with a measured amount of skill, intelligence, and creative ability that can’t be improved upon. People with this mindset may avoid challenges, give up more easily, and ignore constructive feedback.

It would have been easier to ignore Joan’s feedback. We didn’t because we both possess what Dweck calls a growth mindset. People who possess a growth mindset believe that their successes and failures are based upon the effort they invest to grow from what they learn, not how smart they are or the skills they possess. People with a growth mindset expect mistakes and view them as part of the learning process.

When it comes to race work, know going in that you will make missteps; bumps and blunders are inevitable parts of any growth journey. The good news is, like empathy, you can develop more of a growth mindset by recognizing your inner critic, disputing negative thinking with evidence to the contrary, and being willing to play.

Meghan, another early reader of our manuscript, who is a learning and development professional at a global law firm, told us she felt a “sense of relief” when she learned that making mistakes and failing well are part of the race work journey. “I’ve been seeking a directive about what I need to do to get it ‘right’ when there is no right way. Explicitly telling folks, ‘You will get this wrong and you need to try anyway,’ is a message that is missing from the conversation right now. The expectations are so high and everyone is afraid to fail, be ‘canceled’ or be decried ‘tone deaf.’ ”

The Inner Work

In nearly every interview we conducted with more than two dozen business professionals for The Business of Race, the need to do “your own inner work” came up again and again, unprompted, as did the word “journey.” For this inner work we recommend at least three foundational resources needed to become consciously competent in your own race journey: discover your strengths, discover your anti-racist style, and discover your racial identity.

At the core of Joan's question was the third one – discover your racial identity.

Any learning and development program advises that the first step toward competence is self-awareness, not immediate action. Introspection involves slowing down, going inward, and being deliberate about how we think. Productive race work begins with self-awareness and your way of being in a multiracial workplace. That way of being is tied to many variables, including family-of-origin, education, professional circles, and media exposure. How you racially self-identify and how society identifies you are often quite different. Our racial identity shapes our worldview that includes the different opinions, ideologies, and assumptions that we bring to the workplace. These shape nearly every interaction, conversation, and business decision whether or not we are aware of it.

Back to Joan’s question: If we are all basically the same, isn’t our work done? The answer is no. When we assume sameness, we let ourselves off the hook for doing the work of empathizing with others who are not like us. We excuse ourselves from being constructively curious about the life experiences of people from different races and ethnicities; instead we treat them as a faceless, homogeneous throng rather than as individuals. The idea of sameness, of adopting a color-blind strategy for relating to individuals of different races, ethnicities, and skin tones, leaves people without the language to discuss race and racism and examine their own bias.

Instead, we must become color aware instead of color blind. We urge you, no matter the color of your skin or no matter which group you belong to (dominant or under-represented), to explore your own racial identity. This will help you to be more color aware of others. We offer two ways to do this in The Business of Race. One: reflect upon and write your response to this question: How do you self identify? Another way to explore your own racial identity is with National Public Radio’s The Race Card Project.

A Final Note

Productive race work begins with self-awareness but it does not end there. Awareness is not enough to end systemic racism. In The Business of Race, the second half of the book focuses on concrete actions we can take to reimagine an antiracist workplace.

We applied one more strength to Joan’s question: gratitude. Without Joan’s feedback, our articulation of a concept core to our thesis would have remained murky. What some might call a “mistake” we saw as an opportunity to deepen our learning and strengthen our race work lexicon. Our hope is that The Business of Race will spark constructive conversations in organizations that lead to positive changes to create an antiracist workplace.

*The Business of Race is a practical guide for business leaders and employees alike who are struggling with both how to talk about race and what to do about it. The book offers concrete ways businesses large and small can make positive, sustainable changes to bring more racial diversity, inclusion, and equity to the workplace. Readers will learn more than a half-dozen tools that bring an asset view of race, rather than a deficit view, such as SOAR and growth mindset. Readers will also learn to reach for familiar tools they use nearly every day, such as strategic planning and project management, to implement other priorities and apply them to the deeply complex, emotional, and intimidating dynamic of race in the workplace. But don’t confuse accessibility with ease. This is hard work.

References

Dweck, C. (2017). Mindset -- updated edition: Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential. Random House.

Edmonson, A. (July 2018). Creating psychological safety at work in a knowledge economy [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUo1QwVcCv0&t=7s

Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity: Discover the upward spiral that will change your life. Harmony.

Greenberg, M., & Greenlee, G. (2021). The business of race: How to create and sustain an antiracist workplace and why it’s actually good for business. McGraw-Hill, p. 203.

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths-based leadership: Great leaders, teams, and why people follow. Gallup Press.

Riess, H., & Neporent, L. (2018). The empathy effect: Seven neuroscience-based keys for transforming the way we live, love, work, and connect across differences. Sounds True.

Worline, M., & Dutton, J. E. (2017). Awakening compassion at work: The quiet power that elevates people and organizations. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, p. 5.

Margaret H. Greenberg (C’06) and Gina Greenlee are both organizational development (OD) consultants and coaches who met in the workplace more than twenty years ago. They have remained friends ever since. They are also the co-authors of the upcoming book, The Business of Race (McGraw-Hill, August 2021).

The Business of Race website includes options for pre-ordering (before August 31), and a free downloadable chapter (Chapter 10 - Hiring Made Visible: Individual Decisions, Institutional Changes).

Margaret and Gina can be reached at businessofrace@gmail.com

On LinkedIn: Margaret's LinkedIn Profile; Gina's LinkedIn Profile; The Business of Race LinkedIn Page