Government, Courts, and the World of Work

A major study has reported that most diversity training efforts at American companies are ineffective and even counterproductive because it focuses too much time on compliance and not enough time on organizational culture and change.  

Several experts offered two reasons for this: The first is that businesses are responding rationally to the legal environment, since several Supreme Court rulings have held that companies with mandatory diversity training are in a stronger position if they face a discrimination lawsuit. Second, many companies, with the implicit cooperation of diversity trainers, find it easier to offer exercises that serve public relations goals, rather than to embrace real change.

I have trained thousands of supervisors at hundreds of companies since 1995 and I generally concur with the study’s findings.

For the most part, companies see diversity as a legal compliance issue, not as a meaningful opportunity to create a more productive working environment. Our research indicates that employers get sued regardless of training because of this.

In response, we have developed training that gets at the root causes of conflict and treats diversity as a corporate value, rather than as a legal necessity.  This type of value-based training is really not for everyone. By and large, it’s for employers that already get it.  Short of that, there is something to be said for preserving a defense to a discrimination suit.

The most common cause of workplace litigation is the perception of unfair discipline and discharge.   Many employers misunderstand this, and that’s why supervisory training makes no difference.

So, before considering supervisory training, consider this: Most employers are interested in production, efficiency, uncovering mistakes, and the elimination of waste. This requires the compulsory cooperation of employees by getting them to follow uniform procedures over and over again, and to make sure there are no deviations.   Since the whole system is based on repetition and finding and correcting mistakes, most feedback given by supervisors, even if  intended to be helpful, is viewed by employees as punitive.

Further, in a workplace where there is an absence of praise, discipline will almost always be perceived as punishment. 

But fair and ethical discipline requires thinking and acting from both sides of the brain.  It requires more than the use of punishment.  The best supervisors combine job expertise with people skills. To have a truly productive and litigation free environment, supervisors must motivate employees by tapping into their values– as opposed to merely threatening them, which is mistakenly seen as easier to do.  In short, the best supervisors are leaders, not dictators.

But the dirty little secret is that many employers are simply not interested in the leadership abilities of their supervisors because they believe that leadership skills– such as listening, articulating core values, coaching, mentoring, conflict resolution, cultural sensitivity– are incompatible with meeting production quotas, finding mistakes and eliminating waste.

Since many employers are not really interested in supervisory leadership, supervisors have no incentive to improve their people skills. Supervisory training is a waste of time without incentives encouraging supervisors to take leadership skills seriously. Training without incentives and role models from the top, leave supervisors feeling more disillusioned and cynical than ever. 

Its clear that discipline without leadership results in conflict; and conflict perpetuates litigation. But most employers have no insight into the problem and no genuine desire to break this vicious cycle.