Archive for month: May, 2022

Here’s how you can help new BIPOC managers and experienced hires succeed.

By Jahna Berry Posted on: March 4, 2022

https://source.opennews.org/articles/sloc-onboarding-isnt-just-early-career/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=early%20career%20staff&utm_campaign=Enews%20BOTW%203/11/2022

About this series: Sincerely, Leaders of Color is written for everyone in the journalism industry who cares about creating a more supportive environment for journalists of color to do their best work. Have a question for the team? Drop it here and watch for it in a future column. This column is proudly sponsored by the Executive Program and the Tow Knight Center at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and our guest writers budget is sponsored by The American Press Institute.

It’s been electrifying for me to see so many brilliant people of color step into powerful leadership roles in the two industries I work in, the nonprofit world and the media world, and it’s made me think more deeply about how to best support those BIPOC leaders and other more experienced hires during their first year of joining a new organization.

As chief operating officer at Mother Jones, it’s my job to hire and support managers. Plus, I’ve experienced this transition personally – I know what it’s like to be a new leader at a new organization, and I also know what it’s like to be promoted from within.

There are a lot of articles that talk about thoughtful onboarding practices (here, Amaris Castillo writes about onboarding challenges during the pandemic), especially for people who are early in their career. But, I’ve seen few that talk about how to support new managers who are BIPOC or experienced hires during their first months on the job. In my experience, they may have a few specific needs.

For example, I’ve found that newly hired senior level workers may get invited to more get-to-know-you meetings, but may experience an overall less robust onboarding process than people early in their careers. Why? In past jobs I’ve had onboarding teams say they didn’t want to insult me by going over something that seems like a “101” issue, like workplace conduct norms or basic workflows they assume I’ve seen before. In other situations, a new hire’s supervisor might assume a more experienced hire or someone promoted from within might not require much guidance. If a new hire is joining a small organization or startup, their boss may not have experience onboarding other supervisors.

Here are some things you may want to consider when you onboard an experienced BIPOC employee or a person of color who is a manager.

Create a formal, modified onboarding plan for internal promotions. This doesn’t have to have all of the bells and whistles of a new employee welcome, but consider creating a framework with goals and details about key transitions, like the one below. This is helpful for BIPOC employees who are further along in their careers or taking on new leadership roles, because they may feel additional pressures, which I will talk about in more detail in a bit.

Collaborate on a flexible 30/60/90 day plan, and ruthlessly prioritize. New BIPOC managers and experienced hires often step into their role after a long search, (it’s not uncommon for senior level management searches to take months or more than a year) so right away there are a lot of urgent tasks. Having a 30/60/90 conversation (or series of talks) will help prioritize, especially if it includes what they are expected to master within the first 30, 60 and 90 days. This framework (especially the 30 day goals) will help them prioritize as they are inevitably hit with competing requests. Expect to revisit this 30/60/90 plan often, because they may need more than one assurance it’s OK to deprioritize something. An ambitious new hire may set up their own 90-day plan, but if their manager helps draft it, then it’s easy for the new hire and manager to refine and update it together as things change.

Instead of shortening or skipping parts of the usual orientation when you onboard an experienced hire, try this: After you send an initial orientation schedule, ask the new hire what parts of the organization or their role they want to prioritize briefings on or they think they need to learn more about.

If the job includes any DEI work, help the new employee establish and communicate boundaries around those tasks. If a BIPOC manager works in a predominantly white department, they may feel unspoken pressure – from front line staff, leadership team, or themselves – to help fix or diagnose pre-existing diversity issues in the organization, whether that is explicitly part of their role or not. If the role is involved in DEI, the new hire and that person’s manager should help define the boundaries of that work and, together, proactively message that to the staff.

For example: sending out an email that explicitly states: “Eric leads the task force tracking diverse experts who appear in our news stories. DEI questions about hiring are owned by the CEO and Human Resources.” My boss is great at this and I try to remember to do it whenever I can.

Consider giving the new hire a business briefing. Does business reporting generate the most sponsorships? Does a project’s funding come from a grant with key deliverables? Explaining the nuances of the core business is a really helpful context for senior level hires, even if that information is not crucial right away. This is especially important for editorial hires and promotions. Help folks who have previously worked in silos gain a more holistic understanding of the organization and its revenue model.

Think about power dynamics during orientation. Orientation buddies are great. Don’t forget to give the new hire more than one go-to person for their questions. If possible, give the new hire at least one orientation buddy who is at their level – not a subordinate or their supervisor – so they can ask frank questions and get candid answers. In an ideal situation, at least one orientation buddy is a BIPOC person at their level within the new hire’s department or similar department. Some organizations might be too small or have too few employees to accomplish this, and that’s okay. If you do everything else on this list, that will still be great onboarding.

Ask thoughtful questions about tech needs. Set aside a block of time at the beginning, and perhaps a month after their first day, so the new hire can get answers to a batch of tech questions all at once. It’s my experience that seasoned hires who are BIPOC are often so focused on supporting their new team, they often backburner their own personal tech needs, which may make their jobs harder. For example, I’ve seen experienced hires delay requesting job-specific hardware, ordering ergonomics gear needed for working from home, or seeking training for hard-to-understand systems that they use on a regular basis.

Consider making a user manual about your work style or exchanging one with each other. I have not tried this yet, but I am obsessed with the examples I’ve seen on blogs like this one and this one. At the very least, make sure you have one one-on-one dedicated to this discussion.

Give them the insider’s tour of the org chart about a month in. This is a great opportunity to answer questions they may be pondering after their first few weeks whiz by. Discuss any people, teams, or projects they need to prioritize.

If their predecessor is available, ask them to have a coffee meeting with the new hire about six months after they start their new job. This is a terrific idea I saw from Race Forward’s Maria Smith Dautruche.

Consider offering management training designed for BIPOC managers during the first year on the job. There are some great training programs tailored to support leaders of color like Maynard 200 and Poynter’s Leadership Academy for Diversity in Media. I’ve found that getting management training during the first year at a new job often inspires me to try things in my new role and to shed old management habits that don’t work. Also these programs offer a community for BIPOC leaders, which is helpful because their roles can feel isolating at times. If this kind of training isn’t an option, look at more general training programs that have a DEI lens, like The Management Center, which specializes in training nonprofit leaders. Offer to connect your new hire to a peer who is BIPOC who does similar work at another organization.

Keep an eye on their workload. New BIPOC employees who are more experienced or who are supervisors often project confidence, yet have the same instincts and feelings as other new employees. They want to make a good impression. They hope that people will like them. They might be perfectionists. They could be battling imposter syndrome. BIPOC experienced hires may not have spaces at work where they can be vulnerable about this, especially in the early days at a new job. If you are the new hire’s manager, factor in how these very human impulses may play into dynamics at work, including how many projects they voluntarily take on.

Sincerely,
Jahna Berry
Chief Operating Officer, Mother Jones

By Ruchika Tulshyan

https://www.shrm.org/executive/resources/articles/Pages/dont-hire-for-culture-fit-tulshyan.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=exclusionary%20hiring%20practices&utm_campaign=Enews%20BOTW%204/15/2022

Tiffany Tate was eagerly awaiting the phone call informing her that she had gotten the job as career center director at a recognized college.

Not only was she qualified—overqualified, in fact—as a college career development expert with two degrees, her interviews with the university’s hiring team had gone exceptionally well. The team was selling the role to her; she had spent ample hours in the interview process including having dinner with the team that she was sure she would be working with.

Tate was excited to move to a beautiful part of North Carolina with her then two-year-old daughter. The role would give her a growth opportunity, she would manage a significant budget, and the person she would be reporting to had bonded with her over the fact that they graduated from the same college.

It was all laughs and smiles. The fact that the 12 people who had interviewed her were all white was par for the course in Tate’s experience in North Carolina. As a Black woman, she had learned to navigate being the only at work.

When the hiring manager called back, she had all but packed her bags. She was ready. “Tiffany, I really hate to call you with this. It was such a tough decision. The search committee struggled with it, and it came down to you and one other person. And they just felt like the other candidate was a better fit. I’m sorry,” he said.

The blood drummed in her ears. Did she hear correctly? But she quickly collected herself, dusting off the disappointment.

“OK, well, can you offer any feedback?” she inquired. “Can you share what would make me a better fit for this role?”

He responded, “No, I just want you to know you asked all the right questions. I don’t have any feedback, I want you to keep being who you are. I love your transparency. You are obviously very skilled at what you do.”

It’s been five years since that day, but Tate remembers those words perfectly.

She wonders, “Weird! I’m not a good fit, but they’re telling me to continue being the way that I am. That doesn’t make any sense.”

When a hiring manager can’t offer constructive feedback, despite a candidate having all the experience and certifications, despite them being able to demonstrate skill in navigating institutional leadership and customers—students in Tate’s case—it’s a red flag. Considering that she had all the pedigree and all the best references, but was then told she wouldn’t fit the culture of the institution, she couldn’t ignore the only noticeable difference she had with everyone on the selection committee and eventually the person they hired: her identity as a Black woman.

“I felt defeated,” she says.

Culture Fit Is Exclusionary

Hiring for culture fit is among the most widespread and exclusionary hiring practices today. When you’re hiring for a fit—given that most companies in Western countries are led by white men—by default, you’re hiring for sameness. “Culture fit” is an unspoken code that people have around what’s acceptable and what’s not within an organization, or even in society.

It reminds me of when I first moved to the United States as an adult in my twenties. When people encountered my unfamiliar name, they frequently asked if there was an easier or shorter way to say it. Depending on the situation, I would come up with an Anglo-Saxon nickname (like Rachel). If I had to interact with them often, say at work, I’d let them call me Ria, removing most of my name to make it easier for them to write or read it.

As I grew older, I got more comfortable with telling people I didn’t have a shorter name and that Ruchika was the only version I would respond to. But even then, for years later, I wouldn’t correct them if they mispronounced it. A common mispronunciation still is for Westerners to call me “Roo-sheek-ah” instead of “Roo-cheek-ah” (like it’s spelled). Now I’ll correct people and remind them until they get it right. In the past, I was so eager to fit into the culture—both what I considered U.S. culture as well as assimilating into the workplace culture. Now I see that my biggest asset is the difference that I add to the culture.

Focus on Culture Add

Rather than focusing on culture fit, organization leaders must concentrate on culture add to be inclusive. A plethora of research shows that harnessing the power of diverse teams leads to better outcomes, such as less groupthink, more innovative solutions, and overall more profitability. My favorite data point, though, is how culture add can lead to justice and fairness.

Tufts University psychologist Samuel Sommers created a mock jury experiment with 200 adults. Some juries were racially mixed with white and Black jurors, and some were all white. After watching a video trial of a Black defendant facing charges of sexual assault, the juries were first to submit their own verdict of guilty or not guilty, and then deliberate as a group. Even prior to deliberation, the mixed juries were nearly 10 percent less likely to presume that the defendant was guilty, compared with the all-white juries. During deliberation, the racially diverse juries had a more thorough consideration of the evidence and deliberated on average for longer, making less factual errors and being more open to discussing the role of racism in the process. In general, even though there may be more debate, or what psychologists call “interpersonal conflict,” when teams are diverse, the benefits of better outcomes far outweigh the drawbacks.

When teams prioritize hiring a candidate who would be a culture add rather than a culture fit, they’re more likely to benefit from out-of-the-box thinking and better outcomes.

Culture Fit Persists

Yet the language of who is a culture fit persists—and one survey of global organization found 84 percent of recruiters look for it in their selection process.

Think back to the last time that you talked about someone being a fit or not. The more trouble you have articulating why a candidate is not a culture fit, the more likely your judgment is biased. Instead, seek to hire people you don’t already have represented, whether by race and gender, educational background and experience, country of origin and languages spoken, or other identities.

Tate, whom we met earlier, is a hiring expert with over a decade of career development experience. She advises her clients to move away from an outdated model of assessing how much you “like” a candidate to how well could they do their jobs.

“The old culture fit model relied on deciding whether to hire someone if you thought you could be stuck in an airport or blizzard with them. It’s a bizarre metric—and riddled with biases, because you would likely choose to be stuck in an airport in a blizzard with someone who looks like you,” she says. But that isn’t the best assessment of who would best perform a job on your team.

Hiring practices that revolve around assessing for culture fit result in bias. One such example? Black women are earning college degrees at record numbers, but remain underrepresented and underpaid in corporate workplaces, with low access to leadership opportunities, as most workplaces still hire for a fit with Eurocentric culture norms.

Structural racism cannot be dismantled overnight, but declaring that your workplace is no longer seeking a culture fit for new roles and disrupting peers when they reject a candidate for not being a culture fit is a quick win. So is creating a workplace environment where diversity and inclusion are valued, and culture add is celebrated.

Ensure that your organization prioritizes the hiring of a diverse range of employees, especially women of color. This is not just HR’s job; it is every manager’s responsibility.

As for Tate? She’s since founded a company where she coaches clients to navigate the recruiting process and advises countless leadership teams and boards on hiring and retention best practices.

During these interactions, she advises her clients to inquire of interviewees, “How will you add to the culture on our team?”

Excerpted from Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work by Ruchika Tulshyan. Reprinted with permission from the MIT Press. Copyright 2022.

Ruchika Tulshyan is an inclusion strategist, CEO of Candour and author of Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work (MIT Press).