A CEO recently complained that his employees were resistant to diversity and any kind of training.
I asked him what he meant. He told me that the EEO officer had created a program and no one was signing up.

What’s wrong with this picture?
1-Diversity management is not the same as affirmative action and shouldn’t be sitting in the same office.
2- When people hear diversity = affirmative action they think it’s only about race, representation, looks good in the company photo and laws.
3- I’m not speaking against affirmative action, I’m just making an important differentiation between the two.
4- Diversity management  necessitates making internal changes in our own mindset and organizational systems and culture. That’s too hard for some people because they fear what they don’t know, so they designate diversity to a “brown bag” session and an affirmative action training program.
5- In a real inclusive work culture, differences and similarities are recognized as facts, and leaders look for ways that differences and similarities can benefit everyone in the organization.

It took awhile for the CEO to open his mindset and look at diversity and inclusion as a mindset and recognize that diversity management includes everyone. He separated diversity from the affirmative action function and changed his message. He created a communication process that asked for input from everyone and was able to demonstrate how diversity and diversity management benefitted every employee.

Result: So many employees signed up for diversity training and expressed an interest in being part of the diversity/inclusion  diversity/management process that the CEO had to add more sessions to the schedule.