Dear Egalitarian/Antiracist/Feminist/[Fill In The Blank] Manager:

One of the most impactful actions you can take to increase diversity on your team is MANAGE MEDIOCRITY.

/1

Most workers are average. No shade, just facts. Think about your job candidate debriefs and 9-box matrices. Most people perform in the middle of the respective rating scale or grid./2

It’s in the gray zone of mediocrity - “when given latitude for interpretation” - when -isms surface. -isms don’t surface in macro and micro decisions about superstars or low performers./3

But when talent decisions aren’t clear cut, you lean on emotions and then reverse engineer a justification for what your gut told you./4

http://www.psych.purdue.edu/~willia55/392F-%2706/Dovidio&Gaertner.pdf

Importantly, you tend to tip the odds in favor of people who fit workplace prototypes, not against folks who don’t. Put together, this trend is aversive for you to seek out (What does it say about your values?) & hard to detect./5

Even if you’re not ready for that reckoning or equipped to audit past decisions, you can take proactive steps to level up your team, differentiate talent and make room for more diversity./6

#1 - Give the feedback: It’s critical to surface & resolve misalignments between where you assess people & where they see themselves. I’ve seen these alignment gaps increase as recruitment has become transactional & companies have moved away from employee performance ratings./7

It’s your responsibility and duty to have the hard conversations and let people know where they really stand. Yes, even job candidates deserve constructive feedback./8

Preparing for these conversations affords you the opportunity to assess if you’ve fallen into the traps of scrutinizing prototypical talent less than their counterparts or weighting criteria in favor of prototypical candidates and employees./9

If preparing to give this feedback is taxing or leaves you anxious, it’s possible that you don’t believe the initial story you told yourself about the individual. It’s never too late to correct that narrative and remediate some of the corresponding outcomes./10

Giving honest feedback is especially critical for mediocre performers from prototypical backgrounds, who - for a variety of socialized reasons - can lack self-awareness and are more prone to think they’re better than they are. Again, facts. /11

#2 - Uncover potential. Provide your middle performers with well-defined opportunities to showcase their potential and demonstrate growth./12

It can be easy to ignore middle performers as the drumbeat of your team while you PIP low performers and reward top talent. It’s also easier to see the potential in prototypical talent because you’re more familiar with what their success looks like./13

For job candidates, stop trying to stump them arbitrarily. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. Do all you can to prepare them for the hiring process so you can see the very best of what they can do vs. how well they can manage performance anxiety./14 https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/

#3 - Seek counterpoints. Go out of your way to find evidence that is contrary to where you’re leaning - and take it seriously. Dig in with that one interviewer whose feedback stood out from the rest./15

Enable employees to request performance cycle feedback from collaborators who see a different side to them than you do. Question everything until you’re satisfied that you have enough objective data to make an informed decision./16

This is especially critical with prototypical talent, the recipients of this murky-middle bias. Ask: Why *shouldn’t* I hire or promote them?/17

Meritocracy is a myth but mediocrity is alive and well. As an egalitarian manager, your power lies in recalibrating what average at work looks like for the folks you’ve been discussing in your book clubs and protesting in solidarity with. They see it all around them. Do you? /end