What can gardening tell us about Diversity, Inclusion and Unconscious Bias?

May 3

May 3 What can gardening tell us about Diversity, Inclusion and Unconscious Bias?

So I was out enjoying the weekend sunshine in our garden and pulling out weeds when I got to thinking about what this could tell us about diversity and inclusion. And, in particular, about some of the debate around unconscious bias training.

Before I start, a small caveat, I know D&I is way, way more important than weeding my garden and this blog in no way seeks to trivialise anyone’s lived experiences. What it is, is a (hopefully) simple way to explain these areas in a way that might resonate for some people who don’t already understand as well as they could.

OK, to my garden weeding then…..

Ideally we want to achieve is a thriving garden full of a diverse range of plants. We have some producing fruit and veg, some producing colourful flowers, and some that are enjoyed by bees, insects, birds and other nature.

What we don’t really want is weeds….but what are weeds? My late father once said they are just plants that have grown in the wrong place! Indeed, in our garden, our most common weed is grass - seems to be more prevalent in the flower beds and veg patch than the lawn 🤷‍♀️ But for the purposes of this analogy, weeds can be seen as plants we don’t want, plants that grow against our wishes, plants that spread voraciously and inhibit the diverse plants we do want. They are not “bad” plants and not poisonous but having them there has the potential to lead to an unwanted or “bad” outcome.

Now, if we just let our weeds grow, they spread until all of the garden is covered with these plants, smothering everything else, no flowers, no veg, nothing for the insects and birds - a homogenous sea of green with the odd yellow dandelion head! What if that is your employee base, all homogenous with the odd one person who is “different”, not allowing diversity to thrive, smothering everything else.

I see unconscious bias training as teaching our gardeners (managers and leaders) the difference between weeds and plants, to spot the one who might negatively impact on our diversity efforts. All great, but they need to then use that knowledge to take action. And not just a few easy, surface level actions, but meaningful changes. Its possible that unconscious bias training just teaches employees what they can and can’t say in the workplace (i.e. don’t mention the weeds) but doesn’t change how they behave.

gypsophila flowers with sunny sky background.jpg

So what about your diversity initiatives…well if they are just surface level such as awareness sessions, posters near the water cooler on International Women’s Day or Black History Month or some changes to where you advertise your job roles, great, that’s a start. But it is only as good as just a quick pull on the weeds - it won’t last, there’s a risk the weeds are just underground for a while and pretty quickly they regrow and are back. You might have a short term improvement in diversity but it is not embedded and cannot be sustained long term.

What we really need to do is pull those weeds out from the root, to really clear all trace of the weeds. Even then, they (or new ones) may return so you need to keep a constant eye on the performance of your garden.

How does this translate to business?