Jim Norman, Adriene Bruce, Michelle Lee

“You’re so articulate,” “You must have voted for Obama” and “I love your name, it’s so ethnic” top the list of blatantly obvious things you shouldn’t say to Blacks. But it’s not always about what you should say as much as how and when you say it.

“The comments frequently may be coming from an unconscious bias,” says Kraft Foods Group Vice President of Diversity Jim Norman. Living in an increasingly diverse country doesn’t necessarily make it easier. In fact, it becomes more difficult, especially when you’re unsure of how best to build relationships at work. People struggle to find affinity and fall back on stereotypes unintentionally, Norman says.

Most people aren’t aware of the negative impact their words can have on others, according to Wells Fargo Executive Vice President and Northeast Regional President Michelle Lee. She recommends that Blacks “call it to attention and explain how what [the person] said sounds. The average person doesn’t walk around wanting to be offensive and most are very grateful for the insight.”

Norman also advises not to jump to conclusions of racism or discrimination. “These instances are best responded to candidly, with some sense that the individual asking the question is doing so from a lack of knowledge,” he says.

5 Things NEVER to Say to Blacks

1. “You’re so articulate.”
This phrase is one of the most frequently cited gaffes. “When someone makes this statement, they think they are providing the receiver with a compliment,” explains Adriene Bruce, Vice President of Consulting, DiversityInc.

But the comment implies that the person is an exception to a rule, which promotes stereotypes. “It comes from ignorance or lack of exposure and is nonintentional,” says Bruce, but it’s condescending.

2. “I actually voted for Obama.”
It’s not what you say—but when you say it. Telling a Black person you voted for Obama when you’re conversing about what’s being offered in the cafeteria downstairs or immediately after discussing last night’s game unintentionally highlights underlying issues of race that exist.

The statement is an attempt to create affinity or commonality, says Norman, but translates as superficial. “Don’t assume to know who I support politically,” Norman says.

3. “Is that your real hair?” and “Can I touch your hair?”
This question should not be asked of ANY person. Hair and grooming are personal. Read Do Blacks Need to Relax Their Natural Hair to Get Promoted? (www.diversityinc.com/natural-hair) for more on this subject. As a general practice, you also should never initiate unsolicited and/or inappropriate physical contact with anyone.

4. “You people”
Referencing Blacks or any other demographic as a collective “you” quickly causes negative assumptions that you mean to offend. “You’re implying an intention to make the Black person—or any person—at the receiving end of the statement feel substandard,” says Bruce. For example: “Please be on time, since you people have a tendency of being late.”

“No specific race is late,” Bruce says. “People are late and people are on time.”

5. “Do you know any good diversity candidates?” and “Let’s take a risk on a diverse candidate”
“Yes, I know good diversity candidates. Why don’t you?” says Norman, noting that the word “good” suggests a belief that the majority are not qualified. While the speaker may not intend to imply this negative connotation, it implies that choosing a Black for a senior-level position is a risk.

“Usually it’s someone trying to be very supportive of the company’s or their own diversity initiative, but a statement like that lands negatively on people,” explains Lee. “What I’ve done is called it to their attention and explained how that sounds.”

Bruce, Lee and Norman also advise to avoid these phrases:

• “Is this how the brothers do it?”
• “I love your name, it’s so ethnic” and “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned names like Bob, Jim and Mary?”
• “You’re like the Black [insert white person here]” and “You look like [insert famous Black person here]”
• “So what sport did you play?”
• “I don’t see color” (“Sure you do,” says Norman)
• “You are only here to meet the company’s quota”
• Don’t try to dance, rap or use terms associated with hip-hop culture in jest
• Don’t assume all Blacks are African-American; there also are people who are African, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Caribbean, etc.
• Read more at www.diversityinc.com/10-things-blacks

Most importantly, companies need to equip their employees to have these difficult conversations and take advantage of these opportunities to provide some cultural perspective, stress Lee and Norman. An organization can address acts of discrimination, but that will not mitigate less obvious stereotypes and biases.

“When people have a good relationship, they can talk about a few things very openly. irrespective of race and gender. We all have biases we need to become aware of and we need to become conscious of what we do and say,” explains Norman, noting that it’s important for Blacks to take the time and get everyone engaged in genuine conversations about diversity and how stereotypes affect them.

The post ‘You Must Have Voted for Obama’: 5 Things NEVER to Say to Blacks appeared first on DiversityInc.

The six CEOs and eight senior executives at our event demonstrated how their personal passion and commitment to diversity have become a critical factor in making strategic business decisions. In many cases, this helped gain traction within senior leadership and generated measurable results in workforce diversity, while sometimes improving market share.

The two-day event featured two panels with six chief diversity officers—one focused on best practices for executive diversity councils and the other on using compensation to drive diversity-management results. Additionally, DiversityInc Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Barbara Frankel presented exclusive advice on what companies need to do to improve their DiversityInc Top 50 rank.

Watch all the presentations from this event via the players below or view our YouTube playlist. Videos of all the speakers will be posted throughout the day.

Also, be sure to save the date for our upcoming 2013 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity Announcement Dinner, April 23–24, 2013.

How New York City Drives Diversity Results
R. Fenimore Fisher, Deputy Commissioner, Chief Diversity & EEO Officer, City of New York
How does the City of New York drive diversity metrics and results? Find out from a world-class diversity expert.

Diversity in the Workplace: Leadership Counts
Jorge Benitez, Managing Director – North America, Chief Executive – United States, Accenture
This CEO really values work/life issues. He tells us how he includes spouses and encourages family priorities.

Panel: Best Practices on Executive Diversity Councils
Debbie Storey, AT&T; Rhonda Crichlow, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Michelle Lee, Wells Fargo 
Three companies with the best practices—and results—on diversity councils talk about CEOs chairing the councils, setting goals and accountability.

Building a Strong Diversity Brand
John Bryant, President and CEO, Kellogg
The CEO of Kellogg tells us why his company has invested so much over the last two years in its diversity-management efforts.

Workplace Diversity: The Personal Connection in Leadership
Forest T. Harper, CEO, INROADS 
The son of migrant workers, who went on to be a top Pfizer executive, talks about how INROADS helps Black and Latino college students become corporate leaders. Click here to download the presentation slides.

Corporate Diversity at the Top: Q&A With Luke Visconti
Steve Howe, Area Managing Partner – Americas, Ernst & Young
The U.S. head of Ernst & Young discusses how corporate values drive business decisions at his firm

Diversity & Inclusion: Accountability & Your Business Future
Thomas F. Zenty III, CEO, University Hospitals
The CEO of this Cleveland hospital system tells us how outreach to Blacks and Latinos is driving hospital growth.

Workplace Diversity: Using Leadership to Save Lives & Talent by Creating Inclusive Workplaces
Dr. Eliza Byard, Executive Director, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network)
The head of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) tells you about young lives saved through the help of corporations like yours.

Panel on Diversity Metrics: Using Compensation to Drive Results
Maruiel Perkins-Chavis, Marriott International; Joy Fitzgerald, Rockwell Collins; Chad Johnson, Sodexo
Three companies with the most effective diversity metrics tell you what’s on their diversity scorecards and how they link goals to compensation.

Corporate Diversity: A Personal Story of Why Corporate Values Matter
Michelle Lee, Executive Vice President and Northeast Regional President, Wells Fargo
This exec shares her remarkable story of how and why she became a banker and the challenges she faced as the only young, Black woman in her management-training program.

DiversityInc Benchmarking: Tips on How to Move Up on the DiversityInc Top 50 List
Barbara Frankel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, DiversityInc
See our tips on the best ways to answer questions on The 2013 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity survey. Click here to download the presentation slides.

The post 8 CEOs Prove the Intersection of Diversity, Engagement & Innovation appeared first on DiversityInc.

Talent-development doubts? Michelle Lee’s extraordinary story is a testimony to mentoring and teamwork.

With all intentions of following a career in music, she took a job as a bank teller to have something to fall back on. She fell in love with banking and, through support, perseverance and an innate ability to bring people together to work collaboratively, rose to the top of Wachovia, now a Wells Fargo company. Wells Fargo is No. 33 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50.

As the executive vice president and Northeast regional president, she is responsible for more than 460 branches, nine business banking teams, approximately 5,500 team members, and about $100 million in revenue.

DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti sat down with her to discuss her personal story, including the racial stereotypes she had to fight as well as her deep faith in Wells Fargo’s corporate values and inclusive culture in the workplace and the marketplace.

Read When Will There Be More Women CEOs? for more on women and talent development. For more on stereotypes, read ‘Blacks Should Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’: The Danger of Stereotypes.

Luke Visconti: You mentioned that you didn’t intend to be in banking and that it was kind of a mistake.

Michelle Lee: From the age of 5, I never considered doing anything other than music. I think I was born singing. I had this great dramatic soprano voice and ended up going to Boston Conservatory. I graduated with a degree in music, applied voice.

My mother is from Cleveland, my father from Blakely, Ga., and they came to my recitals and asked, “Why don’t you think about teaching or something a little more conventional?” To get them off my back, I applied for a job at the bank. I thought that was a nice, respectable career. I started as a teller.

I had this inquisitive nature about banking. I wanted to understand how it worked. There was this woman in the back room who basically did all of the proof work. I ended up taking on little tasks for her, running numbers and learning. Here was this informal mentor. She was willing to train me to be the backup person when she was on vacation or when she had a day off.

I started attending the American Institute of Banking, taking classes after work. I had this hunger to learn. I think it’s the same side of the brain that makes music theory fascinating to me. Mathematics, numbers all appeal to me.

I eventually got into the bank’s management-training program. I remember talking to my assistant manager. She’s an African-American woman and she gave me an example of another really talented African-American woman who had applied for a similar program years before and didn’t get into it. She said, “I’m just trying to give you a reality check. They’re never going to take a Black girl in that program.”

I was accepted into the program. I was the only African American and probably was the only person who wasn’t just out of college.

Luke Visconti: Why do you think they took you?

Michelle Lee: My work history, references that I received. It probably was the first time in my career that I really got a sense of what other people thought of me. They were willing to recommend me; other people saw potential in me. That’s the first time that I really understood the importance of having an advocate.

A Learning Curve

Michelle Lee: There were probably 25 people in the class. They were all white men and women just graduating from Ivy League schools.

I show up for class. I have on my very best Sunday dress. I’m in a royal-blue dress with flowers on it, and I walk into this class with this sea of dark navy, dark brown, dark gray suits. I knew immediately one of these things is not like the other.

Luke Visconti: Where did you get assigned to after this class?

Michelle Lee: There was an assistant manager at a branch in downtown Newark who had a heart attack. They actually pulled me out of the class a little early. From there I got my first management job in northern Newark, which was a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. No one wanted to talk to me. Trying to bridge the communication gaps that we had, connect with people and establish relationships with them—it was my first lesson as a manager.

Someone approached me about a branch in East Orange, N.J. It was much bigger, much busier, a very challenging community to work in.

I spent about five years at that branch. That was really where I think I cut my chops in managing people. That branch had failed its audit. The previous manager had been fired. The head of operations said, “You’re green. I have no idea why they put you here and I think you’re going to fail.”

On the one hand it scared me, but it motivated me. Three years later, we passed our audit with flying colors. We’re a top-performing branch with the same group of people.

I think about what made this team not behave like a team—they didn’t care, didn’t align with the company’s vision and philosophy around serving our customers. It really was about helping them see the value that they could bring to work every day.

I didn’t think that I was doing work around diversity because that was before all of the focus on diversity and awareness training. But when I think back on it, it was about the same core values.

Luke Visconti: When you think back on those traits that you used to make this branch successful, can you distill them down into bullet points?

Michelle Lee: Part of it was sharing, creating a vision for the team. We knew why we were coming together every day. We came to some common agreements around how we wanted our customers to feel and how we wanted our customers to experience us and what we wanted our work environment to be like.

Then celebrating success; giving people candid feedback; letting them know here is what’s standing between where you are and where you’re trying to go; being a great coach, mentor and not shying away from giving people tough feedback. 

A Seat at the Table

Luke Visconti: Tell me about the scope of your responsibility.

Michelle Lee: I’m responsible for New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, all of community banking—over 460 branches, nine business banking teams, about 5,500 team members in total, about $100 million in revenue.

There are 11 lead regional presidents in Wells Fargo with the acquisition of Wachovia. I report to Laura Schulte, who is the president of Community Banking for the East Coast. She reports to Carrie Tolstedt, who is the head of Community Banking for the company. On my expanded leadership team, there are 21 people: 12 are women and four of those women are African American.

Luke Visconti: What do you think about the bank and its ability to relate to people, to be successful in a very demanding marketplace?

Michelle Lee: One of our key priorities is our focus on our communities and stakeholders. In order to be successful, our workforce has to reflect their diversity. Wells Fargo having so many women in senior management roles helps us interpret and form the company around what’s important to our stakeholders.

When I go into my stores, I don’t just see white men as my customers. I see their wives; I see single women; I see single mothers; I see working women; I see women in business.

John Stumpf, his leadership team and his direct reports are very deliberate about getting the voice of our team members. It’s not about having more people than the next organization; it’s really about having more engaged people.

People are engaged when they feel like they are valued, that a company gets them and that we’re not trying to homogenize everybody. When you feel that your leaders, your mentors, the decision makers of the company value your opinion, they seek it out.

Ultimately, that leads to helping our customers succeed financially. [For] any company, regardless of the industry that figures that out, I think it’s a difference maker.

Luke Visconti: I’ve seen the results of Wells Fargo’s engagement surveys. How deep down do they survey the people who report to you?

Michelle Lee: We survey down to every team member that is part of the organization.

Not only do we assess where we are but then each team builds an action plan to address areas where we could do a better job.

What I really like about our process is that we get the opinions and voices of our team members, ultimately solving for areas where we have opportunities or building on strengths. The team members are engaged in figuring out what the action plan is and then holding themselves and each other accountable to it.

Diversity-Management Success

Luke Visconti: Let’s talk about diversity management. What are the things that have struck you as being particularly effective?

Michelle Lee: Building competency around diversity—it’s a skill that you build. Where you are along your journey is so colored by what your background is, what your culture is.

We’re willing to apply some resources around developing leadership skills, to set expectations with leaders that they become competent as it pertains to diversity and inclusion. Not to have it be this sort of separate thing that we do because it’s the right thing to do but making it an integrated part of our business practices.

Most corporations will say that our ability to grow, our ability to sustain, is tied to our ability to create a diverse and inclusive environment. How does that actually translate to the bottom line? How do you build it in to your day-to-day business practices?

Understanding demographics, the different needs of your customers, how their backgrounds and culture might drive their needs and desires differently—how as a company, regardless of your product, do you respond to those needs and not have diversity be this thing that’s sitting off on the sideline?

Is it in your recruiting practices? Are you looking to attract diverse talent? How do you on-board a person with a diverse background differently? How do you support that person differently so that they can be successful in their roles.

Luke Visconti: Your organization realized it. How did it happen here? Why was it successful?

Michelle Lee: The one that rings in my head is that every day we come to work to help our customers succeed financially. It’s at the core of everything that we do, including all of our efforts around embedding diversity into our business practices.

Wells Fargo is grounded in its vision. If you were to read, interview after interview, leaders across all different business lines, I guarantee you that somewhere in that interview you’re going to hear the words “We want to help our customers succeed financially.” It’s the pillar upon which the success of the company is built.

If our vision is to help our customers succeed financially, we need to understand who our customers are. Our team members need to reflect the communities that we’re serving. That will be our competitive advantage.

It’s not about whether the vision statement is good. It’s not about the words or that internal guilt that makes you go apologize to someone or do something to correct it.

We bounce decisions that we make against our values system. I’m not saying we get it right 100 percent of the time. When it doesn’t align, we go back and ask how we get this in line with what we believe.

Everyday Accountability

Luke Visconti: You see in great detail what’s going on with the economy from a very feet-on-the-ground perspective. How do you see things going right now?

Michelle Lee: The economy is still sluggish. Our movement out of it is really tied to jobs. Businesses are still hesitant, people are still hunkered down, not willing to grow or build until there is more certainty. I also sense that people want to be hopeful. As a society, that will help the trajectory of the upswing.

Our value-add as a bank is to understand that that’s on your mind, to help you, to provide you with some expertise around how you’ve invested. Helping you do the math on “Do I really need to work until I’m 75 now? What can I do differently today that will help remedy or resolve some of that?”

To me, it’s our time to step up … I’ve got to know the customer who is walking into my branch. They are just trying to figure out how they’re going to make the rent, the business customer like you who is not just thinking about impact to his business but impact to his personal livelihood and retirement needs.

Luke Visconti: I find this to be a very consistent beam across industries: Companies that are focused are successful and the value statement is extremely important.

Michelle Lee: How are we going to hold ourselves accountable to it? Having a vision is part of it. That’s what breathes life into it, moves it off the brochure, off the page, into action.

How was it ingrained into our business practices? It’s in our recruiting practices. I require my recruiting team to make sure we’ve got a diverse candidate pool before we interview. We’re starting to get our team-member networks up and running: we’ve got five here in my region. It’s in our diverse-supplier strategy, where I make an effort to meet diverse businesses who could potentially become vendors and champion beyond those.

Doors for Those Like Me

Luke Visconti: Do you think that having a diverse leadership team creates the kind of environment that encourages good decisions around diversity?

Michelle Lee: Absolutely. We’ve got this pool of talent that we’re developing. These people will be future leaders who’d take our roles. People want to look up and see that somebody looks like them and that they made it. It makes it feel tangible for them; it makes it feel possible.

I’ve been in banking 28 years. When I started as a teller and really had the epiphany that I wanted to be a banker, my goal was to be a branch manager.

No one said “You’re never going to be anything more than a branch manager.” I said “If I could just be a branch manager” because it’s all I could see; it’s all I could envision. But when I saw other women or I saw other African Americans, it made me think “I can do that too; that’s not a road I’m not allowed to go down.”

It probably was 15 years before I started thinking [about] what’s next for me, before I started to take the cap off my career opportunities, take the chain off my own brain around what I am able to do or what I can achieve.

I represent that to a lot of people. I don’t just think that, I know that. People take time to tell me that.

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