Scientific Community Finds Value In Diversity Training

Sidebar : For More Information on Diversity Training Groups February is Black History Month. To commemorate the occasion, employees at South San Francisco, Calif.-based Genentech Inc. have been taking part in activities that introduce them to African American culture. Members of African Americans in Biotechnology, one of the biotech firm's internal employee associations, have put together displays about the contribution of black scientists and sponsored lectures by prominent black investigators, among other activities. Undertakings such as these are part of a growing effort in industry, government, and academia to acquaint employees with the diversity that defines the work force of the 1990s. The lectures and workshops that constitute diversity initiatives have been part of some organizations for years. Now, diversity training is finding its way into the scientific workplace, an environment many trainees and human resources professionals say comes with its own unique challenges. Among these are the need to overcome resistance by scientist employees and to explain how diversity impacts scientific discovery. DO THE RIGHT THING: Dupont’s Bernard Scales says that diversity training has a business as well as an ethical motivation at his company. The "prime driver" for Wilmington, Del.-based Dupont Corp.'s participation in diversity education is that "it's the right thing to do, in terms of addressing equity, fairness, excess, and equal opportunity for all of our employees," says manager of diversity Bernard Scales. "And right behind that is that it's critical to our business success." He maintains that with the removal of any messages of oppression, discrimination, devaluation, or other inhibitory signals, employees can truly focus on what they're at work to do. More and more companies, and to a lesser extent government agencies and academic departments, have been looking to multicultural educational programs to combat narrow-mindedness. Tracing its origins to courses in race relations for United States military personnel in the 1970s, diversity training has grown into a multimillion-dollar industry. Diversity education has come to include a various and complicated list of topics, including race, gender, age, culture, and communication style. Some companies' diversity initiatives also encompass objectives for recruitment and hiring. "Diversity is not just cultural differences," maintains Theresa Isaacs, Genentech's newly hired diversity manager. "Diversity is style. Diversity is where you grew up. Diversity is language. All those things and more can impact how you perceive the world and how you will contribute overall to your company." "I believe that any corporation that's focusing on diversity has to answer several questions," says Isaacs, who spent eight years at Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Computer Inc. setting up diversity programs. "A key question is: What is the impact of diversity on our business? That's difficult to answer, and I don't think the question has been asked that often within the biotech industry." TRAINING EXERCISES: "One of my favorite tools is a stereotyping exercise," says Maurizio Velásquez, who runs diversity education workshops, inset Maurizio Velásquez, president and founder of Diversity Training Group in Columbia, Md., says that the organizations where he teaches simply do not want prejudiced managers. "If they do discriminate, then you become a Texaco and you fork out millions of dollars," he notes, referring to a widely reported recent legal settlement involving the giant oil company. "There are also marketing issues. The more diverse a company is, the more competitive they will be in a diverse society." For the last several years, efforts to recruit and retain minority students in universities, medical schools, and government agencies have been on the rise (K.Y. Kreeger, The Scientist, March 6, 1995, page 1). But few of these have included diversity training for established researchers and administrators. Robert Hayles, an independent consultant on effectiveness and diversity training based in Minneapolis, says that 80 percent to 85 percent of his work is with corporate clients, and that none of his university-based clients are from scientific or medical-related departments. Other consultants report similar clientele. One recent university-based effort on the World Wide Web, however, does provide resources to colleges and universities that "view diversity as a compelling educational priority." DiversityWeb-a Web site developed by the Washington, D.C.-based Association of American Colleges and Universities and the University of Maryland at College Park-links such institutions (see list on page 18 for address). The National Institutes of Health is one of the few government scientific organizations that is actively crafting a permanent, comprehensive diversity program. "We're just beginning to develop our initiative," reports Joan Brogan, branch chief in the NIH Office of Equal Opportunity. At an executive briefing conducted last fall, NIH director Harold Varmus, along with institutional and scientific directors and others, discussed definitions of diversity and how diversity education could be implemented within the different institutes. BROADENED VIEW: Diversity is not just racial or ethnic differences, notes NIH’s Kenneth Yamada. Kenneth Yamada, chief of the craniofacial developmental biology and regeneration branch at the National Institute of Dental Research, has attended some of NIH's diversity seminars. "Personally, I found them very helpful. What really struck me was that diversity is not just racial or ethnic." He says that this broadened view of diversity has aided him as a branch chief, helping him to recognize differences in communication style attributable to culture and upbringing. "I realize that it might not be just a personality problem, or that someone is difficult, or that I don't have the right atmosphere, but in fact there may be real differences in approach due to culture." As a research chemist and principal investigator at Dupont, Christopher Halinsed has gone through several of his firm's training programs. In his experience, embracing diversity education as an integral part of professional life is a slow process for employees. And the R&D rank and file is no exception. "We researchers are perhaps the most arrogant snobs known to mankind," says Halinsed. "I think the research community has the opportunity of being the first to learn because they are very bright, but they really do believe that they know it all. There are professional standards in the research world, and the feeling is that we don't need to take diversity into consideration. We just want people that meet those professional standards, and we believe that those standards are completely objective, which of course isn't true." Halinsed has found that in general scientists have two attitudes toward diversity training. "There's the type that welcomes it and thinks that it's good and important to do, and another type that thinks any type of training that's not technical is just a waste of time." This attitude extends to diversity training as well as other professional-development courses such as time management, he states. "I think for people in the sciences who are comfortable working in a very competitive, intellectually challenging environment, [the need for diversity training] comes as news to them," says Marilyn Loden, president of Loden Associates Inc., a diversity training consultancy in Tiburon, Calif. "And in some instances, that news isn't particularly welcome. For people who are very smart and well-educated, it's sometimes hard for them to acknowledge that there are areas in which they're not as proficient. What often has to happen is that [researchers] have to begin to think more of their role as managers of people as opposed to their role as a researcher." TOUGH ROOM: Robert Hayles cites research in team performance when making the business case for a diverse work force to an audience of scientists. Hayles takes special measures when he makes presentations to scientific and technically oriented groups. "First, I tend to be very data-intensive, so when I make the business case for [a diverse work force], I cite lots of research." Drawing upon research on team performance, he says, helps make a typically cautious audience more receptive. "When there is diversity of style, of function, of age, of race, of language, or of culture in a group contrasted to a group that is more homogeneous-given equal management and goals in both groups-the diverse groups quantitatively and qualitatively outperform the homogeneous groups." He also cites correlative studies showing that companies that engage in diversity education exhibit more sales and profit growth and perform better in a downturning economy. However, says Genentech's Isaacs, "This is a fairly new area for biotech companies to explore." While it was easy to measure the business impact of diversity in the computer industry, she notes, it is not so clear-cut in the world of biotech. "The challenge is figuring out how this affects the way we do our science, in addition to creating an environment that respects and values the unique differences our employees bring to the organization." Center of the American Experiment http://www.amexp.org Diversity Works http://www.inform.umd.edu:8080/DiversityWeb Diversity Training Group http://www.diversitydtg.com/ Dupont Corp. Bernard Scales Human Resources 1007 Market St., Wilmington, Del. 19898 (302) 774-5441 · Fax: (302) 773-1914 http://www.dupont.com/ Genentech Inc. Theresa Isaacs 460 Point San Bruno, South San Francisco, Calif. 94080 (415) 225-1000 · Fax: (415) 225-2391 E-mail: isaacs.theresa@gene.com http://www.gene.com/ Loden Associates Inc http://www.loden.com National Association of Scholars http://www.nas.org National Institutes of Health Joan Brogan Office of Equal Opportunity Building 31, Room 2B47, 31 Center Dr., MSC-2109 Bethesda, Md. 20892 (301) 402-6583 · Fax: (301) 402-0994 E-mail: broganj@od31em1.od.nih.gov Training that leads to such a work environment falls into two categories: awareness, in which participants are made more sensitive to their own biases and prejudices; and skills, in which they are introduced to communication and problem-solving tools. A key element of the latter are activities designed to introduce people to differences in style and approach. "One of the things that scientists share is a very strong commonality around the scientific method, and that goes a long way in helping to resolve disagreements and misunderstandings," says Mitchell Hammer, an associate professor of intercultural communication and conflict resolution at American University. "But how they present their arguments, and how much emotion is acceptable, is culturally learned." Hammer reports that his approach to teaching and lecturing about diversity "is predicated on the assumption that many of our misunderstandings and difficulties oftentimes arise because we have different ways of looking at things and different communication styles." He lists three levels of these differences: situation, personality, and culture. He recalls an example of the third area from his work on the impact of cultural relations in international space flights for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). "The first and most important area where culture has an impact is in crisis or emergency situations," he explains. "The reason for this is that under stress, people tend to revert back to their primary cultural programming." In a potentially life-threatening situation, astronauts need to quickly gather and communicate information to make split-second decisions. Differences in seemingly small conversational nuances-for example, the degree to which people feel comfortable talking over one another's conversation-can lead to larger miscommunications. "One person may grow up with the idea that it's okay to do what others would call interrupt, to jump in with your idea. For this person, the cultural rule is that it's the listener's responsibility to insert themselves in the conversation when they have something to say. This rule allows people to talk over one another, without being considered rude. But for others, it's the speaker's responsibility to invite the listener into the conversation by giving a pause. This rule considers jumping in impolite." In Hammer's NASA study, astronauts reported that cultural differences were indeed a factor in communication. Hammer sums up the astronauts' responses: "If you come from a culture where talk-overs are permitted, and I come from a culture where they aren't, and in an emergency you start talking over me, to me you're talking before you're thinking. You're crumbling under the tension. But you're really not. You're just inserting ideas in a different way." But, he explains, the misunderstanding could have dire consequences: The individual who talks over others becomes marginalized within the group. "So right at the point where that person's input might be the solution, they're not heard." Although diversity programs emphasize new ideas like differences in communication style, many still contain more classic goals like increasing minority recruitment and retention, and combating stereotyping. At Hewlett-Packard Co., for example, diversity programs differ from one division of the company to another. "For some divisions, a diversity objective might be to increase the number of managers who are females and people of color," notes Claire Lee, personnel support manager with Colorado Memory Systems, a division of Hewlett-Packard located in Loveland, Colo. Although one area of Hewlett-Packard's diversity program is related to recruiting and staffing, quotas are not part of the company's objectives. "We don't want to pressure managers in this way," states Lee, who also is coordinator for her division's diversity initiative. "We want to build awareness and skills. For example, we want to introduce a mentor program, and we want to introduce a brown-bag lunch series where employees can discuss HIV and AIDS in the workplace." TWO TYPES: Some researchers welcome diversity training while others find such professional development classes a waste of time, according to Dupont’s Christopher Holinsed. One of Colorado Memory Systems' main exercises in diversity education are one- to two-day diversity workshops led by Vel^Çsquez. "One of my favorite tools is a stereotyping exercise," says Vel^Çsquez. He asks participants to write down one-word descriptions that define themselves professionally and personally. "We'll get categories like engineers, people with Ph.D.'s, people with bachelor's [degrees], people from one university vs. another. Then I throw them all up on a flip chart and ask the students to pick a category and expound on it." For example, under the heading of "engineer," participants write "geek" or "nerd"; for upper management, they write "ivory tower" or "out-of-touch." At the end of the exercise, Velásquez puts all the stereotyped clues on another chart without the category heading and has the group guess the heading based on the stereotypes. David Burks, a manufacturing engineering manager at Memory Systems who has attended diversity training seminars, likes Vel^Çsquez's tailored, matter-of-fact approach. "I was fairly typically closed-minded about some of the diversity issues that scare people off, like quotas," notes Burks. "What I've really gotten an appreciation for-especially here, where we really don't take an affirmative-action emphasis-is that this is an issue about respect. It's not focusing in on giving any one group preferential treatment." PIGEONHOLING: Katherine Kersten warns against programs that educate people to view their coworkers through a lens of "immutable group characteristics." Some critics argue, however, that diversity education does more harm than good. Katherine Kersten, an attorney and chairwoman of the Center of the American Experiment, a public-policy institute in Minneapolis, has written that diversity training is based on a false premise. "Whether used in corporate boardrooms or elementary schools, programs that encourage people to view others through the prism of race and ethnicity are bound to fail, for pigeonholing people by race and ethnicity imprisons rather than liberates," wrote Kersten in a column for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis (K. Kersten, Jan 10, 1996). "It is so dangerous in a democracy to teach people to view others in terms of their immutable group characteristics," says Kersten. "I think that diversity training overall has contributed to divisiveness by drawing sharp group lines and attaching awards to the status of being oppressed." She speculates that teaching that there are different individual work styles might be a better way to handle conflicts in the workplace. But she is quick to add that this does not mean lessons that "blacks manage this way or women manage that way." She advocates emphasizing what an individual can uniquely bring to a team. "[Any training] should focus on the individuals and the team, rather than tending to divide people into racial and gender groups and to think of themselves as basically opponents with different world views." Velásquez disagrees, noting that "diversity is not only about our differences, it's also about our commonalties. In one of my activities, I ask two strangers to write down what they think is unique about themselves. Then I ask them to share their lists. Guess what? They'll usually find something in common." Commonalities are also stressed at Hewlett-Packard. "We're trying to get the people at our site on the same page," says Lee. "We want everybody to understand that they all bring diversity to the workplace, and to get people to see their coworkers not just as groups, but as individuals." ALL WORK, NO PLAY: Rita Zürcher says that the attitudes of political correctness taught in diversity training might stifle workplace interactions Other critics of diversity training think the programs will oversensitize employees so much that they will be uncomfortable being themselves at work. "All of sudden, employees will start asking themselves: 'How am I not going to offend somebody '" contends Rita Zürcher, research director at the National Association of Scholars, a nonprofit think tank of professors, graduate students, and administrators based in Princeton, N.J. "There'll be no more casual banter." Hewlett-Packard's Burk has seen elements of the problems to which Kersten and Zürcher refer. "There [are] certainly aspects of backlash that you encounter," he notes. "So you have to experiment with strategies that work for your organization." He says to encourage employees to participate, "people have to feel as if they have something at stake-the opportunity to have their ideas heard." With the creation of a diversity manager position at Genentech, employees are starting to feel that they have a place to take their ideas for fostering a work environment that recognizes and values diversity. Isaacs has been collaborating with several of the company's employee associations to set up diversity education classes, which are scheduled to start in June. VALUED: "There’s been an increasing awareness of what diversity is and what we’re going to do about it, "notes Genentech’s Dave Cowfer. Lisa Tealer, manager of assay services at the firm and chairwoman of the African Americans in Biotechnology group, says that diversity efforts before Isaacs's arrival had lots of "starts and stops because it was put on people's plates as an extra." But, within the last year, remarks Dave Cowfer, a research assistant and cochairman of Genentech Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Friends, "there's been an increasing awareness of what diversity is and what are we going to do about it." He adds that the creation of a managerial position was a clear signal of the value the company places on diversity. In addition to Tealer's and Cowfer's groups, Genentech has two other employee associations: the Genentech Association for Latinos, and the newly formed Filipinos and Friends at Genentech. With the company's emphasis on diversity, such groups are "mushrooming," notes Cowfer. Other organizations are seeing the value as well. From biotech boardrooms to government labs, diversity training in its broadest sense is no longer considered a frill, but a necessary component of professional development and corporate growth.

Scientific Community Finds Value In Diversity Training

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