24. Navigating DEI Backlash: A Balanced Approach for Women Leaders
Is the rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs creating unnecessary division in your workplace?
As a female leader, I understand the pressure of being asked to comment on these politically charged issues, especially when you might be the only woman or person of color in the room. The fear of not knowing all the facts or saying the wrong thing can be paralyzing. What's truly needed isn't more polarizing debate but a balanced approach that combines both feminine and masculine leadership energies.
Join me this week as I equip you with frameworks to speak confidently about DEI in ways that are emotionally grounded yet focused on business imperatives and outcomes. By understanding how overly masculine approaches (like rigid quota systems) and overly feminine approaches (like inconsistent performance standards) both create backlash, you can advocate for balanced policies that ensure fairness, transparency, and business success.
Whether you're leading a team, making big bold decisions, or tackling tough conversations, confidence is the key to showing up powerfully. That's why I created the Confidence Hack, a simple yet powerful tool that has helped tons of women just like you break free from limiting beliefs and step fully into their potential.
Click here to download the Confidence Hack for free now!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How approaching the DEI debate from an all-or-nothing mindset creates blindspots.
Why balancing masculine and feminine leadership energies creates more effective and less divisive DEI initiatives.
How to identify when DEI policies are too masculine or too feminine in their approach.
Strategies for expanding your talent pool while maintaining merit-based advancement and clear performance expectations.
How the coming $30 trillion wealth transfer to women by 2030 makes inclusive leadership a business imperative.
The importance of shifting away from polarizing narratives to create DEI policies that focus on fairness and business outcomes.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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How diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) matter - McKinsey study
Full Episode Transcript:
The rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs has sparked heated debate in the US, but what if the real issue is how we're approaching these policies?
Let's focus less on the divisive drama and more on real outcomes that drive business success. If you're a woman leader who cares deeply about DEI programs and its spirit, and wants to influence and make a lasting impact, speaking up in an emotionally grounded way, backed by compelling business evidence, this episode is for you.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey, podcast listeners, we have a very important and relevant podcast episode for you today around the diversity, equity, and inclusion backlash amidst President Trump's latest executive orders to roll back a lot of these initiatives and to actually investigate both federal and the private sector's policies.
So what I'm focusing on in this is really to discuss the context of this environment and also for women leaders out there who are listening to this podcast who want to be part of this but also you might be asked in your leadership team about what you think and how you would move ahead.
I know a lot of my podcast listeners are similar to me. Maybe you're the only woman in the room, maybe you're the only person of color, but you are being asked to comment and get your views on all of this. And you may be feeling similar to me, a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear to know all of the facts and data to understand everything and to maybe want to do things in a right way.
But what I want to offer is part of navigating this DEI backlash is really stepping away from the polarizing narratives and moving away from thinking that things are either good or bad or right or wrong. When we're in that mindset, when we're focused on either we're good and right, then we become superior and we have a blind spot to what the other side might be thinking. On the other end, if we're saying the other group is bad and wrong again, we have this power struggle and this dynamic.
And so what I'm offering really here in this episode is for you, as the female leader, to be grounded in your emotions, but also to be able to speak to this in terms of business imperatives and in terms of values that matter to you, grounded in data. This is going to support you to show up in those meetings and to speak in a way that creates context and relatedness for those around you, but also helps you to see things from a broader perspective.
And from perspectives of people in the room that might feel like these policies are not for them. For example, this is exactly why Trump has a lot of support. There is a big piece of the US population that doesn't feel like these DEI programs are for them.
And so instead of, again, making it right or wrong, part of this debate and understanding is to number one, see what's true, investigate what's out there, and to learn about what are some of these policies and how can we shape them in a way that are transparent, fair, clear, and drive the business imperatives and outcomes that we actually want as leaders, whether we're men or women, right?
But I do want to acknowledge the specific vulnerability that you might have as a female leader, especially a woman of color, in spaces where you're being asked to talk about this, knowing that you are representing a group that is potentially underrepresented, probably underrepresented in your leadership team. So there's just the one piece of acknowledging and knowing your feelings, and I have an episode just on those emotional pieces to understand that and to be grounded in your emotions.
And then there's another piece of knowing that when we're entering this debate that we don't move into this debate from an either/or, all-or-nothing standpoint because that creates blind spots for us as leaders. And what happens when we have blind spots is when we actually go to debate or share our idea.
If we have these blind spots and we're emotionally charged, it can actually cause us as female leaders to seem overly emotional, very much focused on values, but without the groundedness of actual policies that can be executed and implemented in a way that feels fair and that is creating interrelatedness and context with the people around you. So that's what this episode is really focused on.
But I do want to say, give everybody some context of what is happening and really share about what some of the companies are saying. So of course, there's the fear of political and legal repercussions. I just talked to a colleague, actually, whose company they're getting investigated.
Well, I guess it's not a full investigation, to be fair. This is why context and language make sense. He actually told me it was an inquiry from the FCC on their DEI programs. So they were really seeking to find out information. It wasn't a full investigation yet. But this is a real concern, right?
And as a business leader, you want to be focused on business outcomes. And here is a highly political thing that's happening that is going to impact your organization and its operations. And so a lot of organizations have just been driven by fear and have scaled back, and maybe they also have some cost-cutting actions that they needed to do and they were like this is just an easy win-win, we’re just saying we're complying, right?
But of course that also has repercussions to the people in the organization, the employees and also customers. There are a lot of people now boycotting companies that have quickly changed their tune, taken money away, right?
And it's difficult to know, is this from fear? Is there a business purpose for it too? Because maybe they're also using it as a way to say, actually, we need to cut costs and this is an easy way to do it. But it's really hard to understand without understanding a lot of those other details.
For you, in your business, you wanna understand what it is for you, because you're not going to know all of these other companies what they're doing. But you're going to probably be asked, you know, how do you feel about it? And what do you think we should do next?
So other companies like Costco, Microsoft, and Apple are actually double-downing on their diversity, equity, and inclusion activities. And they're actually going to shareholders and doing votes on this. So they're asking the people that are owning the company to weigh in on the long-term business strategy about these types of programs.
Because diversity and equity and inclusion is also about talent management and human capital, which is, of course, you know, what the business is totally run on. Relationships run the business. People run the business.
A lot of companies are actually pulling back and citing poorly executed DEI programs that create division rather than focusing on fairness and business outcomes. And this is actually what the Trump administration is saying in terms of their executive order.
They are telling companies that you need to step away from discriminatory DEI activities that are starting to discriminate certain groups of people. And this is what he kind of led his whole campaign on. Like, I am for you people that don't feel like they're being heard or that these policies are for them. And so this is really where we can start understanding and looking at the approach to these policies instead of again being black or white, all or nothing, good or bad, really looking at the approach from an expanded standpoint and a holistic standpoint. And this is where the importance of masculine and feminine leadership and energies come into play.
And when I talk about masculine and feminine, I'm not talking about male or female. I'm actually talking about certain traits. And I'm going to share a bit about this. But when you think about feminine, it's really about intuition, being, receiving, nurturing. It's circular thinking. It's more visionary in terms of a broader view and a broader concept. It's developing quality processes, it's accepting what's so.
Whereas masculine is very logical, it's a very doing approach, right? You're doing things, you're looking at projections, it's very linear, it's achievement-based, it's quantity-based, it's very hard facts and numbers. It is results-oriented, which is great, and it is going to cause conflict and disruption and challenges.
And really what I talk about, and I'm going to give you examples of where these policies in the DEI world have been too feminine or too masculine, which has caused a lot of uproar and upset by people. A more balanced approach could actually create the type of evolution that we want to be seeing in the companies, not the revolution of disruption and fighting and sort of this polarizing.
Like if you think about it, if we're just kind of finger-pointing and blaming each other, things actually don't get done. Progress actually doesn't get made. Diversity doesn't move forward. Equity doesn't move forward. Inclusion doesn't move forward. It's more of an emotional finger-pointing, blaming fight, right? Versus approaching it from a balanced, feminine and masculine synergy approach.
So I'm gonna share with you some examples of this. I want you to use this as a way to really up-level the conversations that are happening so that they're not just focused, again, on that very polarizing, divisive tone, which really doesn't get us anywhere. You know, when people show up defensive, that is like the first act of war. I don't know who exactly said that, but like, if you show up defensive, you're automatically going to create defensiveness from another person.
So this framework of really using masculine and feminine energies in combination can help you to create policies in your company and to talk about what really matters to you in both the emotionally grounded way, what matters, the values, but also in a way that is focused on execution and business outcomes and data.
So let me give you an example of a DEI policy that is too masculinely focused. This is one that has been pulled up many times and is really focused on quota-based hiring. So some organizations, as they were rolling out their DEI policies, have implemented strict hiring quotas.
Again, this is super masculine because it's like, you know, just looking at the numbers. And these quotas were based on diversity, focusing solely on meeting numerical targets, certain percentages of women, certain percentages of people of color or LGBT individuals.
While this does ensure diversity on paper, it can create a competitive transactional environment where individuals that are not part of those groups feel like they are losing out. But also it makes the individuals that were hired or promoted to fill a quota rather than based on merit, that also doesn't feel great. This can lead to resentments and feeling of tokenisms as people may feel reduced to a statistic number rather than being seen for their unique skills and potential.
So it goes like right in the face of the American dream, you know, because it's really focused on these rigid rules. And it can also foster a rigid mindset where diversity is seen as an external requirement rather than strategic value.
You know, even for me, and I'm going to speak to this from my personal standpoint, I did not want people to look at me and be like, oh, she's the token Asian woman that's on the leadership team, right? I don't want to be known for that. Yes, those are things that I am. And those are things that I'm proud of, but I don't want to be known as that's why I was put in that place. I was put there for my experience, for my life knowledge. It is part of your whole experience.
A whole person is more than just their gender or the way they look. And so when we have these quota-based hiring metrics, they can be too masculine in nature. And they are polarizing. They cause polarization. Both the people that are benefiting from it have some negative impacts, and the people that aren't benefiting from it, of course, feel like they have negative impacts too.
So I wanted to share that. These are really the discussions that you want to be approaching and looking at when you start looking at policies in your company. And when you're, you know, asked to give your opinion, you want to think about both sides of the situation and seeing how, is this too masculine of an approach.
So I'm going to give you another example of being overly feminine in an approach and what happens here. What happens when people are led too much by that feminine energy is that it can oftentimes feel unclear in terms of the performance metrics for diverse talent.
So in an attempt to be more inclusive, some companies have focused heavily on empathy, creating policies that soften performance metrics to accommodate perceived disadvantages or different needs of diverse groups. This might include giving more time or extra support for employees from underrepresented groups without clear performance expectations or accountability.
So it may look like not having the same standards for all of the people that are in that same job role. So while the intention is to create a more supportive environment, this approach can result in a lack of clear expectations for all employees. It can also unintentionally create an environment where diverse employees feel coddled or not held to the same high values. And it can ultimately lead to lower performance and missed growth opportunities for everyone, right?
If people aren't feeling engaged and they're not feeling like this is a fair practice. If I'm like a finance leader and I'm being judged against other finance leaders, I would want us to be judged from a transparent standpoint. I wouldn't want somebody to say, oh, she's a woman, so we don't expect her to present as powerfully as a man, right? I'm like, no.
Like, I remember when I had to, you know, fight for my promotions. It was really about showing my gravitas. It was about learning that skill. It was about learning how to present in a way that's powerful and impactful and adapting to that change. It wasn't just something that was given to me because I was the token woman or that they had lower expectations of me.
My company had high expectations of me and I liked that they did because I knew that my seat at the table was because of my hard work and because I was being held to the same standards as everybody else at the table. So I just want you to see how that feminine energy can be like overly emphasizing empathy and lack of accountability also causes that backlash.
So we actually want to move towards a balanced approach, one that recognizes that having outcomes related to business outcomes and metrics and performance and merit where we honor all of those things. But from that feminine energy, also look at the groups of people that are in the pool and look at different ways to support a more diverse group of people where they are being reviewed and interviewed, right?
So here's a great example. Somebody reached out to me and asked me about a board member seat that they were like, you know, this female board member is leaving our organization and I really want a new board member to join. I want her to be another woman because we need women.
And so she asked me what she should do because she had approached the board. She was on the board and she's like, listen, I really think this next person should be a female. And the board members were more focused on this board member should be a really good member of the board, period.
This board member should have these types of abilities. They should have really strong sales networks because that's what we're needing as we're growing this and we want somebody who has a strong sales background because that's something we're lacking from the board level. Then they went into some other details.
And so the person who asked me this question was like, but I want it to be a woman. And I said, listen, you don't need to make them right or wrong, and you don't need to make yourself right or wrong. You focusing on bringing really talented women to the table that have those skill sets will help to ensure this balanced approach.
So hiring practices is a huge way to do this because oftentimes, if we are not letting our recruiters know, if you use recruiters or just people know, you might say, hey, we're just going to put it out there in the world and have people apply.
Well, if your hiring practices aren't such that you're trying to get as many diverse candidates as possible, which if they are diverse candidates, that means all sorts of candidates, and you're going to be interviewing them and having them be on that same performance metrics.
So I told her like, your job is to go and find those best candidates and find as many females as you can because part of what you're doing is leveling the playing field. Oftentimes it is in the pipeline where people or women are not applying for jobs or where recruiters are not having any type of push to find diverse candidates.
So you can say, yeah, we want the diversity in the talent pool as we are doing our hiring practice so that we can get the best candidates, whatever their gender is, but that we want to get the best candidates. And so you're mirroring up like that performance still matters, right? They still have to go all through the same interview process, but we're going to expand that talent pool and ensure that we have just as many men and women and as many diverse candidates as possible, right?
So that when you're going and looking at their resumes and looking through, you know, who's going to move on to the next round, that this pool gets, you know, expanded. And so there's approach that's both, you know, thinking about the whole cultural context and who typically applies for this role. And it's also having them go through the same process so that it can be fair and accountable in that way, right?
And even having a panel of people interviewing them that, you know, all get their say in and that that group of people come from different parts of the organization that matter. Because this is really the crux of diversity. We are getting to have more innovative thinking and we're getting to have other types of people with different types of experiences, both being on the side of the interviewing side, but also the interviewee.
But having this balanced approach, right, and integrating it and making it fair and transparent and letting everybody understand what's happening, that is what's going to create this next level of DEI policies that actually become stronger and more grounded. It's not easy for somebody to say, hey, that's not fair, when you're like, no, it is fair, because we are both looking after the performance of how these people do in the interviews and we're expanding the pool.
What cannot be fair about that? When you as a woman leader are thinking about this, really using that masculine and feminine and creating balance in them will help you to speak up for policies that are not only focused on business imperatives, transparency, and fairness, so that you're really grounded and clear on both sides of the situation and that you don't have a blind spot that you are inadvertently ignoring.
So using that masculine and feminine approach in these policies and really thinking about it this way and looking at past policies that don't seem to work as well, this is going to be really impactful as you think about these frameworks and how to position yourself to speak up in a way that you feel, again, is grounded, can influence and impact.
And what's next is I want you to also know the business case for inclusive leadership. Companies with diverse leaderships outperform their competitors by 36% in profitability. Now that is real research done from a lot of different companies and that comes from a McKinsey study.
So again, equipping yourself with the right data so that not only are you speaking to your values, but you're speaking to what's best for the company in the future and its profitability and other people. So you again come across as a well-rounded leader and are not just dying on some values or being too emotionally charged to speak clearly about what the business impact is.
And furthermore, with a shrinking native workforce, so that's like the workforce that's in the US right now, immigrants and underrepresented groups will increasingly drive labor force of growth. That's going to be who is going to be driving a lot of our future labor market. A lot of industrialized worlds are facing a shortage in workers.
I saw this when I was actually working in Singapore. They actually gave women a baby bonus if they had babies because they were really trying to incentivize the locals to have more babies. But what's been an interesting correlation is as women are more educated, as women are feeling more empowered, they have less kids, right?
And so this actually is impacting the labor force of a lot of industrial countries. Specifically, South Korea is one that is seeing this trend because their birth rates have declined a lot. But you're seeing this trend in a lot of different areas. So again, by creating policies that are bringing in immigrants and underrepresented groups, you're also ensuring the sustainability and life force of the company because the company is going to be, you know, able to withstand these things because with the 6,000,000 workers that will be short by in the US by 2030, having this pipeline to other talented individuals from other countries or other underrepresented groups is going to actually fuel growth for most of the companies in the US.
The next piece is also, I am actually going to do a separate podcast on the great wealth transfer, but women will control $30 trillion in wealth by 2030. There's going to be a significant shift and it keeps rising as the baby boomers are actually going to be transferring a lot of their wealth to widows and daughters. This makes it crucial to cultivate inclusive leadership now.
If you think about all of the women that are going to have money to make decisions in the future, you want to make sure that your company is set up to have the right knowledge and experience to capitalize on that ability to sell to more of that women market.
So it doesn't need to just look like more women, but it could just look like more people in general, because women generally do care more about these diversity groups and inclusion types of things, and they're more likely to invest in companies that are focused on fairness and focused on sustainability.
So investing in leadership pipelines that expand opportunities while remaining aligned with business imperatives is super important. And so the more you can bring up these types of things as you enter your debates in your company, and as you think about it yourself, like how you want to be reframing these conversations around fairness and innovation, the focus here is on business outcomes and to shift from divisive narratives to transparent policies that ensure merit-based advancements.
We can create a win-win out of these things. It does not need to be all or nothing. And focusing on leadership development and mentorship programs can also provide pathways for employees regardless of their background.
So what do you want to do with this? I want you to just take away this as you reflect on fostering inclusion based on fairness and business outcomes in your company. So take some time to identify gaps in leadership representation and transparency in your organization.
Just notice what comes to mind. You want to just start noticing for yourself what matters most to you. And as you start thinking about how to advocate for these diversity, equity, inclusion practices that support the business's long-term success. If you're able to ground it in that, people will feel more aligned with you, trusting of you, understanding of you.
And lastly, engaging in conversations with your leaders about balancing these masculine and feminine leadership traits, really thinking about how these policies go across, having empathy and context for the wider sort of systematic, you know, where we're at, and also really focusing on that merit-based and performance piece where people care about too, right? It's not throwing, what did they say? Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, right? You want to have both and have that synergy.
But it's important for you to get clear with yourself before you talk to others about it, particularly if you are feeling a lot of emotions. When our emotions are high and unregulated, our critical thinking is low. So you want to get to a place where you are with your emotions, but you're also using your emotions with your logic.
And that's that balance of feminine and masculine together, which has you coming across as a grounded, impactful leader that is creating trust with people as you talk about why these policies matter yo the long-term success of the company, and again creating that win-win.
Alright, so the key takeaway from today's episode is that the DEI conversations need to be focused on outcome and fairness and transparency, not divisive drama. So we wanna stay out of all the drama that is in the world that is causing us to not show up and actually causes us to be more focused on blaming and finger pointing versus creating more of these policies that are going to create long-term success for ourselves and our companies.
Again, balanced leadership, integrating both masculine and feminine traits, creating those synergies and successes, and implementing in a way that creates connectedness and trust and alignment with the employees and stakeholders involved. True leadership isn't about picking a side. It's about finding balance and focusing on outcomes that benefit everyone.
So I encourage listeners to have open conversations at work, focusing on opportunity, transparency, and business cases for inclusive leadership. I would love to hear what your thoughts are on today's episode. Please feel free to leave a review or connect with me directly on LinkedIn.
All right, go out there, use what I've shared in terms of these frameworks, open up your mind and your perspectives to other ways of doing things, and invite other people with you on this journey. All right, have a great week ahead. Take care.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Let's focus less on the divisive drama and more on real outcomes that drive business success. If you're a woman leader who cares deeply about DEI programs and its spirit, and wants to influence and make a lasting impact, speaking up in an emotionally grounded way, backed by compelling business evidence, this episode is for you.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey, podcast listeners, we have a very important and relevant podcast episode for you today around the diversity, equity, and inclusion backlash amidst President Trump's latest executive orders to roll back a lot of these initiatives and to actually investigate both federal and the private sector's policies.
So what I'm focusing on in this is really to discuss the context of this environment and also for women leaders out there who are listening to this podcast who want to be part of this but also you might be asked in your leadership team about what you think and how you would move ahead.
I know a lot of my podcast listeners are similar to me. Maybe you're the only woman in the room, maybe you're the only person of color, but you are being asked to comment and get your views on all of this. And you may be feeling similar to me, a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear to know all of the facts and data to understand everything and to maybe want to do things in a right way.
But what I want to offer is part of navigating this DEI backlash is really stepping away from the polarizing narratives and moving away from thinking that things are either good or bad or right or wrong. When we're in that mindset, when we're focused on either we're good and right, then we become superior and we have a blind spot to what the other side might be thinking. On the other end, if we're saying the other group is bad and wrong again, we have this power struggle and this dynamic.
And so what I'm offering really here in this episode is for you, as the female leader, to be grounded in your emotions, but also to be able to speak to this in terms of business imperatives and in terms of values that matter to you, grounded in data. This is going to support you to show up in those meetings and to speak in a way that creates context and relatedness for those around you, but also helps you to see things from a broader perspective.
And from perspectives of people in the room that might feel like these policies are not for them. For example, this is exactly why Trump has a lot of support. There is a big piece of the US population that doesn't feel like these DEI programs are for them.
And so instead of, again, making it right or wrong, part of this debate and understanding is to number one, see what's true, investigate what's out there, and to learn about what are some of these policies and how can we shape them in a way that are transparent, fair, clear, and drive the business imperatives and outcomes that we actually want as leaders, whether we're men or women, right?
But I do want to acknowledge the specific vulnerability that you might have as a female leader, especially a woman of color, in spaces where you're being asked to talk about this, knowing that you are representing a group that is potentially underrepresented, probably underrepresented in your leadership team. So there's just the one piece of acknowledging and knowing your feelings, and I have an episode just on those emotional pieces to understand that and to be grounded in your emotions.
And then there's another piece of knowing that when we're entering this debate that we don't move into this debate from an either/or, all-or-nothing standpoint because that creates blind spots for us as leaders. And what happens when we have blind spots is when we actually go to debate or share our idea.
If we have these blind spots and we're emotionally charged, it can actually cause us as female leaders to seem overly emotional, very much focused on values, but without the groundedness of actual policies that can be executed and implemented in a way that feels fair and that is creating interrelatedness and context with the people around you. So that's what this episode is really focused on.
But I do want to say, give everybody some context of what is happening and really share about what some of the companies are saying. So of course, there's the fear of political and legal repercussions. I just talked to a colleague, actually, whose company they're getting investigated.
Well, I guess it's not a full investigation, to be fair. This is why context and language make sense. He actually told me it was an inquiry from the FCC on their DEI programs. So they were really seeking to find out information. It wasn't a full investigation yet. But this is a real concern, right?
And as a business leader, you want to be focused on business outcomes. And here is a highly political thing that's happening that is going to impact your organization and its operations. And so a lot of organizations have just been driven by fear and have scaled back, and maybe they also have some cost-cutting actions that they needed to do and they were like this is just an easy win-win, we’re just saying we're complying, right?
But of course that also has repercussions to the people in the organization, the employees and also customers. There are a lot of people now boycotting companies that have quickly changed their tune, taken money away, right?
And it's difficult to know, is this from fear? Is there a business purpose for it too? Because maybe they're also using it as a way to say, actually, we need to cut costs and this is an easy way to do it. But it's really hard to understand without understanding a lot of those other details.
For you, in your business, you wanna understand what it is for you, because you're not going to know all of these other companies what they're doing. But you're going to probably be asked, you know, how do you feel about it? And what do you think we should do next?
So other companies like Costco, Microsoft, and Apple are actually double-downing on their diversity, equity, and inclusion activities. And they're actually going to shareholders and doing votes on this. So they're asking the people that are owning the company to weigh in on the long-term business strategy about these types of programs.
Because diversity and equity and inclusion is also about talent management and human capital, which is, of course, you know, what the business is totally run on. Relationships run the business. People run the business.
A lot of companies are actually pulling back and citing poorly executed DEI programs that create division rather than focusing on fairness and business outcomes. And this is actually what the Trump administration is saying in terms of their executive order.
They are telling companies that you need to step away from discriminatory DEI activities that are starting to discriminate certain groups of people. And this is what he kind of led his whole campaign on. Like, I am for you people that don't feel like they're being heard or that these policies are for them. And so this is really where we can start understanding and looking at the approach to these policies instead of again being black or white, all or nothing, good or bad, really looking at the approach from an expanded standpoint and a holistic standpoint. And this is where the importance of masculine and feminine leadership and energies come into play.
And when I talk about masculine and feminine, I'm not talking about male or female. I'm actually talking about certain traits. And I'm going to share a bit about this. But when you think about feminine, it's really about intuition, being, receiving, nurturing. It's circular thinking. It's more visionary in terms of a broader view and a broader concept. It's developing quality processes, it's accepting what's so.
Whereas masculine is very logical, it's a very doing approach, right? You're doing things, you're looking at projections, it's very linear, it's achievement-based, it's quantity-based, it's very hard facts and numbers. It is results-oriented, which is great, and it is going to cause conflict and disruption and challenges.
And really what I talk about, and I'm going to give you examples of where these policies in the DEI world have been too feminine or too masculine, which has caused a lot of uproar and upset by people. A more balanced approach could actually create the type of evolution that we want to be seeing in the companies, not the revolution of disruption and fighting and sort of this polarizing.
Like if you think about it, if we're just kind of finger-pointing and blaming each other, things actually don't get done. Progress actually doesn't get made. Diversity doesn't move forward. Equity doesn't move forward. Inclusion doesn't move forward. It's more of an emotional finger-pointing, blaming fight, right? Versus approaching it from a balanced, feminine and masculine synergy approach.
So I'm gonna share with you some examples of this. I want you to use this as a way to really up-level the conversations that are happening so that they're not just focused, again, on that very polarizing, divisive tone, which really doesn't get us anywhere. You know, when people show up defensive, that is like the first act of war. I don't know who exactly said that, but like, if you show up defensive, you're automatically going to create defensiveness from another person.
So this framework of really using masculine and feminine energies in combination can help you to create policies in your company and to talk about what really matters to you in both the emotionally grounded way, what matters, the values, but also in a way that is focused on execution and business outcomes and data.
So let me give you an example of a DEI policy that is too masculinely focused. This is one that has been pulled up many times and is really focused on quota-based hiring. So some organizations, as they were rolling out their DEI policies, have implemented strict hiring quotas.
Again, this is super masculine because it's like, you know, just looking at the numbers. And these quotas were based on diversity, focusing solely on meeting numerical targets, certain percentages of women, certain percentages of people of color or LGBT individuals.
While this does ensure diversity on paper, it can create a competitive transactional environment where individuals that are not part of those groups feel like they are losing out. But also it makes the individuals that were hired or promoted to fill a quota rather than based on merit, that also doesn't feel great. This can lead to resentments and feeling of tokenisms as people may feel reduced to a statistic number rather than being seen for their unique skills and potential.
So it goes like right in the face of the American dream, you know, because it's really focused on these rigid rules. And it can also foster a rigid mindset where diversity is seen as an external requirement rather than strategic value.
You know, even for me, and I'm going to speak to this from my personal standpoint, I did not want people to look at me and be like, oh, she's the token Asian woman that's on the leadership team, right? I don't want to be known for that. Yes, those are things that I am. And those are things that I'm proud of, but I don't want to be known as that's why I was put in that place. I was put there for my experience, for my life knowledge. It is part of your whole experience.
A whole person is more than just their gender or the way they look. And so when we have these quota-based hiring metrics, they can be too masculine in nature. And they are polarizing. They cause polarization. Both the people that are benefiting from it have some negative impacts, and the people that aren't benefiting from it, of course, feel like they have negative impacts too.
So I wanted to share that. These are really the discussions that you want to be approaching and looking at when you start looking at policies in your company. And when you're, you know, asked to give your opinion, you want to think about both sides of the situation and seeing how, is this too masculine of an approach.
So I'm going to give you another example of being overly feminine in an approach and what happens here. What happens when people are led too much by that feminine energy is that it can oftentimes feel unclear in terms of the performance metrics for diverse talent.
So in an attempt to be more inclusive, some companies have focused heavily on empathy, creating policies that soften performance metrics to accommodate perceived disadvantages or different needs of diverse groups. This might include giving more time or extra support for employees from underrepresented groups without clear performance expectations or accountability.
So it may look like not having the same standards for all of the people that are in that same job role. So while the intention is to create a more supportive environment, this approach can result in a lack of clear expectations for all employees. It can also unintentionally create an environment where diverse employees feel coddled or not held to the same high values. And it can ultimately lead to lower performance and missed growth opportunities for everyone, right?
If people aren't feeling engaged and they're not feeling like this is a fair practice. If I'm like a finance leader and I'm being judged against other finance leaders, I would want us to be judged from a transparent standpoint. I wouldn't want somebody to say, oh, she's a woman, so we don't expect her to present as powerfully as a man, right? I'm like, no.
Like, I remember when I had to, you know, fight for my promotions. It was really about showing my gravitas. It was about learning that skill. It was about learning how to present in a way that's powerful and impactful and adapting to that change. It wasn't just something that was given to me because I was the token woman or that they had lower expectations of me.
My company had high expectations of me and I liked that they did because I knew that my seat at the table was because of my hard work and because I was being held to the same standards as everybody else at the table. So I just want you to see how that feminine energy can be like overly emphasizing empathy and lack of accountability also causes that backlash.
So we actually want to move towards a balanced approach, one that recognizes that having outcomes related to business outcomes and metrics and performance and merit where we honor all of those things. But from that feminine energy, also look at the groups of people that are in the pool and look at different ways to support a more diverse group of people where they are being reviewed and interviewed, right?
So here's a great example. Somebody reached out to me and asked me about a board member seat that they were like, you know, this female board member is leaving our organization and I really want a new board member to join. I want her to be another woman because we need women.
And so she asked me what she should do because she had approached the board. She was on the board and she's like, listen, I really think this next person should be a female. And the board members were more focused on this board member should be a really good member of the board, period.
This board member should have these types of abilities. They should have really strong sales networks because that's what we're needing as we're growing this and we want somebody who has a strong sales background because that's something we're lacking from the board level. Then they went into some other details.
And so the person who asked me this question was like, but I want it to be a woman. And I said, listen, you don't need to make them right or wrong, and you don't need to make yourself right or wrong. You focusing on bringing really talented women to the table that have those skill sets will help to ensure this balanced approach.
So hiring practices is a huge way to do this because oftentimes, if we are not letting our recruiters know, if you use recruiters or just people know, you might say, hey, we're just going to put it out there in the world and have people apply.
Well, if your hiring practices aren't such that you're trying to get as many diverse candidates as possible, which if they are diverse candidates, that means all sorts of candidates, and you're going to be interviewing them and having them be on that same performance metrics.
So I told her like, your job is to go and find those best candidates and find as many females as you can because part of what you're doing is leveling the playing field. Oftentimes it is in the pipeline where people or women are not applying for jobs or where recruiters are not having any type of push to find diverse candidates.
So you can say, yeah, we want the diversity in the talent pool as we are doing our hiring practice so that we can get the best candidates, whatever their gender is, but that we want to get the best candidates. And so you're mirroring up like that performance still matters, right? They still have to go all through the same interview process, but we're going to expand that talent pool and ensure that we have just as many men and women and as many diverse candidates as possible, right?
So that when you're going and looking at their resumes and looking through, you know, who's going to move on to the next round, that this pool gets, you know, expanded. And so there's approach that's both, you know, thinking about the whole cultural context and who typically applies for this role. And it's also having them go through the same process so that it can be fair and accountable in that way, right?
And even having a panel of people interviewing them that, you know, all get their say in and that that group of people come from different parts of the organization that matter. Because this is really the crux of diversity. We are getting to have more innovative thinking and we're getting to have other types of people with different types of experiences, both being on the side of the interviewing side, but also the interviewee.
But having this balanced approach, right, and integrating it and making it fair and transparent and letting everybody understand what's happening, that is what's going to create this next level of DEI policies that actually become stronger and more grounded. It's not easy for somebody to say, hey, that's not fair, when you're like, no, it is fair, because we are both looking after the performance of how these people do in the interviews and we're expanding the pool.
What cannot be fair about that? When you as a woman leader are thinking about this, really using that masculine and feminine and creating balance in them will help you to speak up for policies that are not only focused on business imperatives, transparency, and fairness, so that you're really grounded and clear on both sides of the situation and that you don't have a blind spot that you are inadvertently ignoring.
So using that masculine and feminine approach in these policies and really thinking about it this way and looking at past policies that don't seem to work as well, this is going to be really impactful as you think about these frameworks and how to position yourself to speak up in a way that you feel, again, is grounded, can influence and impact.
And what's next is I want you to also know the business case for inclusive leadership. Companies with diverse leaderships outperform their competitors by 36% in profitability. Now that is real research done from a lot of different companies and that comes from a McKinsey study.
So again, equipping yourself with the right data so that not only are you speaking to your values, but you're speaking to what's best for the company in the future and its profitability and other people. So you again come across as a well-rounded leader and are not just dying on some values or being too emotionally charged to speak clearly about what the business impact is.
And furthermore, with a shrinking native workforce, so that's like the workforce that's in the US right now, immigrants and underrepresented groups will increasingly drive labor force of growth. That's going to be who is going to be driving a lot of our future labor market. A lot of industrialized worlds are facing a shortage in workers.
I saw this when I was actually working in Singapore. They actually gave women a baby bonus if they had babies because they were really trying to incentivize the locals to have more babies. But what's been an interesting correlation is as women are more educated, as women are feeling more empowered, they have less kids, right?
And so this actually is impacting the labor force of a lot of industrial countries. Specifically, South Korea is one that is seeing this trend because their birth rates have declined a lot. But you're seeing this trend in a lot of different areas. So again, by creating policies that are bringing in immigrants and underrepresented groups, you're also ensuring the sustainability and life force of the company because the company is going to be, you know, able to withstand these things because with the 6,000,000 workers that will be short by in the US by 2030, having this pipeline to other talented individuals from other countries or other underrepresented groups is going to actually fuel growth for most of the companies in the US.
The next piece is also, I am actually going to do a separate podcast on the great wealth transfer, but women will control $30 trillion in wealth by 2030. There's going to be a significant shift and it keeps rising as the baby boomers are actually going to be transferring a lot of their wealth to widows and daughters. This makes it crucial to cultivate inclusive leadership now.
If you think about all of the women that are going to have money to make decisions in the future, you want to make sure that your company is set up to have the right knowledge and experience to capitalize on that ability to sell to more of that women market.
So it doesn't need to just look like more women, but it could just look like more people in general, because women generally do care more about these diversity groups and inclusion types of things, and they're more likely to invest in companies that are focused on fairness and focused on sustainability.
So investing in leadership pipelines that expand opportunities while remaining aligned with business imperatives is super important. And so the more you can bring up these types of things as you enter your debates in your company, and as you think about it yourself, like how you want to be reframing these conversations around fairness and innovation, the focus here is on business outcomes and to shift from divisive narratives to transparent policies that ensure merit-based advancements.
We can create a win-win out of these things. It does not need to be all or nothing. And focusing on leadership development and mentorship programs can also provide pathways for employees regardless of their background.
So what do you want to do with this? I want you to just take away this as you reflect on fostering inclusion based on fairness and business outcomes in your company. So take some time to identify gaps in leadership representation and transparency in your organization.
Just notice what comes to mind. You want to just start noticing for yourself what matters most to you. And as you start thinking about how to advocate for these diversity, equity, inclusion practices that support the business's long-term success. If you're able to ground it in that, people will feel more aligned with you, trusting of you, understanding of you.
And lastly, engaging in conversations with your leaders about balancing these masculine and feminine leadership traits, really thinking about how these policies go across, having empathy and context for the wider sort of systematic, you know, where we're at, and also really focusing on that merit-based and performance piece where people care about too, right? It's not throwing, what did they say? Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, right? You want to have both and have that synergy.
But it's important for you to get clear with yourself before you talk to others about it, particularly if you are feeling a lot of emotions. When our emotions are high and unregulated, our critical thinking is low. So you want to get to a place where you are with your emotions, but you're also using your emotions with your logic.
And that's that balance of feminine and masculine together, which has you coming across as a grounded, impactful leader that is creating trust with people as you talk about why these policies matter yo the long-term success of the company, and again creating that win-win.
Alright, so the key takeaway from today's episode is that the DEI conversations need to be focused on outcome and fairness and transparency, not divisive drama. So we wanna stay out of all the drama that is in the world that is causing us to not show up and actually causes us to be more focused on blaming and finger pointing versus creating more of these policies that are going to create long-term success for ourselves and our companies.
Again, balanced leadership, integrating both masculine and feminine traits, creating those synergies and successes, and implementing in a way that creates connectedness and trust and alignment with the employees and stakeholders involved. True leadership isn't about picking a side. It's about finding balance and focusing on outcomes that benefit everyone.
So I encourage listeners to have open conversations at work, focusing on opportunity, transparency, and business cases for inclusive leadership. I would love to hear what your thoughts are on today's episode. Please feel free to leave a review or connect with me directly on LinkedIn.
All right, go out there, use what I've shared in terms of these frameworks, open up your mind and your perspectives to other ways of doing things, and invite other people with you on this journey. All right, have a great week ahead. Take care.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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