86: What To Say About the Lack of Diversity in Your Boardroom

As a board director, you are accountable for serving a business. For a for profit board, it's to your shareholders. For the nonprofit you're serving, the members or consumers, as a director or trustee, chances are you want to remain on that board. So whether it's to continue the greater good of working to govern a corporation, organization or within a community, the opportunity to serve may be your calling. The reason you're there. For others, it could be the compensation or the prestige. Whatever the reason, remaining on the board is likely as important as the work you do on it. However, you may have noticed an increase in scrutiny over the past few years, in particular when it relates to boards in one area, the press, it seemed as if news organizations never reported on the going ons and in the inner sanctum of the boardroom. But no longer. Those stories are no longer relegated to the financial section only or the trade section. They become mainstream stories. If you remember, there was a leadership problem at Uber a few years ago. The CEO at the time, Travis Kalanick, took an indefinite leave of absence. He's no longer at the company after allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Now the board met to discuss the toxic work environment, particularly for women. One board member, David Bonderman, was listening to Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, discussed a statistic that showed once a company had one woman on its board, it was more likely to have a second. Bonderman's interjection. Well, actually what it shows is that it's much more likely to be more talking wah wah. No surprise that made news and Bondurman lost his gig on the board. So since then, at least for me, I have noticed there's more stories about the boardrooms now. The behavior of board members can be subjects of news stories, but so can CEOs and other employees. So you get it. There's more scrutiny for all across the board. In addition to the board, also, there are now activists to contend with as well. And they're mostly popping up on social media. These organized groups that demand transparency and answers from the board, as well as micro activists from within a company or the membership, are starting to ask more questions, holding directors more accountable for the decisions and the policies they make. Now, as a director, this might make you nervous. Outsiders asking questions about how issues are managed from the inside. Questions about compensation are questions you may not want to answer because a dollar figure without context can skew opinions. I understand this fear because I hear it from the directors I work with as clients or as participants in my training. And if I don't hear it directly I sense it. In the five years that I've been actively working with boards and their directors, I've witnessed fear masked and a lot of other characteristics. And this fear was at a fever pitch before COVID 19 and also before the global call for racial equality. And it's not only the boards under scrutiny. Companies, brands, people, athletes, influencers, CEOs, the police. In the past few weeks, many people have been removed from their positions based on what they said or what they did not say as it relates to diversity and racial inequality for the people who govern an organization. The status quo has now been reset in 2020 June with the surge in interest and passion for changing the treatment and the experience of black people in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Now is the time as a director, as a board, to look at your policies. Here's the reason why. If you serve as a director or a trustee on a board. Come with me for a moment. Think back about the protests of the past few weeks. You've seen them all around the country. In fact, you've seen them globally. Big organizations, big protests. They started out as riots in Minneapolis and in the following days they were damaging, destructive riots. They made their way into more peaceful demonstrations of recent. But if you look at the protests of now, compared to the 60s, they're a little different obviously. Obviously they were very widespread. But what else did you notice? If you had to compare protests from the 60s to the protests now, what did you notice? If you followed the news stories or you followed it in your neighborhood? Many of the people protesting about racial equality, more equality for black people, well in many cases they were white. White Americans are in a period of, of self examination. Think about yourself, think about people you know. Are you buying more books about racism? Are you listening to more podcasts about racism? Are you reading more articles? Are you speaking to black people you know, and asking them the hard, difficult questions? Are you having arguments within your own family? People are asking about the question of race inclusivity. And the people who are asking are people who are not black, they are not brown. These people through your members, your consumers. So on this episode of the podcast what to say about the lack of diversity in your boardroom. Recently I was conducting an online training with directors about public opinion, how it's shaped nowadays with news, social media for their members. It was for not for profit directors. And in the training I always ask for a sticky issue that they have to use as an exercise. And one of the directors had mentioned a lack of diversity on the board. Well, that's not exactly what they said. They said someone else mentioned the lack of diversity on the board. It was just one person who mentioned it in the form of a letter. Now, this organization had an all white board, all lovely, lovely men. I'm sure the one who was in the training was wonderful guy. And as he was speaking about the board, I had to go to the website and I looked. All of the board members looked to me to be over the age of 59 and they were all white. Now, in the course of the conversation, the director pointed out that his organization was diverse and diverse in its senior leadership. There were seven members of the senior leadership team. And I noticed on the website only two were women. And I knew without even looking at their titles what roles they had at that business. I didn't even need to look. And I was right. Go ahead, guess. Are you with me? Communications and hr. Now, this particular director did say there was diversity on the board because they all had different backgrounds in work. Now, I want to point out here I am in no way singling out this particular organization to publicly shame them. The makeup of this person's board, this director's board, I have seen multiple, multiple, multiple times. And it is more the norm in the work that I do, especially for boards in more rural areas. Now, it should come as no surprise that race in a June 2020 training started a conversation. It started in the chat room and it was also in the discussion. I asked people to come off the mic to give their opinions. One female director pointed out, and she represented a not for profit located, I'd say, you know, rural, Southern rural, that her board made it a point to seek out a female and they wanted a younger female. Okay. And she was pleased to see that, that they deliberately, intentionally looked for someone like her. She serves on the board and she's. And she's a contributing member of that board. Now, another director, a female one. And from my perspective, from what I can see, I mean, she appeared to be white. I also think she was younger than me. She asked if diversity was also background. How about the jobs and the ages? Isn't that considered diversity as well? And frankly, I agreed with her. I mean, that is diversity. But what we're talking about here, especially in a public opinion course taking place In June of 2020, we're talking about the hard stuff, we're talking about the difficult stuff. We're talking about race, we're talking about gender, we're talking about affirmative diversity. More women, more people of color. Now, in fairness to this one particular director, I Did not believe his statements were racist. I do not think he was a bigot at all. They were more experiential. The area where they held their elections was predominantly white. I could just tell. I don't live there, but I could tell. And the positions that he held on his board, the length of the meetings, the timing of the meetings, it's difficult to attract younger people, to attract women who are mothers to attend these meetings. So it's very common in a lot of the areas that I work in now. Sometimes you can only get older people to run on the board. Millennials are busy Gen Xers. They got kids doing a million different things, playing a million different sports, and a million different activities. And if that part of the area is, let's say, 95% white, it's easy to see why you would end up with an all white board of older males. Now, in many cases, these boards, you know, especially in the rural areas, you know, they started over 100 years ago. And if it's in the Midwest or the south, these rural areas, it can be populated by farmers, you know, white male farmers, and they didn't have a lot of, you know, gender or race to bring into that farming community. It's understandable. And what needs to happen now is that you have to take this almost intentional moment where someone stands up and says, we have to make a change. If someone doesn't do that, they're just going to continue on with the status quo. So in many cases, with so much work to do, many find it easier to do the work with people who think and act like them. They have the same background. It's such a typical and easy pattern to fall into. And it's not only boards, companies with employees, friends, where you shop, you know, who you converse with on a daily basis. Right? You're listening. It's easier to exist in a world where people are the same as you and have the same experiences. The problem, however, for organizations and for their boards is with all white boards, all white mailboards, is now you have to answer to it. A white person is likely not going to get called out unnecessarily for not having more friends of color, okay, that's just not going to happen. It's not likely that it's going to happen, however. But if there's a makeup of a board representing a group of people that need to represent a community or an area that are also made up of women and people of color, well, eventually you're going to have to answer for it. One answer I've Heard time and time again. Well, these men are the most experienced. That's why they're on the board. And I'm told this, you know, before the pandemic, I've been told this to my face. And if you haven't figured this out by now, I'm not a man, I'm a woman. And they'll tell me this with a straight face now, the restraint it takes from me, the female facilitator, when I hear that, my inner dialogue wants to scream. Please tell me your basis for measurement for why your male board of all white males over the age of 60 in the year 2020 or 2019 happen to be the most qualified. Is it your savviness in technology? Is it your work experience in all areas of the workforce? Do you work in computers? You work in tourism? Does someone own a restaurant? Does someone run a daycare? Are you a teacher? Are you a principal? How can you speak on behalf of other women and blacks and Hispanics, Asians, millennials, Gen X, now gen Z, when you're a board of a bunch of older white men? But more often than not, I've recognized the person, this male, saying this to me doesn't necessarily mean that they are the most qualified. I know this, and I very delicately walk around it because I work in pr, after all. But what he is saying to me is this. The group that we're working with together right now works the best. We're the most qualified in the sense we understand each other. We know each other. We understand the quirks and the history and the families. It's easier to govern this way because we're in a very, very comfortable environment. We get a lot work done, a lot more work done. We get a lot more work done quickly. But the importance at the board actually having time to get to know each other and build the ability to work well as a team, well, you know what? It matters. It does. I understand that you need to have a rhythm in your relationship as a board, but do you want that board to be governed in that way simply because it's easier? In 2017, there was a survey conducted by board source of 1700 executives within the industry. They found that 90% of all nonprofit CEOs are white. 90 as are 84% of board members. Now, that number is up from their 2015 findings, which were 89% and 80%. Now, if I take that survey and I match it with my experience, 90% of all nonprofit CEOs are white, as are 84% of the board members. Well, that matches with me. And overall, within the time frame of all those white boards, those rose too, from 25% to be 27%. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that all white people who sit on boards are bigots or racists. But now is the time to recognize that many, all white people consciously or unconsciously benefit from systems that support their race and oppress others. Now, the past few weeks brought varying degrees of unconscious and learned behaviors that have not been tested like they have in the past few weeks. It is time to recognize that if you have a seat on the board, in large part it's because you are white, and in many cases, it's because you are male. And that's not a bad thing if you think about it. Now, if you're still struggling with the concept of it and you're saying to yourself, if you're still listening, yeah, but. Yeah, but, like you want to put it into context, Think about it this way. This is how I explain it. Sometimes think about a party with people that you know, okay, and you're driving by on the street. It's a Friday night at 7 o', clock, and you drive by a friend's house and you see all these familiar cars in the driveway spilling out into the street, and you see the lights on and you. And you might even hear music. You might even hear people out in the back. There's probably a barbecue going on. Maybe there's music. Are you going to walk up to the door, ring the doorbell and ask to come in? Chances are you wouldn't because you weren't invited. Now, if you were invited, you would walk right in. Now, how does it make you feel if you were excluded? It hurts, right? And some people might even get mad, well, why didn't they ask me? It's time to start asking yourself, why? Why aren't we inviting other people to our party? To our party to help people that we are serving? It's time for boards to ask themselves this question. Because if you don't, soon, very soon, others will be asking the question for you. Now enter your activists. Those are even the more vocal members who will start asking the questions and. And they'll start asking online for other people to see. So for the podcast today, I want to give you your answer. Some steps, three steps for what you can do about the lack of diversity in your boardroom. More specifically, what can you say? Well, if you've listened to this podcast frequently, you know, I work with a framework, and the framework, well, it works. If you are asked that question in person indirectly. Perhaps it's a post on Facebook or it's during a meeting and you have to answer it directly. You go back to my framework. One, you own it. Two, you clarify it. And three, you promise it. If you do all three, then you'll win it. Okay, what does that sound like? Number one, own. It sounds like this. Picture a person at a meeting asking the question about the lack of diversity. Yes, it's true. We do have a board that lacks diversity. Grossly. We have a board of all white males. That's the number one, you're going to answer truthfully. Two, clarify it. The reason why we have a board makeup that looks like this is because this is what our board has looked like for the past 100 years. We haven't changed because we, we have brought this organization from X thousands of dollars to X millions of dollars. We have done all these things with the success of working with a board that looks like this. However, history has proven that things need to change, that policy needs to change. That's why. Three, now we're going to talk about the promise. We are promising to change. We are going to hold board elections where we can find people of diversity and be a more inclusive board. Now, to be honest, we have to tell you, we've struggled with binding candidates. We have elections, but no one runs against our board. So that's why we want to make sure we seek out people. We find people. We are looking for more women. We are looking for minorities. We want black people, we want brown people, we want Hispanics, we want Asian wealth. Whatever it is, we're looking for you. This is where you can even cite, you know, the numbers from your elections and tell them no one has run for these positions. Okay? And then you make the promise and you stick with the promise. All right? This is creating a party where everyone is invited. Okay? Now, the next step is you have to make that commitment to change. If you are a board made up of directors or trustees who compose of a reflection on the community, if your organization's values and beliefs match what your board looks like, people will notice it. As I said earlier, yes, it's true. It's easier to run a board meeting if you're with people that you know, people you're familiar with. You understand the cadence and the patterns of the board meeting. But if you put a little bit of energy, burn a couple calories on diversity and inclusion, you are going to bring new people where you can draw on a different set of skills, a different set of talents, perspectives that are broader and more diverse. You're going to get a range of directors and leaders. Even if you're bringing CEOs with different viewpoints that come from different life experiences and even more so if they have different cultural backgrounds, it's going to strengthen your board deliberations and the decision making process. Healthy debate from different perspectives can lead to better actions. Inclusivity. You want to bring and cultivate an inclusive culture that ensures that all board members are encouraged to bring their perspectives, their identity, their life experiences to the board services. An inclusive board culture is going to welcome and celebrate all differences. Ensure that all board members are equally engaged and invested. Share the power. Share the responsibility across the board. You will be bleeding your mission and your values if you do it. So yes, I know it does take more work. It takes more energy. You're going to burn more calories working with people who are different than you, but the payoff is going to be worth it. Your actions will be on the right side of the events of June 2020 and your board will likely be the better for it. Lastly, number three, I say it a lot. Transparency boards. They play a very critical role in shaping how an organization is managed and governed. However, you cannot empower management and staff to be more transparent. If the board isn't your staff, your management, they need to work in an environment with updated policies that support transparency. That helps create a culture of trust, of candor and respect. Now is the time to update your policies and let your members know that you're doing so. Share the makeup of your board. Share it on your website. Share it in photographs. Share it in imagery. Heck, go on to GuideStar, the nonprofit profile. Update your profile. Share with people the makeup of your board. Trust me when I say as a public relations practitioner, your reputation, the brand reputation, will be improved significantly the more transparent you are. The questions get asked when answers aren't readily available. The questions do not come for organizations that provide them. Now, the point of this episode is not to just point out what's wrong, but to set boards on a path to fix it. The reality is there are going to be a lot of white boards in some areas in the country. No matter how much an organization tries to change it, you may be called out the directors, the board chairs could be at risk of being canceled. But if you communicate it and you're transparent and you tell people the challenge of having a more diverse board, well, they're going to be on board with you. A PR colleague of mine, Mary Beth west, she recently published an article about this issue on LinkedIn I'm going to share a link in the show notes, but Mary Beth stated in her article, I offer respectful pushback to colleagues who criticize other colleagues for serving on boards with little to no diversity in a cancel culture manner. If colleagues on the board are taking definitive and credible action to push forward positive change, that's the key. Pushing forward, looking forward to make a positive change. The three takeaways if you are serving on a board that seriously lacks diversity, 1. Own it. Be very open and transparent about what your numbers are on the board and how you got there and why you got there. Commit and clarify why your board looks like it does and commit to making changes for diversity and inclusion. And finally, let people know about it. Be willing to answer the difficult questions and tell people about your process for making change. Change, more often than not is never easy. It is not an easy thing to do, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. Boy, I surely hoped it helped you if you are a director or a trustee on a board. For more help about the art of the response, I wanted to let you know about a project that I'm launching. I've mentioned it on the podcast before. You may know that I had launched a COVID 19 response kit back in late March of 2020 in response to the pandemic. It was my way to help other communicators who are struggling with communications in this new uncharted territory of communicating during a pandemic. And boy, I was amazed by the response, the community that was born from this kit. I created a Slack channel, a lot of communicators discussing things back and forth and sharing ideas and sharing solutions and also sharing their stresses and their concerns. It was a wonderful community and I knew as we were coming out of COVID 19, or at least the immediate response phase, I knew I wanted to keep this idea of a response kit alive. So that's why I created the Response kit. So if you head over to responsekit.com right now, you can sign up. We're getting ready to launch soon and it is going to be a response kit really for anyone who needs to communicate on behalf of a business or an organization. In many cases there are so many, especially nowadays with everything virtual. There are so many resources out there, but the response kit is going to help you plan and implement those resources. So if you struggle with creating relevant content, or if you're struggling convincing your leadership or your boards how to buy in to the importance of communications are you connecting with your audience, you know, on the right channels, on social media, is your website news ready? Is it ready to break news? Is it ready to respond? So if you're frustrated by not having the right resources or valuable resources, I encourage you to head over to responsekit.com right now. Sign up. You will get an email as soon as we are ready to launch. Thanks for listening. You can follow me on Twitter Molly McPherson and I look forward to communicating with you again next week. Bye for now.