And so he was not that welcoming, but Cecilia dived in anyway.
She was used to this kind of response when you have these conversations.
And she started with some easy questions, just asking him about how large his team
was, and how he typically went about recruiting, and what their tasks were.
And then she got to the demographics questions.
And she asked him to share the makeup of his team,
which was, of course, pretty much all white male of a certain age range.
And she then asked him, well, so why do you think that's true?
Why do you think it's not a more diverse group?
And that was the point where he suddenly became engaged and even triggered.
And he leaned forward in his chair, and his face got more stern, and
he started to speak in a more agitated way.
He was in the conversation now, and he basically said, this is just nuts.
He said, the organization pressures us to have a more diverse workforce.
But, he said, a few years ago,
I hired the first African-American male at a very senior level in my organization.
And he didn't work out, and
I had to let him go, and I have been paying a price ever since.
And then the organization comes in and
sends you to talk to me about why I don't have a more diverse workforce.
He said, it's really rather hypocritical.
So Cecelia kind of sat back in her chair, she was a little bit flummoxed.
And she knew intellectually what kind of responses she might give to all
the assumptions that were embedded in the statements that this manager just made.
For example, if you hired a white male who didn't work out, and
you had to let him go, would you never hire another white male?
And are you sure that this individual received the kind of onboarding and
training that everyone else did?
Are you sure that his performance was evaluated fairly?
But she had the feeling that this manager was the kind of person that if she started
arguing with him, or even just offering alternative interpretations,
that he was going to view that as an argument.
And that he was going to come right back at her in an argumentative and
a conflictual way.
And he was somebody who who liked to engage in that way, and Cecilia was not.
Cecilia was a more introverted person.
She was someone who was more comfortable with dialogue,
with a learning conversation, with asking questions.
And so she felt that not only would she not be comfortable, but
she really wasn't sure that it would be effective with him.
She was tempted to simply withdraw, but she felt, the values that she cared about,
she was committed to diversity and to effective and fair management.
Really, the values she cared about meant that she really should try and
have an impact here.
But she wasn't sure what she could say and do that was going to communicate with this
individual who clearly had his walls up and was very convinced that
he'd paid this negative price for trying to diversify his workforce.
So she paused, trying to figure out what to do.
Let me invite you to take a minute,
if you were in Cecilia's shoes, what might you say and do at this moment?
If you truly cared about these issues and you wanted to have a positive impact,
what would be the most likely effective thing that you could say and do?
And especially if you had the kind of personality that Cecilia did,
which was more quiet,
more of a dialogue and questioning person than a debater.
What do you think she could say and do to be effective?