Diversity & Inclusion or Inclusion & Diversity: Where to start matters

If you are in a corporate role or seeking your collegiate education, you may be hearing a lot of swirl on Diversity and Inclusion or one or the other. As an HR professional and a life-long learner, I often see these two used in very different contexts or as interchangeable words.

Diversity is defined as the state of being diverse, a variety of different shapes, colors, sizes and more differentiators than we can define today.

Inclusion is defined as an action or state of including or of being included.

Defining these two words, helps bring clarity around the differences of each and how they may have been used interchangeably when they mean different things.

The order in which these two powerful words, show up, can be telling for how companies or universities tackle the challenges they face today. Programs and initiatives around diversity and inclusion are important and while many of the programs out there seem to be tackling these areas, measuring improvement isn’t something easily done.

Let’s go back to the definitions of the two. Diversity can be measured from a self-identification perspective, for example, most companies and universities measure diversity by gathering data like gender, color, veteran, disability and other categories that would show a variety of individuals. A question to ask yourself though is, “does having a diverse team, organization or student cohort, make you inclusive?” The short answer is no, chasing ways to increase diversity does not equate to being inclusive, it only addresses if there is a need to be more diverse.

As an individual who falls under several diverse categories, female/ minority/ differently abled, my differences allow me to view things from a different lens. My differences do not support inclusion as a default. Meaning, because I am diverse, it does not equate to inclusion.

Inclusion is an act or the act of being included and I have to stress the definition once more to create a picture of the importance to shift from how you think about Diversity and Inclusion.

My perspective is, diversity should be a product of an action, what we are striving for. A simple example of this is to see diversity as flowers and water or the act of watering, as inclusion. If you plant three flowers, a rose, a lily and a sunflower, you intentionally meant to have a diverse garden. Now planted, how do others know you have a diverse set of flowers? This is where watering comes in. You have to water the flowers to get them to grow and bloom but it’s not just about watering them, this is where EQUITY comes in. Yes, we can’t talk about Inclusion if we don’t include EQUITY.

Flowers come with instructions like how much sun, water, what kind of pot, the environment like outside or inside and so much more. You know the flowers need watering, you know they need to be placed in specific places to grow and you know they all need something a little different to thrive and bloom. Inclusion is about giving all the flowers an opportunity to grow, intentionally, through equitable actions.

If we look at Diversity and Inclusion in this way, you can see that we now have “Inclusion and Diversity.” Did I share I am also a consultant in IE&D (Inclusion, Equity and Diversity)? A shameless plug, I know.

Bringing it back, we need to start looking at this as Inclusion & Equity, because Diversity matters. If we want to strive for more diverse talent to join our companies, pick our universities and stay, we need to water them, care for them and allow them to bloom and grow.