It’s important that your association has deep and candid conversations around diversity and inclusion.
However, when it comes time to do so, you should expect some reluctance and discomfort from your members. Why? Because many people simply don’t know how to openly and respectfully discuss these topics; what’s more, they may fear judgement or that they’ll say the wrong thing.
So how, for example, can associations in male-dominated industries make space for women and minorities? How can those in female-dominated industries ensure their leadership doesn’t remain predominantly male?
Here are a few ways you can ensure your association’s diversity strategy is more well-rounded.
4 Ways to Get Your Diversity Strategy On Track
Acknowledge shortcomings and be aware of unconscious biases
First things first: It’s important to figure out and acknowledge where we’re falling short before we can move forward. During this process, make sure you’re aware of unconscious biases, encouraging others with different backgrounds, lived experiences, and perspectives than you to weigh in as well.
Encourage the review of recruitment and other processes
In order to be truly successful, this effort should be association-wide and touch every initiative and stage of your membership lifecycle. Start by looking at your recruitment process—are you centring diversity and inclusion in the ways you actively look for and attract new members? What about your introduction/onboarding program?
Make inclusion a priority
Making inclusion a priority can create a truly inclusive culture where all association members are encouraged to develop, interact, and voice their opinions. And, by doing so, diversity is inevitable.
Provide DEI learning opportunities
Successful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) learning opportunities and initiatives create more opportunities for continued engagement—something you’re probably looking for from your association members.
Putting These Lessons Into Practice
Mentoring programs—especially those centred around DEI—are a great way to understand the experiences of all minority communities, including communities pertaining to:
- Race
- Gender
- Sexuality
- Culture
- Neurodiversity
- Disability
- Differences in lived experiences (e.g. experience with poverty)
Mentoring programs can also help amplify the voices in such communities while allowing your association to start making meaningful changes in the way you treat them.
Implementing such a program means taking action that goes beyond forming policies, or things like bias or sensitivity training; mentoring creates space for more in-depth conversations and deeper connections.
The USTA Cross-Cultural Mentoring Program
The United States Tennis Association (USTA)—the national governing body for tennis in the United States—understood these benefits and wanted to experience them for themselves. They realised that a mentoring program could play a pivotal role in:
- Fostering greater understanding and awareness of different cultural backgrounds
- Providing a safe environment for employees to learn about and share their experiences
- Creating an avenue for employees of different backgrounds and in different areas of the organisation to have the chance to interact
Therefore, the USTA Diversity & Inclusion team launched a pilot program to test how a peer mentoring initiative centred on diversity and inclusion would work, as well as how it would be received in the organisation.
The program coordinators ensured that there was real diversity in the program as well, especially when it came to ethnicity, gender, age, seniority, departments, etc. They also decided to have a peer mentoring program instead of the traditional setup. Thankfully, Mentorloop’s value system aligned with all of their goals for their program.
The results? Feedback from the initial pilot was overwhelmingly positive, with participants sharing that they opened themselves to different perspectives and are now having productive conversations that they would never have had before.
Learn more about how USTA implemented their own mentoring program, which ended up tying all of their DEI activities and efforts together.
