The Glass Ceiling on Accountability
Is opposition to DEI really a fear of what true appointment on merit would mean for many current leaders?
While huge progress has been made in embracing diversity and inclusion at work in recent years, there is still a very long way to go (even before current ridiculous ideas about doing away with DEI take effect). Indeed, the arguments used against DEI are actually the real reasons why it is so important. Far from leading people to be appointed to jobs based on their protected characteristics, DEI takes us nearer to promotion and appointment on merit rather than allowing discrimination, both conscious and unconscious, to play a key role in decision making.
However, if you are different in any way from many of those around you, chances are that you will find it harder to progress in your career. I remember many years ago when a manager told us about the appointment of a new director we would be working to. When the first reaction was “oh look, it’s a middle-aged white man”, all we could do was laugh. For the purposes of full disclosure, I am a white middle-class man, so I have been spared from much of the discrimination faced by others, and I know that I have many privileges. But being neurodivergent and just generally different from the corporate orthodoxy has definitely held me back and slowed down my career progression.
So while there is a glass ceiling that stops people who are different from progressing, it also seems to stop any sense of responsibility or accountability from progressing to the higher levels of most organisations. Senior people are, of course, always keen to be seen and involved when there is a success to be celebrated. When your organisation wins an award, you generally find that you cannot move for senior managers looking to take some of the credit.
But when something goes wrong, you are likely to find yourself on your own. I know that senior managers like to say they take responsibility for mistakes and failures, but in many cases, these pronouncements are just words. Taking responsibility means accepting the consequences personally, not just saying sorry and moving on. It means being answerable for failings and accepting that something serious, or repeated failure, will have a detrimental impact on your career.
This is not the way it works in reality, in my experience. I like the analogy of a deep-sea diver, carrying weights to keep themselves at the required depth and breathing air from a tank on their back. Successes are like the bubbles of air expelled from their mask when they breathe. Nothing will stop them from getting to the very top of the water in no time at all. This is how it feels when something good happens in a big organisation. Those who had the idea and did the work may get a passing moment of credit, but the real kudos always goes to those at the top, even when they had nothing at all to do with the success. Indeed, those doing the work may have had to actively fight against seniors to get the change made, or to do it the right way. But none of that seems at all relevant when there is glory to be had.
But blame and responsibility are like the weights dropped by the diver when they want to rise through the water. They fall like stones to the most junior people involved, even if they had been constantly warning that there were problems and things would go wrong. When this happens, of course, taking responsibility usually does involve real consequences for career progression or even continued employment.
There really does seem to be a glass ceiling for accountability, above which only good news is your responsibility. I have lost count of the number of people of demonstrably questionable ability who seem to keep failing upwards from one senior position to an even more senior role, regardless of their track record of disaster or clear lack of aptitude for these roles.
Which brings me back to the fundamental importance of DEI. Those opposed to it say that they want the best person for the job regardless of their other characteristics. That is the whole point of DEI, because progression is generally almost entirely unrelated to merit at present. Much more important are things like who you know, talking rather than doing, and playing the game. People who are different in any way are almost automatically excluded before they even get started – they are not allowed to play the game, let alone taught how to do so from an early age. When you are different, every mistake stays with you for life. When you are a chosen one, you can do no wrong, regardless of facts.
I genuinely believe that a lot of the problems in the world today are down to a complete lack of accountability of senior leaders in all areas of life. Too many of them genuinely seem to believe that the rules that the rest of us must follow do not apply to them. When things go wrong, they distance themselves from the mess and move on to the next disaster, perhaps whining about how unfairly treated they have been while doing so.
Leadership and seniority should go hand in hand with accountability. I am by no means very senior, but I often lose sleep over the things I am responsible for, because my integrity will not allow me to deflect the blame for my own mistakes to someone else. Why does this feel so unusual?
More power and more reward mean more responsibility, and that the buck stops with you. High risk and high reward. There should be no glass ceiling on accountability.
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