Existential Approaches to EDI

So, Wide Open Voices takes an existential approach to leadership and EDI and, having given a sense of how existential is relevant to our everyday lives here and its relationship to leadership here, I thought I should probably do the same for existentialism and EDI. So, here we go…

Given the degree to which existentialism is about relationships, uncertainty, and anxiety and how our values, attitudes, and beliefs impact on our engagement with these, it is fairly easy to see how it relates to our business and person life, but where does EDI fit in?

Well, when we meet, engage with, work with people who are ‘different’ from us, people who we do not know, we experience a sense of anxiety about what the outcome of this will be. Think about how you felt when a new person joined your team, or a someone you don’t know became your boss. Think about a time when you first met a new client or had your first meeting with the Board of Directors. Most, if not all of us, will have experienced a sense of anxiety about how they will respond to you and what the outcome will be.

This anxiety comes from our age-old fear of being eaten if we step away from the fire at night. Now, of course, rarely, hopefully never, are we anxious that the people we meet might eat us. However, people do often experience a sense of threat. This sense of threat, or fear, is sometimes about physical harm but it is always a sense of a threat to how we understand who we are and to our position in society. Often this is experienced unconsciously but manifests in our behaviour towards and in relation to these ‘other’ people. This is where we get to the nub of the relationship between existentialism and EDI. I’m going to break this down a bit here, starting by going back to relationality.

We all exist in a web of relations with other people. Some people we know well, others, not so much. It is within this web of relations that we know who we are as well. This comes from the degrees of similarity and difference we see between ourselves and these others. This is particularly the case in terms of the broad social groups that we feel we belong to. At a surface level, I know I am White because my complexion is similar to other people I recognise as being White. But how do I and other White people know we are White? What are the reference points that tell us we are White? Oddly, they are not anything to do with us. Rather, it is the markers of difference in other people’s complexion that we recognise as different to ours that define us as White. So, I know myself as White because I am not Black or Brown, for example.

If points of difference do not exist, we don’t have any reference points against which to define ourselves. If everyone was White, we would not know ourselves as White because no markers of difference would exist in other people against which we define ‘White’. In truth, it is the differences we see in others that tell us who we are more so than the similarities. With these differences come unknowns and, as we know, with unknowns comes uncertainty about how those we understand as different will respond to us or behave in general.

Well, hang on a moment, don’t we actually know a lot of things about people who are different from us, and can’t we use this to predict how they may behave? Don’t we know that a person wearing a Union Jack t-shirt is a royalist? But wait, maybe they are a proud Brit, or a racist, or a lover of Minis, or a fan of Britpop, or a supporter of the GB Olympic Team…It is unlikely that the person wearing the t-shirt is all of these, although, they may be one or more of them, but how do we ‘know’? Where do these ideas about people that cause us to assume we know them come from?

We live in a society that is infused with stories, narratives, and stereotypes about all sorts of people. Some of these are positive narratives, others less so. Indeed, in our society, the positive narratives tend to be about those who are either in the majority or those who hold the power over these narratives. In Britain, for centuries, these have been predominantly White, heterosexual, middle- and upper-class men. However, for a positive story to exist it must have a related negative story to act as a reference point. You cannot have good without bad. You cannot have honest without dishonest. You cannot have strong without weak.

In truth, our society has been so infused with negative stories and stereotypes about Black and Brown people, about women, about LGBTQIA+ people, about the working-class and their lifestyles, and about the ‘ways of being’ of all these ‘different’ people that there is no need for the positive stories about White people, the middle-classes, etc to be told. Instead, these characteristics, particularly in combination, and the associated ways of being, have been imbued with a ‘rightness’ has become to be understood as the ‘norm’ and the ‘natural order of things.’

The negative stories we have been told have taught us that what is considered ‘normal’ i.e., being White, being heterosexual, being a man, middle-class attitudes, values, and behaviours, etc, are superior to all others. These negative stories about others have become our reference points for understanding who we are and what our position in society is. They condition our worldview - how we see ourselves and others, and how society works. Consequently, they condition the assumptions, subconscious or otherwise, about how other people will behave, their values and beliefs, and how they will respond to us. This gives us a degree of certainty about who we are and our place in society.

Then along comes EDI and says, ‘You can’t see the world like this anymore’. In fact, not only that, but it also tells us that we now must see these others and their ways of being as of equal value to our own. In effect, EDI is removing the markers of difference and leaving us not knowing who we are anymore, what our position in society is, or how to be in the world. Importantly, EDI does not provide us with an alternative way of being once its goals have been achieved. Instead, it leaves this unremarked upon and undefined, creating an uncertainty filled void into which we look. In many ways, EDI represents a death of our way of being and a death of our ‘knowing’ about ourselves and our place in society, and death is the ultimate existential threat.

This death and the uncertainty that it comes with understandably creates significant fear and anxiety in many. It is, in many ways, am existential crisis for those to whom EDI feels like a threat. Some respond to this with anger and resentment. Some respond with fragility and defensiveness. Sometimes these responses are overt, sometimes they are covert and, even more often, they are unconscious. Others, perhaps less wedded to the negative stories society has told us, respond with a fear of ‘getting it wrong’, an anxiety that often leads to inaction or, even worse, box ticking exercises that are no more than a fraudulent nod to EDI.

Ironically, this fear we experience, this anxiety about the future is wholly misplaced, given that we have all experienced a way of being in which all ways of being are equally valued and in which our place in society is certain. Think back to your childhood. Thank back to how you engaged with others before you were aware of these narratives of difference. We have all lived this way. We just need to find a way back to it.

So, other than proving some explanation behind discrimination and inequity and an understanding of the responses of some to EDI, what can existentialism do to help? Well, existentialism, particularly in the form of coaching and development activities, provides the lens through which to explore and understand the anxieties we feel because of the perceived threat if EDI. It is a lens through which to examine the beliefs and values that condition our worldview and lead to our fears. Crucially, it is a perspective through which to gain clarity and an understanding of who we are and how to be authentically us, to develop a new way of being in a world in which all ways of being are equally valued and respected.