Integrating Diversity Intelligence, Leadership and Career Development

Organization leaders cannot be expected to understand and capture the essence of the lived experiences of protected class group members, but they can acquire competencies to deal with diversity. Leaders who do not have a frame of reference for the lived experiences of protected class group members must be open to learning and being educated about some of the experiences. They must learn enough to be fair in their treatment of protected class group members. Leaders can listen to employees but there is a limit to the empathy that they can offer (Watyz 2016). The limitations of empathy are that it can be exhausting, can be zero-sum, and erode ethics. The limitations are compounded for leaders as they try to focus on everyone’s problems and not the problems that they are legally required to address. Many protected class group members are left out of opportunities, and have been left out for centuries. They are exhausted by the continuous efforts to obtain fairness. They are tired of being placed within the zero-sum calculations with others who have not been treated unfairly, and they are tired of watching their leaders’ ethics being eroded in how they are treated. Leaders should abdicate their leadership roles if they cannot work with all protected class group members.