Get your FREE 30-day trial.
Please complete all fields.
Last month, Salesforce held a Equality Summit keynote highlighting the major issues that have plagued our nation in the fight for equality in the past and how that struggle still continues today. We had the privilege of hearing from three incredible speakers-- humanitarian and sports icon Billie Jean King, civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, and Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO Bernard J. Tyson-- on the issues facing the world today compared to the past, and how we can work together to change the future for the better. Each shared their individual stories and their visions for change. Here are three inspirational lessons that you must know:
Inclusion and acceptance go hand-in-hand in the fight for equality. According to Billie Jean King, it’s a bit like sports.
“[Your company] is like a sports team. If you have more to draw from, you’re going to have a stronger team. If you have a stronger team, you’re going to win,” King emphasized. “And you're going to win not only in the culture and the inclusion and the equality, you’re going include at the bottom line, you’re going to make more money, and everybody’s going to win.”
The problem, she noted, was that it was hard to create this kind of change, whether it's in a company or in sports itself. Still, numbers don’t lie: according to a study by McKinsey & Co, companies with more diverse workforces perform better financially, with those that are gender diverse likely to outperform by 15 percent and those that are ethnically diverse likely to outperform by 35 percent. In fact, there is a linear relationship between gender and ethnic diversity in companies and better financial performance. So why is it so hard to create an equal playing field? According to King, the answer may lie in holding others back once they begin to succeed.
“Why is it when a woman or somebody of color gets ahead, that others feel like they’ve lost something?” King questioned. “They haven't lost something. They’ve actually gained something.”
Holding others back, if anything, actually weakens your team. Through inclusion and equality for all and utilizing every individual player’s strengths regardless of gender, race, disability or sexual identity, however, a team will gain power through equality. And when you include the whole team, there’s no way you can’t win.
Change can begin with just one voice, as King proved through her creation of the Women’s Tennis Association, which fought to establish equal pay for equal play in every major world tournament since its founding. It finally accomplished this goal by 2007, but there’s still a long way to go. The point, according to King, is that we have to change.
“My whole life I've felt like I've been on a tightrope. Trying to navigate, trying to stay balanced on this thing, trying to help change, but not get somebody so ticked off that they don't listen,” King said. “Because once somebody does not listen, they're not going to help change things.”
Bernard Tyson echoed this sentiment. After working with the LGBT-identifying members of his company and learning how to better understand the issues from the voices of his employees, Tyson used those lessons to create a policy that, today, is committed to reinventing transgender care.
Speaking up isn’t always easy, however. In a study in the Harvard Business Review, over half of the employees surveyed felt that it wasn’t safe to speak up-- and worse, felt the need to keep quiet for self-preservation. This lack of communication can lead to huge social and economical costs to a company in the long run, which may be detrimental to the company’s future. One solution is to create an inclusive culture that allows speaking up to happen without consequences-- thus giving all employees, including marginalized groups, a voice.
The biggest lesson Tyson said he learned from his experience dealing with this firsthand was that giving underserved groups a voice can make a huge difference.
“It does matter to have your voice at the table, dealing with these issues and not sitting back, simply letting something go on that you know is not the right thing to do,” said Tyson.
Congressman John Lewis spent his teens being told not to cause trouble.
“Growing up, I didn't like segregation and racial discrimination, and I wanted to do something about it,” said Lewis.
Then, in 1955, when he was just 15, he learned of Rosa Parks and heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s words on the radio. Their actions, alongside those of the hundreds and thousands of people in Montgomery, Alabama, inspired him to “find a way to get in the way.” He got in what he called “good trouble” when he was 16, trying to check out books at a public library. He went on to get arrested 40 times during the sixties and early seventies, and an additional four more times while serving as a member of the House of Representatives. His rule of thumb for creating equality is to get into trouble, but only when it is necessary to create change.
Getting into this kind of “good trouble” that helps make the world a better place in the future is just one of many steps to take in the fight for social equality, according to Lewis.
“My simple philosophy is when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up and speak out, and get in the way,” said Lewis. “Get in trouble: good trouble, necessary trouble.”
