Interview
Founder and director of Inclusion Institute, Lisa Kepinski, has been a senior global diversity and inclusion executive with AXA, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard. She also co-authored the Inclusion Nudges Guidebook, exploring behavioural drivers behind bias. She shares her insights on achieving cultural change.
Taking the moral position, that diversity and inclusion are ‘the right thing to do’ has not motivated change in business. Yet there has never been a senior leader that has said to me, ‘I want to treat people unfairly’. We all want to be fair to feel good about our interactions with each other.
Compliance is not generating change either. In fact, compliance often has negative consequences. For example, increasing the number of women at the top is often a hard metric within organisations, or a legislative topic. But it can trigger backlash and make people suspicious about talent decisions: ‘Did she really get that promotion because she’s qualified?’ ‘Is she up to the same level of leadership capabilities as her peers?’ ‘Did you hire me because of me, or because of my gender?’
