Cultural Competence
In our attempt to create a safe and productive work environment for ourselves, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people have asked their employers to bar discrimination, provide domestic partner benefits, establish an employee resource group (ERG), and mandate diversity training. The latter is the only reliable means of bridging the chasm between corporate policy and corporate culture.
Heterosexuals, for the most part, feel unprepared to be proactively supportive of their company's efforts to value diversity. The best they feel they can do is to refrain from engaging in behaviors that would be considered hostile. They don't know how, nor feel comfortable, engaging their gay or transgender colleagues in a positive way. Their strategy is avoidance. They don't ask their gay colleagues about their weekend plans, nor question who is in the photograph on the desk. Thus, gay people generally feel marginalized at work, even in companies with a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign in the U.S., and from Stonewall in the U.K.
Diversity training on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workplace issues, which is mandated and not optional, is the only reliable means of empowering heterosexual colleagues to be allies, even those with conflicting moral values. Such training puts a face on the issue and provides understanding of who gay and transgender employees are, why they feel the need to come out at work, how their doing so is related to the bottom line of competition, and what language and behaviors are considered inappropriate and what are considered welcoming. The goal of such training is creating cultural competency.
But cultural competency is a two-way street. It's hostile and counterproductive to expect that heterosexuals become sensitive to the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees without having the same expectations of gay and transgender people toward their heterosexual peers. Too often, bitterness is created along with compliance to company policies because no effort has been made on the part of the gay and transgender ERG or the diversity office to become aware of the challenges which face heterosexual employees in becoming allies.
The recent discussions around inclusion of transgender protections in the Employment Non-Discrimination ACT (ENDA) is a prime example of cultural incompentency on the part of the gay and transgender community. While the general population has had many years to become knowledgeable about homosexuality, the same is not true of gender identity, and certainly not of gender expression. Most heterosexuals, including those who work in corporate human resource offices, don't have a clue what the "T" of GLBT really means. The letter "T" was added to the acronym by the gay community out of good will but without much good thought. Little if any education has been provided about the full spectrum represented by the "T," and, as a result, even most gay people feel uncomfortable explaining its meaning.
I've been privileged to work as an educator on gay issues in corporations and colleges for 34 years, and on transgender issues for the past 20. My work is now with senior executives across the globe. I know from that experience that good education changes perspectives and behaviors. The overwhelming majority of heterosexuals want to do the right thing at work. They want to be team players and support the company's initiatives to truly value diversity so that they might succeed in attracting and retaining the best and brightest employees and compete effectively in the global marketplace. But until they get the chance to get past their fear of the unknown, they feel as lost as any of us do when we're in a foreign country and don't know the language.
Today, many of those heterosexual executives in companies around the world, are receiving the education they need to proactively support their gay and lesbian colleagues. But their understanding of transgender issues is at least ten years behind. Before they can be expected to do more than begrudgingly fumble through conversations on the topic, they need far more education. Not to understand and accommodate that is a sign of our cultural incompetence.
