Photos Courtesy Equitas Advisory Group

Photos Courtesy Equitas Advisory Group

Just weeks after the death of George Floyd, Susan Harmeling (MBA 1991) and Charles Henderson (MBA 1991) came together for a fireside Zoom chat on diversity, inclusion, and equity in business with the HBS Class of 2010 as part of its 10^th Reunion.

This was not their first time partnering to tackle the thorny issue of inclusion. Harmeling, an ethics and entrepreneurship professor at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, had often hosted Henderson, who has 30 years of experience in executive leadership diversity training, in her courses to discuss his work in South Africa. But tensions and emotions were especially high that day. “So, in addition to sharing our own personal narratives, we created a sense of social safety that put people at ease and made them feel comfortable asking questions on the sensitive topic of race,” says Henderson. “They admitted their ignorance and expressed their desire to make a positive difference in their organizations and their communities."

Seeing the value of sharing personal stories in this conversation—how those stories broke down barriers and led to more honest and open communication—became the foundation for Equitas Advisory Group, an evidence-based consultancy designed to help businesses and organizations reimagine and achieve their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.

The problem with the current diversity-consultancy models, Harmeling and Henderson have found, is that most approaches are little more than window dressing—a few hours’ worth of training made up of PowerPoint presentations, computer quizzes, and surface-level Q&A, with little lasting impact. Instead, Equitas works with the case method, a personal narrative approach, and asks participants, especially executives, to get vulnerable in order to dig into the complexities that can’t be conveyed by a PowerPoint slide. “People tend not to share stories of a personal nature for fear of being attacked in an emotionally destructive way,” observes Harmeling. “But on the flip side, sharing stories in a safe space can elicit empathy—and empathy for each other is what we need at this moment, above all else.”

Their approach was the result of dozens of interviews with CEOs, DE&I trainers, employees, entrepreneurs, military leaders, and colleagues who have used storytelling and narrative to help employees in their organizations work across—and value—their differences to create stronger professional relationships and organizational cultures. The Equitas founders also turned to the findings of Joshua Kalla and David Broockman, political scientists at Yale and UC-Berkeley, respectively, whose own research has found that “individuals are often more persuaded by narratives than by statistical evidence.” Kalla and Brookman wrote of their findings last year in American Political Science Review: “It is more difficult to argue against a story; and individuals often become ‘immersed’ and ‘transported’ into narratives, putting them into a more open, less critical state of mind when they think about stories rather than about arguments. Finally, hearing each other’s stories not only makes us more open to the uniqueness and value of each individual; it also helps us to reduce negative attitudes of the identity group(s) to which the individual belongs.”

But sharing is one thing. Couple that with true vulnerability and you’re on to something important, say Harmeling and Henderson. Harmeling points to a large tech client to illustrate: “They have stumbled on to this type of approach where their senior leaders share personal stories of domestic abuse, alcoholism, things that have gone wrong in their lives or challenges they’ve had,” says Harmeling, who is also founder of the International Case Method Institute, which was founded to enhance business education through the development of case studies. “And that type of vulnerability at the highest level opens the door for the larger workforce to feel comfortable being vulnerable, sharing their own stories, and feeling like they can, to the greatest extent possible, bring their whole self to work.”

Contrast that real-life vulnerability and storytelling with a two-hour, mandatory, computer-based training, say the Equitas founders, and there’s no contest in terms of efficacy. “In fact,” says Harmeling, “we’ve found that some of those kinds programs are counterproductive. People shut off. They say, ‘That's not me. I'm not a racist. I don't have implicit bias,’ and they just walk out. And they don’t open up to more possibility in this area.”

Henderson offers this example: Just after the end of apartheid in South Africa, he walked in to conduct a diversity training session with employees at Standard Bank, the largest bank in South Africa with a conservative culture of white Afrikaner managers. The management team had already been through this with another consultant, and they had walked out on her. “So I made a deal with them. I said, ‘Give me one day, and if you feel like leaving at the end of the day, you leave with my best wishes. But I need one day, and I need you guys to just open up your mind and your heart to what I have to say, and that’s all.’”

The management team stayed, and Henderson managed to break through by asking them to share their personal experiences. “I saw these guys—I mean big, rugby-playing, Afrikaner boys—break down in tears at times, sharing their stories. It was often pain that they had bottled up from past experiences, and it was amazing,” he reflects. “When they were able to do that and allowed themselves to be vulnerable, the bonds that then were able to be created across the racial divide was incredible.”

But every story has a teller and a listener, and both are crucial to be effective. “It’s not just me telling you my story,” says Henderson. “It’s also me taking time to listen to yours, ask you questions, and show a genuine interest.” When this happens, he notes, the systematic work of using evidence-based approaches to increase diversity, equity, and belonging becomes much easier.

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