But the post has 50K impressions and over 180 comments with almost 2k reactions and still going. It’s clear that the original post resonated.

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Image description : White background with black writing. It’s a screenshot of a comment on linkedin and reads “1. Who does this? Are you just making up something that happens never in order to have something to post about? And 2. You created with AI and left the description with the verbiage on the post…

This guy is from Texas, but usually it’s a dude from Florida. But 9 times out of 10 it’s a man from a southern US state.

My issue is less about his lack of understanding of number 2 because he thought he’d “get me” with AI verbiage when, in reality, it’s just accessibility.

The issue for me is his point number 1.

1. “Who does this? Are you just making up something that happens never in order to ahve something to post about?”

He really thought he was doing something here.

And I just keep thinking about how minoritized people, Black women in particular, are treated at work, not believed because "this never happens” “you must be making it up.”

When he commented, I literally honed in on those statements.

• This never happens…

• You’re making it up.

In so many spaces, when someone is minoritized or the survivor of some type of violence, whether it be physical or emotional, the dominant gets defensive and tries this tactic to discredit.

It’s classic.

It’s annoying.

And it’s real.

Especially if you’re a leader or in HR, when these things are brought to our attention, even if it hasn’t happened to us, it’s valid.

People’s lived experiences are valid and do not need to be qualified or validated.

Period the end.

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Researchers and advocates call this the hidden curriculum: the tacit conventions that govern how meetings work, what “being a team player” actually looks like, when silence reads as agreement and when it reads as disengagement.

For most people, the hidden curriculum is mildly annoying, a few embarrassing missteps in their first few months at a job, quickly absorbed. For neurodivergent employees, and for anyone whose upbringing or culture didn’t hand them the same unspoken playbook, it can be the difference between a thriving career and a quietly engineered exit.

The rules aren’t just unwritten.

They’re often unwritable, because the person enforcing them can’t fully articulate what they mean either.

• “Be more of a team player.”

• “Show more executive presence.”

• “Just read the room.”

These phrases feel like feedback.

They function as riddles.

The contradiction paradox

In a dataset I worked through recently (2025), hundreds of firsthand accounts from neurodivergent employees describing performance management experiences, one pattern surfaced more than any other.

I started calling it the contradiction paradox: people being disciplined for opposite behaviors, often by the same manager, sometimes in the same conversation.

• Told they don’t talk enough in meetings, then told they talk too much.

• Told to lean in, then reprimanded for leaning in too far after being told to lean in.

• Called “too present” and “not present enough” about the same meeting, by the same person, with no explanation of what either term meant.

One respondent summarized it simply: “It’s so confusing.”

What makes the contradiction paradox so corrosive is that it isn’t really about behavior at all. It’s a symptom of feedback that was never explicit to begin with. When a norm is never named, a manager can invoke it retroactively, in whichever direction suits the moment.

There’s no fixed target to hit, because the target was never real. It’s vibes, dressed up as a performance standard. And vibes are impossible to satisfy on purpose, which means the employee is set up to fail regardless of what they do.

Implicit norms don’t just create confusion. They create standards that shift shape depending on who’s judging and when, and the people who pay for that shape-shifting are disproportionately those who take instructions literally, who need explicit criteria to succeed, or who never got taught the unspoken script in the first place.

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Three ways to make the implicit explicit

1. Replace trait language with behavior language in feedback.

• “Be more of a team player” is trait language; it describes a personality, not an action.

• Behavior language names the specific, observable thing: “In the Tuesday planning meeting, jump in with a question or an update at least once, even if it’s just to confirm you’re tracking.”

• One is a character judgment an employee can’t act on. The other is an instruction they can follow, and a manager can verify. Any time a piece of feedback could be answered with “what does that look like, specifically?”, it hasn’t been made explicit yet.

2. Write down the norm the first time it matters, not after someone breaks it. Most unwritten rules only get written the moment someone violates them, in a PIP, a write-up, a terse Slack message. That’s backward. If “we expect cameras on for client calls” or “we don’t loop in the VP without a heads-up” is actually a rule, it belongs in onboarding material or a team norms doc, not in a disciplinary conversation six months later. A rule that’s only ever articulated as a punishment isn’t a rule; it’s a trap.

3. Separate “I didn’t like how that felt” from “that didn’t meet the standard.” This is the harder, more honest version of explicitness: sometimes there is no rule, just a manager’s personal discomfort, with directness, with a flat affect, with someone not making small talk.

Naming that difference out loud, even just internally, stops personal preference from being smuggled in as an objective performance issue. If a manager can’t turn a complaint into a specific, teachable, consistently applied expectation, it probably isn’t a legitimate performance criterion; it’s a taste, and tastes shouldn’t end careers.

Applied to the contradiction paradox: an organization that did all three would never produce “too visible / not visible enough” as feedback, because both halves would have needed to survive being turned into an observable behavior first. Most contradictions dissolve the moment you try to write them down as instructions instead of complaints.

Reading list

• Anna Kallschmidt, The Unwritten Rules of Work: Social Class and Neurodivergent Identities

• Kathleen McCarthy, “The Hidden Curriculum: What Neurodivergent Employees Wish We Knew”

• “The Neurodivergent Professional’s Guide to Unwritten Workplace Rules”

• Ludmila Praslova, The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work

• Devon Price, Unmasking Autism

• Job Accommodation Network (JAN)

This piece draws on qualitative research I conducted with neurodivergent employees about performance management, feedback, and the contradiction paradox described above.

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The research says otherwise. The mechanics aren’t the problem. The bias baked into who gets clear, actionable feedback, and who gets vague, personality-based commentary, is the problem. And that bias doesn’t go away because someone read a framework once. It requires ongoing, structural attention.

Two bodies of research make this case with unusual clarity: what happens to people in larger bodies when it comes to promotion, and what happens to women when it comes to the content of the feedback they receive.

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The weight penalty nobody names out loud

Weight discrimination is one of the last forms of workplace bias that still operates almost entirely in the open. Researchers who’ve studied it for decades are blunt about the trend line:

Discrimination based on race and gender in the workplace has fallen over recent decades, but discrimination based on weight has not improved.

The effect shows up specifically in advancement. People with obesity are less likely to be promoted and earn less than people at a normal weight, and this pattern starts before someone is even hired; recruiters are more likely to categorize applicants with obesity as “less suitable” for a role.

One review of the literature put it plainly: People subjected to weight-based discrimination have more difficulty securing promotions or moving into leadership roles, because biased perceptions cast doubt on their competence regardless of their actual skills.

That’s the mechanism worth sitting with. It isn’t that heavier employees are being told “no” outright. It’s that the lens a manager brings into a review, an unexamined assumption about discipline, competence, or “leadership presence,” quietly shapes which employees get coached toward advancement and which get overlooked. The bias doesn’t announce itself. It just changes who gets the kind of feedback that leads somewhere.

And it compounds. Researchers studying this have found that repeated exposure to weight stigma erodes a person’s confidence over time, making them less likely to take on stretch projects, voice their opinions, or pursue advancement, which then gets read by the organization as a lack of ambition, rather than a rational response to years of being underestimated.

Even well-intentioned interventions can backfire: one peer-reviewed study found that workplace wellness programs emphasizing individual responsibility for health actually increased weight-based discrimination in promotion decisions, because they reinforced the idea that body size reflects personal discipline rather than genetics, health conditions, or circumstances.

This is the pattern leaders need coaching to see: bias in feedback rarely shows up as an insult. It shows up as what gets talked about: competence and outcomes for some employees, character and self-management for others.

The “personality tax” women pay in every review cycle

The gender research shows the same mechanism, on an even larger scale, with better data to back it up.

Textio’s analysis of tens of thousands of real performance reviews found that women are most likely to receive low-quality feedback rooted in commentary about their personality rather than their work.

Specifically, women receive 22% more feedback about their personality than men do, and 30% more exaggerated feedback. An earlier version of this same research found something even starker: 88% of high-performing women receive feedback on their personality during reviews, compared with just 12% of high-performing men.

The words themselves diverge by gender in a way that should unsettle any manager who thinks they’re being objective. 56% of women surveyed said they’d been called “unlikeable” in a review, and 78% had been called “emotional,” compared to 16% and 11% of men, respectively.

Men are more often described as intelligent and gifted, while women are more often called abrasive, difficult, or friendly. And critically, this isn’t about actual performance: high-performing women receive exactly as much personality-focused feedback as their lower-performing peers.

Competence doesn’t buy women out of the personality lens. Nothing does, except changing how the feedback-giver operates.

It gets worse before it gets better, because bias here isn’t confined to negative feedback. A well-controlled series of studies, MBA students, working professionals, and managers in the US and UK, evaluating an identical underperforming employee described only as either “Sarah” or “Andrew,” found that participants prioritized kindness significantly more when giving feedback to Sarah than to Andrew, even though there was no significant difference in how much they prioritized candor.

Feedback to women, in other words, gets softened, filtered through a goal of not hurting feelings, in ways feedback to men doesn’t. That sounds benign. It isn’t: vague, hedged, kindness-optimized feedback is feedback that doesn’t tell you what to actually change.

The point people miss: it isn’t just men doing this

Here’s the detail that should reshape how organizations think about “fixing” this with awareness training alone. In that same Sarah/Andrew research, both male and female evaluators showed this same tendency toward extra kindness with the woman’s name, to an equal degree.

This matters enormously for how leaders think about their own culpability. Bias feedback is neither a story about individual bad managers nor a story about men doing something to women.

It’s a story about a shared cultural script rooted in patriarchy: women should be warm, women’s feelings should be protected, criticism of a woman is riskier than criticism of a man, and both men and women absorb it and then unconsciously enact it when they sit down to write a review. A woman manager evaluating a woman report is not automatically exempt from this pattern.

The Textio data backs this up structurally, too: while women are more likely to receive personality-based feedback, men and women are equally likely to give it.

This is precisely why “just hire more diverse managers” or “just tell people to be aware of bias” doesn’t solve the problem on its own. The bias lives in the script, not in any one demographic of feedback-giver. Everyone needs coaching on an ongoing basis because everyone is a carrier.

Why this has to be ongoing coaching, not a one-time training

The cost of getting this wrong is not abstract; it shows up in retention data. Textio’s research found that among employees who receive low-quality feedback, 40% plan to quit their jobs, and high performers who get poor-quality feedback are especially quick to leave, because they have options and no patience for being managed by vibes.

So what actually works?

Not a single workshop.

The research and practice literature converge on a few structural moves:

• Make feedback skills-anchored by design, not by intention. The same Textio research that surfaced the personality bias also found it in hiring: interviewers who explicitly document candidate assessments against job-related skills produce better hires who stay longer, while candidates hired based on likability and gut instinct are a much riskier bet. Structure: a rubric, required categories, explicit prompts to cite outcomes, closes the gap that “just be objective” never will, because bias operates below the level of intention.

• Audit feedback language, not just feedback existence. Organizations that have actually measured this, pulling real review text and coding it for personality versus outcome language, by demographic, are the ones that found the disparities in the first place. You cannot manage what you don’t measure, and “I’m sure our team is fair” is not a measurement.

• Treat bias-awareness as a maintained skill, not a completed course. The Sarah/Andrew effect wasn’t diminished by participants’ stated commitment to fairness or candor; everyone in that study said they wanted to be candid. Good intentions and one-time training don’t overcome an automatic, culturally learned script. That’s the case for recurring, practiced coaching, the same way we don’t teach a manager to run one financial forecast and call them financially literate for life.

• Build in friction at the moment feedback is written, not after the fact. Prompts like “cite a specific outcome or behavior” or “would you write this same sentence about someone of a different gender/body size/age” catch the personality drift in real time, before it becomes the permanent record that shapes someone’s next promotion cycle.

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The throughline

Weight bias and gender bias in feedback look like different problems, but they’re the same mechanism wearing different clothes: an unexamined lens quietly decides whose work gets discussed in terms of outcomes and skills, and whose gets discussed in terms of character and personality. One path leads to promotion. The other leads to a plateau that is later blamed on the employee’s own “readiness.”

The fix isn’t a nicer feedback template. It’s leaders who understand and keep relearning that, because the bias is persistent and largely unconscious, the content of their feedback is where equity is won or lost, long before anyone gets to the tone of delivery.

What to do next

You don’t need a full HR overhaul to start closing this gap. A few concrete moves, in rough order of how fast they’re doable:

This week, as an individual manager:

• Before you write your next review, ask yourself: am I describing what they did and its impact, or am I describing who they are? “Difficult,” “abrasive,” “emotional,” “not a team player” are personality words. “Missed the deadline on X,” “the proposal lacked a cost estimate,” “pushed back on the plan without offering an alternative” are outcome words. If you can’t rewrite a comment into the second category, cut it.

• Run the swap test on anything critical or anything unusually soft: would you write this same sentence, in this same tone, about someone of a different gender, body size, age, or race? If the honest answer is no, that’s the bias talking; rewrite it.

• Check your own feedback for the “kindness tax”: are you hedging, softening, or omitting a hard truth for one employee that you’d deliver plainly to another? Withholding candor isn’t kindness; it’s a quieter way of shortchanging someone’s growth.

This quarter, as a manager of managers or an HR/People lead:

• Pull a sample of recent written reviews and code them, even roughly, for personality language vs. skills/outcome language, broken out by demographic. You don’t need a data science team; the disparities are often apparent in a few dozen reviews.

• Replace open-ended review fields with structured prompts that force specificity: “What outcome did this person drive?” “What skill should they build next, and how?” Structure closes the gap that good intentions don’t.

• Make bias-in-feedback training recurring, not a one-time module tied to onboarding, ideally tied to each review cycle, when the behavior is about to happen, not months before.

Ongoing, as an organization:

• Track feedback quality and promotion rates by demographic (including body size where you can, most orgs don’t, and that’s part of the problem) the same way you’d track pay equity. What gets measured gets managed.

• Build a norm of peer review or calibration for written feedback before it’s delivered, especially for promotion-cycle reviews; a second set of eyes catches personality drift that the original writer can’t see in themselves.

• Revisit any “wellness” or “culture fit” language in your performance or promotion criteria. As the research on weight bias shows, framing that emphasizes individual responsibility or personality fit is often where bias hides in plain sight.

None of this requires waiting for a perfect system. It requires treating equitable feedback as a skill that decays without practice, which means the coaching has to be ongoing, not a box checked once.

Purchase beyond buzzwords

Sources: Textio’s workplace language bias research (2022, 2024, 2025); Jampol, Rattan & Wolf, “A Bias Toward Kindness Goals in Performance Feedback to Women (vs. Men),” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2023); GWU Milken Institute School of Public Health, STOP Obesity Alliance; UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health; Täuber, Mulder & Flint, Frontiers in Psychology (2018).

They are: Professionalism. Culture fit. Executive presence.

None of them have a fixed definition. All three are vague enough to justify almost any decision after the fact, and all three tend to work the same way in practice: they protect people who already resemble the folks in power, and they get used as a cudgel against everyone else, especially people holding more than one minoritized identity at once.

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Three words, one function

Each phrase claims to measure something different.

Professionalism supposedly measures conduct and appearance. Culture fit supposedly measures whether someone will mesh with the team. Executive presence supposedly measures whether someone has the gravitas to lead.

In practice, all three collapse into the same test: does this person remind me, comfortably, of the people who already succeed here?

That’s not a neutral question.

It’s a familiarity test disguised as a competence test. And familiarity is not distributed equally. It flows toward whoever already resembles the group that built the institution, usually white, male, straight, cisgender, nondisabled, and upper-middle-class in background.

For everyone else, these words become moving targets that are nearly impossible to satisfy on the first try, because the target was never actually about the stated criteria.

It was about comfort.

Professionalism: policing the body and the voice

Professionalism claims to be about conduct, but it routinely regulates things that have nothing to do with job performance: hair texture, accent, volume, directness, even how much someone smiles.

• A Black woman’s natural hair gets flagged as “distracting” or “unkempt.”

• A South Asian colleague’s accent gets described as “hard to understand” by people who understand it fine when they concentrate.

• A woman who speaks plainly and without hedging gets called “abrasive,” while a man doing the identical thing gets called “direct” and “no nonsense.”

• A woman in a larger body or who is curvy is told that her outfits aren’t appropriate for work.

The standard flexes depending on who is being measured against it. That inconsistency is the whole tell. A truly objective bar would apply the same way no matter who cleared it.

Culture fit: a closed loop

Culture fit is maybe the most dishonest of the three, because it openly admits what it’s doing while pretending not to. The stated goal is team cohesion. The actual mechanism is usually: does this person feel like someone I’d want to grab a beer with, someone whose references I get, whose humor lands the way I expect it to.

That is a closed loop. It reproduces whoever is already in the room. A hiring panel that is not diverse will, almost by definition, rate “fit” highest in candidates who look and sound like the panel.

Diversity of thought, background, and experience, the things that actually make teams stronger, get filtered out at the exact stage where the company claims to be looking for talent.

For someone with intersecting identities, say a disabled, queer Black woman, culture fit isn’t one hurdle. It’s several overlapping ones, and clearing one doesn’t help with the others. She might code-switch her speech patterns for the racial majority in the room and still get flagged as “not quite fitting” because of her disability accommodations, or her queerness, or both at once. The math doesn’t add up in her favor no matter how much translation work she does.

Executive presence: gravitas by resemblance

Executive presence is supposed to capture whether someone can command a room and inspire confidence. What it actually measures, in most organizations, is proximity to a very specific archetype: tall, deep-voiced, traditionally masculine in bearing, calm to the point of detachment, unbothered by interruption.

Literally, ask people to “picture an executive” and see what they say!

• Women get told to have more executive presence and then get penalized when they display the assertiveness that supposedly constitutes it, because assertiveness in a woman reads differently to the evaluator than assertiveness in a man. Especially if she is Black, Indigenous, or another non-Black woman of color.

• Short people, disabled people that affect posture or movement, people with high-pitched voices, people whose cultural norms favor collaboration over dominance in a meeting, all get read as lacking presence, regardless of the actual quality of their judgment or leadership.

• People who speak quickly are assumed to have more confidence than those of us who take our time, are more intentional with our language, or have a processing delay. We’re perceived as not as smart or confident as someone else.

Executive presence, in other words, is often just a height, speed, and voice pitch measurement wearing a suit.

Contradiction paradox

Each of these standards is hard enough to meet when you’re navigating a single axis of difference. When identities intersect, the standards start contradicting each other.

• A Black woman may be told to be more assertive to build executive presence, then told she is “too aggressive” and lacks the tone for the same room, because the tolerance for assertiveness from her is narrower than it is for others.

• A disabled man of color may modulate his voice and mannerisms to seem more “polished,” only to be told he still doesn’t quite have the presence for a client-facing role, because the accommodation itself reads as a deficit to an evaluator who never examined their own assumptions.

There is no version of these standards that a person with multiple minoritized identities can simply study for and pass. The goalposts move because the goalposts were never really about the stated criteria. They were about resemblance to the evaluator.

What this costs, and who pays it

None of this is free. The constant translation, the code switching, the flattening of natural speech patterns and mannerisms, the vigilance required to preempt every possible reading of “too much” or “not enough,” all of it is unpaid labor that never shows up on a performance review, except as a mysterious absence of “presence” or “fit” when someone finally runs out of capacity to perform it.

Meanwhile, the people who already fit the template pay almost nothing. Their normal is the standard. They get to be tired, blunt, quirky, or inconsistent and have it read as personality rather than a professionalism problem.

Naming it is the first step

None of this means standards should not exist, or that conduct, collaboration, and leadership don’t matter. It means the standards in use right now were not built neutrally, and applying them as if they were is how bias launders itself into “objective” decision-making.

The next time “professionalism,” “culture fit,” or “executive presence” comes up in a hiring debrief or a performance review, the useful question is not whether the candidate or employee meets the bar. It’s who built the bar, and whose comfort it was built around.

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Reading List

• Ella F. Washington, The Necessary Journey Presumed Incompetent (edited by Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs and others)

• Emma Dabiri, Don’t Touch My Hair Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage

• Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, especially the essay “The Uses of Anger”

• Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

• Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman

• Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (the original 1989 essay that coined the term)

• Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought

• Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent

• Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

• Minda Harts, The Memo

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The word is professionalism.

And I want to make the case that it isn’t neutral at all. It’s a smokescreen, a way of dressing up preference as principle, and bias as objectivity. It’s a concept that quietly protects the people who already fit the mold, while being wielded as a weapon against everyone who doesn’t.

Who wrote the rulebook?

Ask yourself: who decided what “professional” hair looks like? Who decided that a Black woman’s natural curls are “unkempt” but a white man’s product-heavy pompadour is “polished”? Who decided that AAV is “unprofessional” but corporate jargon, often just as inscrutable, is the sound of competence? Who decided that raising your voice is “passionate” in one person and “aggressive” or “difficult” in another?

Nobody voted on these standards. They were set, unconsciously and cumulatively, by whoever already held power in a given industry; historically, in most Western workplaces, that has meant white, male, able-bodied, cisgender, and upper-middle-class. Over time, their default mannerisms, aesthetics, and communication styles calcified into “the standard.” Not because they were objectively better, but because they were familiar to the people doing the evaluating.

Once a preference becomes a “standard,” it stops looking like a preference. It starts looking like a fact of nature. That’s the sleight of hand.

The double standard is the whole point

Here’s the tell: the same behavior gets coded completely differently depending on who’s doing it.

• A confident white man in a meeting is “assertive” and “has executive presence.” A confident Black woman doing the same thing is “intimidating” or “has an attitude.”

• A man who doesn’t smile enough is “focused.” A woman who doesn’t smile enough is “cold” and needs to “work on her warmth.”

• A neurodivergent employee who doesn’t do small talk is “awkward” or “not a culture fit.” A well-connected extrovert who does the exact same low-empathy thing in a different register is “just brutally honest, but effective.”

If professionalism were really a fixed, objective bar, it would apply the same way regardless of who cleared it. It doesn’t. That inconsistency isn’t a bug, it’s the mechanism. “Professionalism” flexes to protect people who are already inside the circle of comfort, and tightens around people who aren’t.

The tax only some people pay

For people who already fit the template, who share the race, gender presentation, accent, educational pedigree, and cultural references of whoever built the standard, “professionalism” costs almost nothing. They can show up as themselves. Their normal is the professional norm.

For everyone else, professionalism is a second job. It’s the code-switching before every client call. It’s the flat-ironed hair on interview day. It’s suppressing an accent, softening a laugh, rehearsing how to disagree with a manager without being labeled “not a team player.” It’s a constant, exhausting translation exercise that never shows up on a performance review, except in the negative, when the mask slips and someone gets dinged for being “unprofessional.”

And this tax compounds. A person holding multiple minoritized identities, say, a queer, disabled woman of color, isn’t just navigating one set of unwritten rules. She’s navigating the interaction of several, often contradictory ones, with far less room for error and far less benefit of the doubt when she gets it “wrong.”

Meanwhile, the person at the center of the template can show up ten minutes late, take a two-hour lunch, wear the same rumpled blazer for a decade, or bulldoze a meeting, and it reads as quirky, or confident, or just “how he is.” He has slack in the system that others were never issued.

Professionalism as a gatekeeping tool

This is why “be more professional” so often functions less as feedback and more as a verdict. It’s vague enough to justify almost any judgment after the fact, while sounding like an objective critique rather than what it usually is: discomfort with difference, repackaged as a standard.

It shows up in who gets called “articulate” as if that were a surprise. In who gets asked to tone it down. In who gets passed over for a promotion because they’re “not quite polished enough for client-facing work,” a sentence that means everything and nothing at once. It’s a phrase that rarely needs to justify itself, because the people it protects rarely have to hear it.

What to do with this

None of this means workplace norms are inherently bad, or that no standards should exist. It means we should be honest about where those standards came from, whose comfort they center, and who is being asked to do invisible labor to meet them. The next time “professionalism” gets invoked, in a hiring decision, a dress code, a performance review, it’s worth asking: professional according to whom, and convenient for whom?

Because if the standard only ever seems to burden the same kinds of people, it was never really about competence. It was about comfort, specifically, the comfort of whoever got to write the rules.

Worth noting: not everyone agrees with this framing. Some argue that shared professional norms, regardless of their origin, serve a real function: creating predictability, easing collaboration across strangers, and giving people from any background a clear, learnable path to credibility in institutions they didn’t grow up in. Others worry that dismissing “professionalism” wholesale as bias risks flattening legitimate workplace expectations (reliability, clear communication, accountability) into the same bucket as genuinely biased ones (hair texture, accent, tone policing), and that the two need to be pulled apart rather than discarded together. That’s a live and reasonable debate, and this piece is making the case for one side of it.

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Additional reading material —because I am NO one without who taught me!

• “Eloquent Rage” by Brittney Cooper

• “Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde

• “So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo

• Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars

• “Ain’t I a Woman” by bell hooks

• “Neuroqueer Heresies” by Nick Walker

• “Learning from Neurodivergent Leaders: How to Start, Survive and Thrive in Leadership by Dr. Nancy Doyle

• “Empire of Normality” by Robert Chapman

• “Anti-Ableist Menifesto” by Tiffany Yu

• “Biased” by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt

• “Whistling Vivaldi” by Claude Steele

• “Unbias” by Stacey A. Gordon

• “Neurodiversity for Dummies” by Book by John Marble, Khushboo Chabria & Ranga Jayaraman

Here’s how to make performance reviews more inclusive, ensuring all employees, regardless of background, identity, or personal characteristics, are assessed equitably and fairly and given the opportunity to succeed.

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Some quick tips:

• Be clear, be concise, give examples

• If it’s not actionable, is it even worthy feedback?

• Is the feedback related to the process, deliverable, or job description? No? Then it’s most likely biased feedback.

• Give folks time to process. Some neurodivergent people have delayed processing and therefore aren’t able to process information in the same sitting.

Create clear, objective criteria

One of the most effective ways to reduce bias in performance reviews is to base evaluations on clearly defined, objective criteria. This allows managers to assess employees according to consistent standards, reducing the risk of favoritism or discrimination. The criteria should focus on measurable goals, outcomes, and competencies relevant to the role.

• Example: Instead of saying an employee is a “good communicator,” specify the types of communication, e.g., effective email communication, clarity in presentations, or team collaboration.

• Solution: Collaborate with your team to define key performance indicators (KPIs) and job competencies that reflect what success looks like in a particular role.

Address and mitigate unconscious bias

Unconscious bias, stemming from stereotypes based on gender, race, age, or other factors, can negatively impact performance reviews. For example, research has shown that women and people of color are often rated more harshly than their peers for the same performance.

• Solution: Provide training for managers and review committees on how to recognize and address unconscious bias. This includes reviewing common biases such as affinity bias (favoring people who are like themselves) or confirmation bias (focusing on information that confirms pre-existing beliefs).

• Solution: Encourage managers to rate employees on specific, tangible contributions instead of subjective traits. This ensures that ratings are grounded in performance rather than personal perceptions.

Foster a feedback-rich culture

For performance reviews to be inclusive, they must be part of an ongoing feedback loop rather than a one-time event. Creating a culture of feedback helps employees at all levels feel supported and valued, ensuring that their contributions are recognized throughout the year, not just during review season.

• Solution: Encourage managers to provide regular, informal feedback. This can include check-ins, project debriefs, and peer-to-peer feedback.

• Solution: Use 360-degree feedback to gather insights from multiple sources, peers, direct reports, and managers, to provide a more holistic view of the employee’s performance.

Ensure equity in access to resources and opportunities

Inclusivity in performance reviews isn’t just about how employees are evaluated, but also about how they are given opportunities to perform and succeed. An employee’s success in meeting their performance goals is often dependent on the resources and opportunities provided to them, be it training, mentorship, or access to high-visibility projects.

• Solution: Make sure that all employees, regardless of background, have access to the same professional development opportunities. This includes offering mentorship, leadership training, and projects that allow employees to showcase their strengths.

• Solution: Actively work to identify and remove barriers that might limit an employee’s ability to perform at their best. For example, ensure that flexible working arrangements or additional support are available to employees with caregiving responsibilities or disabilities.

Recognize varying contributions

People from different backgrounds often contribute in unique ways, and it’s important to ensure that these contributions are recognized. For example, an employee from a culturally diverse background may bring a new perspective that enriches team discussions, or an employee with a disability may bring unique problem-solving skills.

• Solution: Ensure that the review process acknowledges and values diverse contributions and perspectives. This could involve recognizing the ways employees contribute to team culture, innovation, and collaboration, not just their ability to hit numbers or meet deadlines.

• Solution: Be mindful that people from underrepresented groups may feel they need to prove themselves more than others. Recognize their contributions in a way that feels inclusive and celebratory.

Promote self-reflection and employee involvement

Inclusive performance reviews should be a two-way conversation, where employees have the opportunity to reflect on their own work, goals, and challenges. This not only empowers employees but also gives them a voice in the review process, making it feel more inclusive and equitable.

• Solution: Ask employees to complete a self-assessment as part of the performance review process. This gives them the opportunity to highlight their achievements, voice concerns, and identify areas for improvement.

• Solution: During the review conversation, ensure there’s space for employees to ask questions, provide their input, and discuss career aspirations. This fosters a sense of agency and inclusion in the process.

Ensure cultural competency in managers

Managers play a pivotal role in creating an inclusive performance review process. To be effective, they need education and coaching to understand and navigate cultural differences and avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to evaluating employees.

• Solution: Provide cultural competency training to managers. This helps them understand how cultural norms influence behavior and communication styles, so they can assess employees’ performance fairly, regardless of background.

• Solution: Encourage managers to tailor their feedback based on the individual. For example, some employees may prefer direct, concise feedback, while others may appreciate more detailed guidance and support.

Encourage diverse review panels

In many organizations, performance reviews are conducted by a single manager or a small group of decision-makers. This can sometimes lead to biased evaluations, especially if the decision-makers share similar backgrounds or viewpoints.

• Solution: Whenever possible, involve a diverse group of people in the review process. A team of reviewers from varied backgrounds and perspectives can provide a more balanced, objective evaluation of an employee’s performance.

• Solution: If only one person is conducting reviews, encourage them to seek feedback from peers or colleagues who may have different perspectives on the employee’s work.

Offer actionable development plans

An inclusive performance review goes beyond identifying weaknesses or areas for improvement—it should also include concrete steps for professional growth. Providing actionable, individualized development plans ensures employees have the support they need to succeed and advance.

• Solution: Collaborate with employees to create tailored development plans that align with their career goals and aspirations. These plans should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

• Solution: Make resources available to help employees meet these goals, whether through training programs, mentorship, or access to new projects.

Monitor and evaluate the process

Inclusivity isn’t a one-time effort; it requires ongoing evaluation and improvement. Regularly assess your performance review process to ensure it meets the needs of all employees and helps foster an inclusive workplace.

• Solution: Collect feedback from employees about their experience with the performance review process. Use surveys, focus groups, or one-on-one conversations to understand how employees perceive the fairness and inclusivity of the system.

• Solution: Analyze performance data to identify patterns that could indicate bias, such as gender or racial disparities in ratings, and take corrective actions when necessary.

Conclusion

Inclusive performance reviews are essential to creating a fair, equitable, and supportive workplace. By reducing bias, recognizing diverse contributions, and providing meaningful opportunities for growth, you can ensure that all employees have the tools they need to thrive. An inclusive review process not only enhances employee morale but also drives organizational success by fostering a culture where everyone feels valued and empowered to reach their potential.

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When I sat down with my psychiatrist she pointedly asked me several questions and then said I really would like to give you the adult assessment are you open to it and I said yes and I chuckled through most of the questions because in her words, “there are many red flags” which I knew but I tried to be open and honest as possible including the anecdote that I would receive on my report cards about talking too much and being a distraction to others.

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Because, fun fact, one of the questions is: Do you distract others while they are working? I answered most of the questions with an enthusiastic always or very frequently because that's my reality. So now I'm sitting here realizing I need to relearn who I am in so many ways.

• The relationship to my body sans uterus.

• My brain functioning, my executive functioning, my overthinking, my deep desire to have 15 different things going on at once but always feel like I'm failing at everything.

• My deep need for routine and calmness that is associated with predictability.

• The cPTSD that came from being misunderstood and undiagnosed for most of my life.

This new relationship to myself is unfolding in real time. My next appointment is to discuss what course of action would be best to manage, treat, and navigate. My assumption is I will speak with a psychiatrist as well as seek some sort of medication support because there is availability for that, and if I can increase my capacity to be human better, I think I owe it to myself to try.

My next appointment isn't for a few days to discuss treatment plans on how to navigate, but feel free to follow along!

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If you take nothing else away from this article, let it be this: questions are not challenges.

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The purpose of questions

At their core, questions are designed to elicit information, clarify doubts, and foster understanding. They play a crucial role in ensuring that everyone involved is on the same page. Instead of viewing questions as challenges to one’s knowledge or authority, we should see them as opportunities for growth and learning.

Questions as a path to understanding

When we encounter differing opinions or unclear statements, asking questions helps illuminate the reasoning behind those views. For instance, instead of responding to a controversial statement with disagreement, asking, “What led you to that conclusion?” invites the speaker to elaborate. This approach not only clarifies their position but also opens a pathway for constructive discussion.

Avoiding defensive reactions

Often, the phrasing of a question can determine whether it is perceived as confrontational or inquisitive. Questions like, “Why did you choose that approach?” may come off as critical, whereas a more open-ended version, such as “Can you share your thought process on that?” encourages dialogue without defensiveness. Being mindful of our wording helps create an environment where people feel safe to express their thoughts.

The importance of tone and body language

This is a tricky one, as some neurodivergent people struggle with both “presenting” the “appropriate” body language or “appropriate” tone in conversation. I have been told my tone is sometimes off, and that’s true. So, it’s important for my manager to understand that my asking for clarification isn’t me trying to be difficult. I’m seeking help.

In addition to wording, tone and body language play vital roles in how questions are received. A curious tone paired with open body language signals a desire for understanding rather than confrontation. For instance, leaning in slightly and maintaining eye contact can demonstrate engagement and interest, while a closed posture might suggest defensiveness or judgment.

Cultivating a culture of inquiry & curiosity

In teams and organizations, fostering a culture of inquiry can enhance collaboration and innovation. When Pleaders model the practice of asking questions for clarification, they encourage team members to do the same. This not only promotes open communication but also minimizes conflicts that may arise from assumptions or misinterpretations.

Active Listening: The Key to Effective Clarification

Effective questioning goes hand in hand with active listening. When we ask a question, it’s essential to listen attentively to the response. This means resisting the urge to interrupt or formulate a rebuttal while the other person speaks. By showing that we value their input, we create a space where clarification is welcomed and appreciated.

Conclusion

In conclusion, questions are invaluable tools for clarification, not arguments. By approaching conversations with the intent to understand rather than to challenge, we can enhance our communication skills and build stronger relationships. The next time you find yourself in a discussion, remember that asking the right questions can pave the way for clarity, connection, and constructive dialogue. Embracing this mindset not only enriches our interactions but also fosters an environment where learning and collaboration thrive.

People leader tools:

• Use tools to proactively learn your team and their communication preferences.

• Do some self-work on how you deal with questions.

• Get curious about what’s being asked of you rather than getting defensive if you are asked for clarification.

• Deeply remember that a question is not a challenge.

• Try a new leadership style. Meet folks where they are and try new things.

• Educate yourself on neurodiverse communication tools to create a neuroinclusive work environment.

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• Voice-to-text

• Curb cuts

• Elevators

• Precut vegetables

• Meal kits

• Delivery apps and services

• Flexible and remote work

• Virtual doctor visits

• Closed captions

For most nondisabled, non-chronically ill, and neurotypical people, these are conveniences. A little extra ease. Something that saves time or effort on a day when things are already busy enough.

For disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent people, these same things are often the reason they can participate at all. Not a nice extra. A requirement.

That gap in perception is worth sitting with, because it explains a lot about why accessibility keeps getting treated as optional in workplaces, products, and public life.

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Why this gap exists

Most people build their understanding of “necessary” versus “nice to have” from their own experience. If something isn’t essential for you, it’s easy to assume it isn’t essential for anyone.

Curb cuts are a good example. They were fought for and built for wheelchair users. Now they’re used by parents with strollers, travelers with rolling luggage, delivery workers with hand trucks, and pretty much everyone at some point. The people who benefit most broadly today are rarely the people the accommodation was designed for.

The same pattern shows up everywhere on that list:

Closed captions were built for Deaf and hard of hearing viewers. Now they’re used in loud gyms, quiet offices, and by anyone half paying attention to a video.

Voice-to-text was built for people with mobility or dexterity limitations. Now it’s how a lot of people write texts while driving or cooking.

Flexible and remote work was fought for by disabled and chronically ill people for years before the pandemic made it mainstream. It was framed as unreasonable and hard to manage right up until millions of nondisabled people needed it too. Then it became normal almost overnight.

This is the pattern. Something gets dismissed as an unnecessary ask when disabled people request it. Then it becomes standard practice once nondisabled people benefit from it too.

The cost of not noticing this

When accessibility is treated as a bonus feature instead of basic infrastructure, a few things happen.

It gets cut first when budgets are tight. It gets added last, if at all, in product development. It gets framed as a favor rather than a right, which means disabled people are put in the position of justifying needs that shouldn’t require justification in the first place.

It also means the burden of proof falls on the person asking. Someone requesting a remote work arrangement, an accessible format, or extra time has to explain and often defend a need that a nondisabled coworker could get simply by preferring it.

That double standard is exhausting, and it’s avoidable.

What this looks like in practice

None of this requires a massive overhaul. It requires a shift in how we categorize requests.

When someone asks for something that seems like a “nice to have,” it’s worth asking a different question: nice to have for whom? If the answer is “for me, this would be optional, but for someone else this might be the only way they can participate,” that changes how the request should be treated.

Organizations that get this right build accessibility into the default rather than treating it as a special accommodation process. Captions are on by default, not something you have to request. Documents are shared in accessible formats from the start, not retrofitted after a complaint. Remote and flexible options exist as a standard part of how work gets done, not an exception granted case by case.

The goal isn’t to treat every accommodation request as identical. It’s to stop assuming that if something isn’t necessary for you, it isn’t necessary for anyone.

Three things you can do this week

1. Audit one thing you own or manage, whether that’s a website, an event, a hiring process, or a meeting format, and ask who it quietly excludes.

2. When someone requests something that looks like a convenience, treat it as a legitimate need rather than a preference to be negotiated down.

3. If you want to go deeper on how organizations move from performative inclusion language to real structural change, my book Beyond Buzzwords covers exactly that. It’s written for people who are tired of surface level diversity talk and want to understand what actually shifts culture and access.

The bigger point

Accessibility isn’t about doing something extra for a few people. It’s about designing a world that doesn’t require some people to fight for basic participation while others get it by default.

The next time something feels like a small convenience to you, it’s worth asking who it might be essential for. That question alone can change how you build, hire, design, and lead.

Pick up "Beyond Buzzwords"

So, when my mentor sent me an article on Inside Higher Ed: “Beyond Belonging: Do Students Feel They Matter On Campus?” something clicked.

The course I teach is about connection over content. The connection is to a professor who is invested in their students’ growth, learning, and development, not just in them learning and remembering concepts.

I have taught those content-heavy classes for general education requirements as well as degree requirements, and for me, the connection is just as important, but that is not always what students experience from faculty and staff.

And I made space for both the theoretical, practical, and transformational. But the goal wasn’t always “you have to remember this,” but rather, how do I make this applicable so you want to remember it and think of me when you notice it happening?

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I've been in higher education for over 20 years, and I've seen the rise of belonging initiatives on campus and first-eight-week programs become so important for retaining students, but now in a “post-COVID” (we’re not post-COVID, but that’s how people talk!) where students can take classes online, the connection piece almost matters as much as the content.

In housing, residential life, and student affairs, we were taught belonging as the pinnacle of success for our students, but since 2020, have we been able to find our footing again?

Between the United States government devaluing education in many ways and the abrupt dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in offices, are we seeing a decline in students' sense of connection to their campuses?

This article talks about the survey that was done, and students don't feel like they matter on their campus, which, to me, is caused by burnout on all fronts. Faculty and staff are highly devalued, underpaid, and overworked. The landscape of creating a culture of care doesn't exist the same way it used to.

Does this mean higher education needs a reboot?

To be honest, I'm not even sure what that would look like, but I do know that my students remark that the class they have to take on how to be a student is quite impactful because they feel like they have someone on campus who cares.

So, maybe higher education doesn't need an entire reboot, but maybe the first-year experience class needs to be mandatory across the board again

Another piece of the puzzle is that with more than 53% of Gen Z identifying under the neurodivergent umbrella, how do we support executive functioning, managing a full course load, and creating those connections when higher education simply does not look how it did 20 years ago?

I truly don't have the answers, but I am thinking about how we support student belonging in a world that is oversaturated with points of connection and yet for some isolation is so much deeper.

Only time will tell what impact the pandemic had/has on socialization and development, because remote learning has always existed; however, being a digital native, as Gen Z and Alpha Gen are, has not. Will need people to examine child development through that perspective.

I'm excited to see where research goes in the coming years.

Thanks for reading my musings!

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Spark for the piece:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/college-experience/2026/06/18/beyond-belonging-do-students-feel-they-matter

I find a jacket that I like, and I start to unbutton the buttons, and a young sales associate comes nearby and remarks, loudly and confidently,

“OMG EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE A BESTIE LIKE HER! She’s holding your coffee, and stuff, and omg you should always shop with your bestie.”

I look her dead in the face and say, “Yeah, my partner is wonderful.”

Rather than taking the L, the sales associate continues, “OMG, I shouldn’t have assumed because I’ve done that before and I was so wrong.”

Bruh, you just did it again and STOP DIGGING DEEPER.

It’s 2026.

It’s Pride.

If you want to say something, just say, “How nice of you to hold their stuff while you look around.”

Don’t make assumptions that two women out together are just best friends.

And then when you acknowledge you misspoke, don’t double down and say you were wrong before and now you’re trying to not assume BECAUSE YOU LITERALLY JUST DID AGAIN.

I didn’t go into a deep, long conversation because honestly, I don’t like being approached in a store; I’m fine.

I’m clearly wearing the brand, and I’m good.

But sheesh.

It’s Pride.

Stop assuming folks’ relationship to each other. Period.

Buy a copy of my ebook. It's Pride

And it’s almost my birthday HAHAHAHA.

Inclusive leadership demands more than good intentions. It requires stepping outside of comfort zones, challenging norms, disrupting systems, and being willing to get it wrong, and then doing the hard work to make it right.

It’s not for the faint of heart. In a time when diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and belonging efforts are under increased scrutiny, the most impactful leaders are those who lead with integrity and bravery.

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Here’s what that looks like:

The courage to be disliked

Being an inclusive leader means making decisions that won’t please everyone. Holding people accountable, setting boundaries around harmful behavior, or pushing for systemic change will almost always result in discomfort; sometimes even resentment.

Inclusive leaders aren’t in it for popularity. They’re in it to build equity and safety for everyone. That means staying grounded in values, even when others push back. The courage to be disliked is the courage to center what’s right over what’s easy.

The courage to be held accountable

No one gets it perfect, not even the most well-meaning leader. Inclusive leadership means inviting feedback, acknowledging missteps, and embracing accountability as a tool for growth, not punishment.

This is a radical shift from traditional leadership models that equate accountability with weakness. In inclusive spaces, accountability is a marker of trust. It says, “I’m willing to listen. I’m willing to learn. And I care enough to do better.”

Intent and impact are huge parts of this! We need to be willing to own our impact.

The courage to hear feedback

Hearing hard truths, especially about ourselves, isn’t easy. But inclusive leaders seek out feedback, particularly from those most impacted by inequity. They don’t just listen to the loudest voices in the room; they make space for the quiet ones too.

It takes courage to confront the gap between our intentions and our impact. But that’s exactly where real change happens: in the discomfort, in the reflection, and in the decision to do better next time.

The courage to make a change

Inclusion work often reveals cracks in the foundation: outdated systems, inequitable practices, inaccessible environments. Inclusive leaders don’t shy away from fixing what’s broken. They roll up their sleeves and get to work.

And that’s hard, because change is slow, messy, and often thankless. But inclusive leaders know that progress is built through consistent action, not performative gestures. They focus on impact, not optics.

The courage to go against the grain

Status quo systems were not built with equity in mind. Inclusive leadership means challenging those systems, sometimes in the face of deep resistance.

Whether it’s questioning biased hiring practices, dismantling exclusive traditions, or advocating for structural accessibility, inclusive leaders go first. They are willing to take the heat, stand alone, or push back when everyone else stays silent.

Final thoughts

Inclusive leadership isn’t performative. It’s not a checklist or a title. It’s a daily choice, one that requires vulnerability, self-awareness, and above all, courage.

Courage to be uncomfortable.

Courage to evolve.

Courage to lead with both head and heart.

Inclusion isn’t the easy path, but it’s the necessary one. And the leaders who choose it are the ones shaping the future of work for the better.

Grab your copy of beyond buzzwords

Let me be direct: intent does not outweigh impact. Dr. Tiffany Jana of TMI Consulting stated in a 2020 interview that “intent is not related to impact,” and that framing is critically important.

While intent and impact are connected, intent is never more important, and the two frequently diverge in ways that cause real harm. We may want to assume positive intent or goodwill in most people (Jana & Baran, 2020), and we may want to believe that those around us are not acting from a place of bigotry. The assumption in most interpersonal relationships is that we mean no harm.

Yet, as a result of our socialization and conditioning, we regularly cause harm through casual oppression, microaggressions, subtle acts of exclusion, or even overt discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes.

Well-intentioned people can be good people and still inflict damage.

As leaders, educators, and supervisors, we may not be deliberately trying to harm our relationships, but our individual conditioning means that harm can and does occur regardless of our motivations.

Consider my own experience: as a white woman, I was raised to believe that colorblindness was the appropriate way to exist alongside Black, Indigenous, and other non-Black folks of color. As I matured, this belief caused harm to Black people in my life, and as I began reckoning with my own racial identity, I came to understand that colorblindness dehumanizes and invalidates lived experience.

My intention, claiming I “did not see color,” felt positive to me.

My impact was harmful. I used colorblind ideology believing it was a bridge of connection, but what I was too ignorant, conditioned, or biased to recognize was that it is, in fact, an act of erasure. Colorblindness is a construct of whiteness, a politically convenient posture that sends a devastating message to BIPOC individuals: you are invisible. This mirrors the framework Jana & Baran (2020) describe in their examination of intent versus impact.

When a white person declares themselves colorblind, the stated intent is often to signal that they “don’t care about race,” that they simply care about people. But the message actually received is that your existence as a Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, or multiracial person does not matter, because it implies: I do not see you or your experience. The hidden communication is far more damaging than the intent, which is typically to express comfort or solidarity (Jana & Baran, 2020). The intention is, in most cases, positive. The impact is profoundly negative.

Another illustration of this dynamic is the way workplaces and educational institutions have treated Christmas as the default lens through which all December holidays are viewed. Other winter holidays are frequently acknowledged as an afterthought, mentioned briefly to signal inclusion while Christmas remains centered. This is Christian hegemony, and in the United States, we rarely examine or interrogate it because it has been so thoroughly normalized, particularly in schools and professional settings. We believe we are being thoughtful by naming alternatives, but the structure itself still marginalizes and excludes, not through malice, but through assumption.

This is precisely why awareness of the gap between intent and impact matters. The intention may be genuine, but the impact carries more weight. If we exclude colleagues, students, or peers, even unintentionally, we still cause harm.

In workplaces and educational settings, most individuals are not seeking to do damage. But absence of harmful intent is not the same as absence of harm.

Awareness is not optional; it is the foundation of accountability.

Liberatory Consciousness

Self-Reflection

1. Who raised me?

2. What messages did I receive about macrosystems — race, class, gender, sex, sexuality, religion, and so forth?

3. What biases do I hold? Be honest.

4. How did my context or location shape my upbringing and worldview?

5. What further questions do I have? What requires deeper examination or clarification?

This piece breaks down what socioeconomic diversity actually means, why it matters for your organization, and, most importantly, what you can do about it starting now.

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What Is socioeconomic diversity?

Socioeconomic diversity encompasses individuals from varied backgrounds in education level, income, family heritage, and access to resources. It’s not just about how much money someone makes today; it’s about the circumstances they grew up in, the opportunities they had (or didn’t have) access to, and how those realities continue to shape their experience in professional spaces.

In the workplace, this diversity brings a multitude of lived experiences that inform fresh perspectives and foster innovation. A workforce that reflects different SES backgrounds harnesses richer insights and more grounded solutions, because the people doing the work have actually lived across a broader spectrum of the world you’re trying to serve.

The risks of limited socioeconomic diversity

When organizations fail to cultivate SES diversity, they pay a real price, in culture, creativity, and competitive advantage.

1. Lack of inclusivity: Homogeneity breeds disengagement. Employees from lower-SES backgrounds may feel unseen, unheard, and undervalued. When the environment doesn’t reflect their experience, they disengage and eventually leave.

2. Narrow perspective: Without SES diversity, companies miss critical insights into underserved or marginalized customer groups, limiting their market reach. You can’t design for people whose lives you’ve never tried to understand.

3. Groupthink: Hiring only from similar socioeconomic circles fosters uniform thinking, leading to missed opportunities and skewed decision-making. When everyone at the table has roughly the same background, the blind spots are enormous.

4. Inequitable advancement: Without intentional systems, advancement tends to favor those who already know how to navigate elite professional cultures, leaving qualified people from lower-SES backgrounds stalled, overlooked, or forced out.

The key benefits of getting this right

The case for SES inclusion isn’t just moral, it’s strategic.

• Enhanced innovation & problem-solving: Diverse SES perspectives spark a broader range of creative ideas and strategic approaches. When your team has experienced life across different economic realities, you get solutions that actually work for more people.

• Improved fairness & equity: Equal opportunity fuels morale and drives performance when every team member sees a genuine chance to succeed. Equity isn’t just the right thing; it’s the productive thing.

• Broader empathy & cultural insight: Diverse backgrounds cultivate empathy toward customers and colleagues, enriching communication and understanding across your organization and beyond.

Debunking common myths

Bias about SES is real, and it shows up in hiring rooms, performance reviews, and leadership pipelines. Let’s name a few myths that need retiring:

• “Lower-SES hires aren’t committed or leadership-oriented.” SES doesn’t determine work ethic or leadership potential. Ambition transcends background. Full stop.

• “They lack education or intelligence.” Education comes in many forms, formal and informal. SES doesn’t equal ability or intellect. Some of the most resourceful, resilient, and creative thinkers have navigated systems that were never designed with them in mind.

• “They’re all from certain racial or ethnic groups.” Socioeconomic status spans across racial and ethnic identities. Diversity extends beyond any single dimension, and conflating SES with race flattens both.

How to foster socioeconomic inclusion

Here’s where organizations can take meaningful action:

• Masked recruitment: Remove names, schools, addresses, and other SES-related details during initial screening

• Equitable hiring practices: Target outreach to underrepresented neighborhoods, community colleges, and diverse networks

• Mentorship & sponsorship: Pair employees from lower-SES backgrounds with senior mentors to guide career development

• SES awareness training: Educate teams on income, education, and cultural bias and its impact on workplace dynamics

• Development opportunities: Offer equal access to learning, travel, conferences, and leadership training across all SES levels

• Inclusive policies & benefits: Provide sliding-scale tuition reimbursement, commuter subsidies, and childcare support

Leadership & culture: The foundation

None of the above sticks without leadership that means it.

• Executive advocacy: Leaders must champion SES inclusion publicly and integrate it into DEI goals. If it’s not on the agenda, it won’t happen.

• Open conversations: Encourage discussions about economic barriers and lived experience to build awareness. Create spaces where people can share without fear of judgment or tokenization.

• Measure & adjust: Track metrics like SES representation in leadership, promotional rates, and employee feedback. Take action based on what the data reveals. What gets measured gets managed.

Getting started: Three first steps

If you’re not sure where to begin, start here:

1. Launch a socioeconomic awareness workshop for hiring managers and leaders, because you can’t fix what you haven’t examined.

2. Pilot a mentorship program for employees from diverse SES backgrounds, because access to guidance is one of the most powerful equalizers.

3. Audit your current policies to identify and remove socioeconomic barriers, because even well-intentioned systems can perpetuate inequity.

Why this matters

Socioeconomic diversity isn’t simply a fairness initiative; it’s vital for innovation, workplace culture, and market reach.

Innovation gets a boost when diverse problem-solving leads to better products and services. Employee retention improves when inclusive environments drive higher engagement and loyalty. New market opportunities open when SES-diverse teams are better positioned to understand and serve a wider customer base.

Companies that intentionally create equitable systems and inclusive mindsets don’t just do right by their employees; they position themselves for smarter, more empathetic success.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to prioritize socioeconomic diversity. It’s whether you can afford not to.

Inspired by Easy Llama’s “Socioeconomic Diversity in the Workplace.”

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To set the stage, he is a guy who is pretty excited that he understands his white male privilege, and, to be fair, for the most part, he is much further along than most white, cishet dudes.

So we’re talking about an issue he’s having, and he turns the conversation to “but I didn’t hire the person.”

“So what? Most people don’t hire the people that work for them.” I replied.

“Well, I like to hire people from my school, my degree program, ya know, the people who have the same mindset as me. Ya know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do. And you just named affinity bias.”

Crickets.

“That’s how you came to have a team that all thinks and looks like you…”

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The issue with bias is that it creeps up in so many ways, especially when we aren’t aware of it, or aren’t thinking about it, or are simply making a hiring decision.

When we see a resume of someone who is from the same place, has the same degree, or we know graduated from the same place, we favor them without any other information.

Affinity bias.

I didn’t scold; I just simply let him know that leaning into affinity bias is against everything I educate on, and what I learned in that moment is that when we’re focused on the BIG issues

the macro injustices

we miss the small day-to-day ways that oppression, bias, and injustice creep in.

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It’s why I wrote beyond buzzwords. To help folks figure out how to crush bias in the small moments.

Grab your copy here

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I was at dinner with some people in 2024.

Casual dinner with folks I’ve known since I was born.

This guy, the boyfriend of someone I’ve known forever, and my first one-on-one with him, starts talking to me, a lesbian, and 2 gay men about how “the estrogen in water from birth control are turning frogs gay.”

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I, an out queer person for decades, who also happens to have a GD PhD looked this guy dead in the face and said, “What is your source for this information? Did you read the actual article?” Knowing full well he didn’t.

He looked back, “I heard it somewhere. Probably a podcast.”

In the dimly lit room, I glared at him. “You know that because you heard it on a podcast doesn’t make it true, right?” I continued, “I’d love to know where you got the original material; do you mind sending it to me later so I can read it?” (he never did!)

He smiled and said, “well, it is true. And sure, I’ll see if I can find it.”

I went in on how I literally work at an engineering firm and that filtration systems not “filtering out estrogen from water wouldn’t make frogs gay.”

His claim was proposterous. And was rooted in two things:

• birth control is bad

• being gay is a social engineering project

Turns out, he did hear this falsehood on a podcast, but I, a PhD, went and fact-checked him, multiple times ¨̮ . And now, give this example in every single class I teach that covers information literacy and social media.

Here are my issues:

• People listen to podcasts as if the person on them is an expert, even if they have NO knowledge, research, or lived experience to back them up.

• Saying “research says” doesn’t make it true.

The talking head on the podcast, who talked about the original study, read the study headline or heard it somewhere else and parroted it to his listeners. Note: Alex Jones, the podcaster, is deeply uncredible.

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Insert Robby Hoffman a few weeks ago. The comedian was doing the rounds on podcasts, and lemme just say, the more she says, the more I dislike her. Her comedic timing is great, but YIKES.

She, along with the host of “Call Me Daddy,” made light of celiac disease, which is deeply harmful. Making fun of a disabling disease that can take years to diagnose and makes people incredibly sick is gross and ableist. Side quest: it continues to demonstrate how much work we have to do on people's understanding of chronic illness as a disability, which is part of my work!

These are just TWO of I don’t know how many examples of how false information gets spread.

They both teach us, though, that we have an opportunity.

At the dinner table.

In a meeting.

During an interview.

To correct misinformation and even inquire for more information or to ask for more information to better understand someone’s position.

And it doesn’t need to be combative.

Or even a fully formed argument.

Simply asking where they read, heard, or got the information and then fact-checking for yourself.

Want more? You can get a copy of my book “Beyond Buzzwords” at the intro price still!

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Sensory sensitivities can affect people in a variety of ways. For some, a crowded space filled with noise and bright lights can feel overwhelming or even cause distress. Others may have specific needs like access to a quiet space for nursing or pumping.

By considering these factors in your event planning, you not only ensure a more inclusive environment but also enhance the experience for all attendees.

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Creating sensory-friendly spaces

Sensory sensitivities are diverse, and what works for one individual might not work for another. A critical aspect of inclusive event planning is providing a variety of spaces to accommodate different sensory needs.

One such space is a quiet room or sensory-friendly area. These areas should be secluded from the main event, with minimal stimuli such as soft lighting, calming colors, and noise-reducing elements like carpeting or soundproofing. The idea is to give individuals a place to retreat when they feel overwhelmed, whether due to sensory overload or the need for a break from the hustle and bustle.

In these spaces, you can also provide sensory toys like fidget spinners, stress balls, or textured blankets, which can help attendees manage sensory overload or anxiety. These tactile tools give people the chance to self-regulate their responses to sensory stimuli, whether they’re children or adults.

Providing information ahead of time

Many individuals with sensory or other needs will benefit from access to event details in advance. This can include information about the event layout, where to find quiet spaces, where the nursing or pumping stations are located, and any additional resources available. Consider making this information available on your event website or via email in advance of the event, ensuring people have the tools they need to plan and feel comfortable.

If possible, offering a sensory-friendly itinerary that breaks down the event’s schedule and highlights times when quieter spaces might be less crowded or less intense could also be useful for those planning their day.

Use of sensory-friendly lighting and sound

Bright lights, flashing colors, and loud noises can be particularly difficult for people with sensory sensitivities, including those on the autism spectrum or individuals with sensory processing disorders.

Consider using soft, ambient lighting instead of harsh fluorescents or strobe effects. Avoiding flashing lights or limiting their use to certain areas can also help ensure your event remains comfortable for those with heightened light sensitivity.

When it comes to sound, it’s important to control the volume and consider noise-canceling features. If you need loudspeakers, provide quieter alternatives, such as headphones or personal amplification systems, for people who are sensitive to sound. A calm, controlled auditory environment can make a huge difference for attendees who experience sensory overload.

Fidget toys and other sensory tools

Offering sensory toys such as fidget spinners, squishy toys, stress balls, and texture-rich objects can be beneficial for individuals who need to remain calm and focused during the event. These items allow people to redirect their nervous energy and can also be a great way for children to engage during long sessions or talks. These sensory tools are especially useful for attendees with ADHD, anxiety, or autism, helping them manage their emotions and stay engaged without disrupting the flow of the event.

It’s a small gesture that can go a long way in helping people manage their sensory needs, especially in long or intense events like conferences or workshops.

One way I did this was to set up a customization station and gave everyone the information ahead of time. When folks came into the event, the table was there, and they got to choose what they needed to enhance their experience.

Clearly marked accessibility features

For any inclusive event, ensuring clear signage and easy access to key facilities is crucial. Mark your quiet rooms, sensory stations, and nursing areas clearly, and provide the same level of visibility for all accessibility options, such as ramps, elevators, and restrooms. It’s also helpful to have event staff or volunteers trained to recognize and address the needs of individuals with sensory challenges, so they can direct attendees to appropriate spaces without delay.

Inclusive food and beverage options

While not directly related to sensory needs, inclusive event planning should also consider dietary restrictions and food sensitivities. Offering a range of food options that cater to allergies, vegan or vegetarian diets, or other dietary needs ensures that everyone can feel included and comfortable. For individuals with sensory needs, be mindful of strong odors or overwhelming smells in food preparation areas that might be difficult for some attendees to tolerate.

Accessibility

By prioritizing accessibility, organizers create an inclusive environment that fosters diversity, encourages equal opportunities, and promotes a sense of belonging for everyone. Accessible features, such as wheelchair ramps, sign language interpreters, and materials in braille, not only comply with legal requirements but also reflect a commitment to social responsibility and respect for all attendees. When events are accessible, they help break down barriers, enhance engagement, and ultimately contribute to a more equitable society.

Pumping stations for nursing parents

Inclusive event planning should also prioritize parents, particularly those who are nursing or need to pump. A designated pumping station or nursing room should be included in your event layout. These stations should be private, clean, and equipped with comfortable seating, outlets for pumps, and perhaps a few extra amenities like bottled water, sanitary wipes, or even a refrigerator for storing milk.

This simple addition ensures that nursing parents feel supported and able to participate fully in the event without needing to step away or feel isolated. It is a key part of supporting inclusivity for caregivers and parents.

Restrooms

Provide participants with information about where the gender- and gender-neutral restrooms are without anyone needing to ask. Include the bathrooms in the pre-event email so folks know where they can find them.

Conclusion

Inclusive event planning is about making sure that all attendees, regardless of their sensory, physical, or emotional needs, can fully engage in the experience. By considering elements like quiet spaces, pumping stations, sensory-friendly toys, and thoughtful environmental design, you can create an atmosphere where everyone feels welcomed and supported.

With a little planning and consideration, your event can be accessible, welcoming, and inclusive to all, ensuring that every attendee can participate and enjoy themselves to the fullest.

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I knew something was off about him from the jump, but what do I know?

When he started taking over department meetings, his big idea was that everyone needed to take notes, and he created a schedule for who would take notes and when.

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I pushed back on this mandatory rotation because he wasn’t accounting for folks’ cognitive needs. I knew I struggled with processing and was dyslexic, so taking notes wasn’t as easy as “just take notes,” and this was pre-AI note-takers.

Of course I get labeled difficult because I was challenging his white man idea, but I didn’t care. Do you want people participating in the meeting, or do you want to have notes? You can’t get both with some people. And you certainly can’t get good notes if you have a slow-processing note-taker.

It also wasn’t just about me.

This take, his idea, was ableist.

Forcing people to take notes despite their clear discomfort with letting everyone down is rooted in YOUR assumptions about everyone else’s brain.

That’s why I created my leadership model.

In order to proactively educate about how our daily work lives and beliefs are rooted in harm, and to reduce harm, we have to be educated about how some of our requests and ideas can minoritize some.

It’s literally why I wrote, “Beyond Buzzwords”. You can grab your copy below.

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We said we wanted inclusive student leaders. We built leadership development programs. We talked about diversity and belonging. And then we trained students to lead exactly the same way we always had, in a style that worked for a narrow slice of who was actually in the room.

We rewarded the confident public speakers. The students who could run a Roberts Rules meeting without flinching. The ones who showed up to office hours, answered emails promptly, and seemed “professional.”

And we called that leadership.

What we were really doing was calling one cognitive style leadership. And quietly filtering out everyone else.

That’s the thing about bias in professional norms, it doesn’t announce itself. It just looks like standards.

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The Cognitive Equity Leadership Model

The Cognitive Equity Leadership Model™ was built on a simple but radical premise: the future belongs to leaders who design for every brain.

Not just the loudest brain. Not just the most organized brain. Not just the brain that thrives in linear, time-pressured, extrovert-forward environments.

Every brain.

In organizational contexts, the model gives leaders a framework for building workplaces where cognitive diversity isn’t tolerated — it’s leveraged. But I’ve been thinking about what it looks like when we bring this into higher education. When we hand this framework to the 19-year-old SGA president, the RA on the third floor, the orientation leader who’s about to welcome 300 first-year students.

What changes when student leaders learn to lead this way?

Everything.

The 5 A’s: On Campus

The model is built around five principles. Here’s what each one looks like when applied to student leadership in higher education.

1. Awareness

Recognizing bias in what we call “professionalism”

This is where it starts. Before a student leader can change anything, they have to see what’s actually happening.

Campus culture is full of invisible norms that dress themselves up as meritocracy. The student who speaks confidently in open meetings is seen as “engaged.” The one who processes slowly and responds by email gets labeled “passive.” The one who needs the agenda in advance to participate well is seen as “high maintenance.”

None of this is neutral. It’s a system built for one kind of mind, and student leaders are often unconsciously reinforcing it.

Awareness asks: Who benefits from the way we do things? Who gets left behind? It’s not about blame. It’s about seeing clearly before you can lead differently.

On campus, this looks like: auditing your organization’s norms, noticing patterns in who speaks and who stays silent, questioning what you’ve inherited and asking whether it still serves your actual community.

2. Access

Ensuring tools, processes, and systems flex for various cognition

Awareness without action stays in your head. Access is where you start designing differently.

Most student organizations run their meetings, events, and communications in ways that assume everyone processes information the same way. One format. One channel. One timeline. One shot to participate.

Cognitively equitable student leaders understand that access isn’t a special accommodation, it’s good design. When you share an agenda before a meeting, you’re not doing someone a favor. You’re removing a barrier that was never necessary in the first place.

On campus, this looks like: sending materials in advance, offering multiple ways to give input (not just open-floor discussion), captioning your digital content by default, building in processing time, making asynchronous participation a real option.

3. Adaptability

Leading through uncertainty with cognitive flexibility

Here’s a truth about campus life: nothing stays the same. Administrators change. Policies shift. A mental health crisis hits your community. A demographic shift changes who your organization is even trying to serve.

The leaders who struggle most are the ones with rigid plans and no tolerance for ambiguity. The ones who frame any change of course as failure.

Cognitive flexibility, the ability to hold complexity, sit with uncertainty, and lead through ambiguity without abandoning your people — is one of the most undervalued leadership skills on campus. The Cognitive Equity model names it and develops it explicitly.

On campus, this looks like: creating feedback loops instead of top-down plans, naming uncertainty openly instead of performing false confidence, modeling that pivoting is a sign of responsiveness, not weakness.

4. Alignment

Designing strategy and culture around human needs, not conformity

Most student organizations inherit more than they invent. They inherit meeting formats, bylaws, traditions, cultures, and rarely ask whether any of it actually serves the students who are currently there.

Alignment is the principle that says: your strategy, your culture, your programming should be built around your actual community’s actual needs. Not around what worked in 2008. Not around what makes your organization look good to administrators. Around human beings and what they need to show up fully.

This is countercultural in higher ed, where institutional inertia is powerful. But student leaders are uniquely positioned to disrupt it, because they’re in the moment, with their peers, right now.

On campus, this looks like: co-creating community agreements instead of handing down rules, doing genuine needs assessment before planning programming, being willing to let old traditions go if they’re not serving anyone anymore.

5. Accountability

Measuring inclusion through lived experience, not metrics alone

This is the one that makes people most uncomfortable, because it demands honesty.

Campus institutions love metrics. Attendance numbers. Survey percentages. Diversity headcounts. And metrics matter. But metrics can also be used to avoid the harder question: Do the people in the room actually feel like they belong here?

Cognitively equitable accountability means building in the qualitative alongside the quantitative. It means asking your marginalized members directly, not just hoping your numbers tell the whole story. It means reporting back on what you heard and what changed as a result.

On campus, this looks like: building qualitative feedback into every program cycle, creating real channels for dissent and critique, following up on concerns instead of tabling them indefinitely.

Why Student Leaders?

Student leaders are not just learning to run clubs. They’re developing the leadership muscles they’ll carry for the rest of their lives, into workplaces, communities, families, and civic institutions.

If they learn to lead in a way that only works for people who think like them, that’s what they’ll replicate everywhere they go.

But if they learn to lead for every brain, if they learn that access is design, that accountability is relational, that adaptability is strength, they carry that into the world instead.

The Cognitive Equity Leadership Model gives student leaders a framework that is practical, values-driven, and immediately applicable to the work they’re doing right now. It meets them where they are. And it asks them to do the same for everyone they lead.

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