Tempering the Storm of Culture & Climate in our Workplaces

Nearly 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies now employ a Diversity Officer in their Executive lineup. This is up almost 50% from a decade ago, largely due to current trends that find women and people of color now constitute 70% of people entering into a workforce that, from our country’s inception, has been predisposed to white male systemology@diversity. Supporters of the diversity approach in business argue that a workforce that is infused with different perspectives tends to come up with ideas that spur growth, drive innovation and help companies become or remain competitive in an increasingly diverse marketplace. They can also help improve a company’s public image and its stock price. 

Dr. James Mason@drjmason, Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) at Providence Health Care Systems, is helping one of Oregon’s top employers navigate their best diversity practices. We sat down to pick his Ph.D. level brain as to why this issue has become so important to a company’s bottom line.

“When you look to create any system, the danger is when diversity is an afterthought; it’s hard to add on. You almost have to re-engineer the whole thing. Consider if we were to build bathrooms with only urinals in them. You’ve just built a system that doesn’t take into consideration over half of the population, women. In my role, I am happy to be a voice at the front end and I really hate being a voice at the back end, because then you have to second guess every step.”   

On stature alone, Dr. Mason@vision may have an advantage that can subdue angst in a room.  He is a 6 foot 7 with a deep resounding voice, the kind that movie folks look to find in a narrator of a great story. He’s highly personable with a smile that spans ear to ear and he chuckles easily at himself and with others in his midst.  Born and raised in Southern California, a ‘good vibration a happenin’ lingers in his demeanor towards those around him, an attitude that can undoubtedly come in handy when easing tension and having uncomfortable conversations.  In his own words he says,

 “I think I was uniquely prepared to do this. I had a lot of conflict between what I was formally taught vs what I experienced in the world. This forced me to consider how a problem might play in different communities with varying socioeconomic status. I felt a need to be a champion, or a voice, for people who didn’t have a champion or voice. That seemed like what I was supposed to do to honor my father, my family, my upbringing.”

Since 1985, Dr. Mason’s life’s work has revolved around consulting and analyzing how service systems work and serve their constituency with regards to diversity. He is the former Director of the Office of Multicultural Health for the State of Oregon@MHSofO and one of the founders of the National Association of State Offices for Minority Health@NASOMH. He is a founding member of the National Center on Cultural Competence at Georgetown University@NCCCGTU where he worked in a collective impact partnership to develop a model of cultural competence with tools for assessment. He has consulted with professional bureaucracies, education, health and provider groups across the United States, Latin America, and Canada. 

Dr. Mason’s work often touches upon two primary diversity focuses. The first is with regards to service delivery. Striving to maintain an approach that is meaningful and responsive to the needs of the population, he cites the following example:

“Take healthcare, for instance.  If you are in a demographic group that we have learned is disproportionately susceptible to glaucoma, we then learn to be sensitive and cognizant  of that factor when working with a certain population.”

Mason’s second diversity focus is related to being an organization that works in the 21st century.   

“A key part of my job has been, in a very non-blaming way, to help systems work with populations that they might not know very well or who have been historically underserved or underemployed.  If you want to be a good health system in the 21st century, you’re going to need to pay attention to the age, gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality of the people you serve. One size does not fit all,” he explained. “For example, the male approach might not work for the Mom, the middle-class, English-speaking approach might not be appropriate for working-class, non-English speaking people.

Dr. Mason admits that in a world where we are all learning to work, cross-culturally, on subjects of race, gender and sexuality, communications can sometimes get misconstrued as rude or invasive.

“As I go through the world, I am supposed to be Mr. Cultural Man, right? But, it’s not like I don’t offend. I say goofy stuff all the time, but that’s not my intent. I might say something authentic to you but awkward or not so ‘politically correct’.  I am willing to take a risk however, if I offend you, don’t sit there and brood. Say something. I have to learn from that mistake and not do it again. In a professional setting, we have to learn to ask [sensitive questions] in a respectful way and without a relationship that can be hard. Think of the health care intake process.  If it’s your first time with a patient, you have to ask about their health history, including mental health, sexual background and, addiction questions within the first 15 minutes. People often look at you like, ‘whoa!’ Culturally, the way I have learned to do that is to say, ‘Forgive my rudeness in how this may come across, but I need to ask you these questions because it might help save your life or give you access to better care. If I offend you, that wasn’t my intent. Afterwards, I can discuss with you if there was a better way for me to ask these questions.”

We asked Dr. Mason how Providence is showing leadership through diversity:

“I think we try to lead in health care through a diversity approach. Do we have a lot of challenges? I think health care does, as do we. We do a great job gathering diverse information that can help us serve our patients better, however, like the STEM field across the board, we sometimes struggle with recruiting a diverse pool of doctors and professionals. So, are we where we want to be? I would say no. Do we have a plan to get there? I would say yes.”

For Providence, that plan includes the work both within and outside their walls. Internally, that includes a variety of discipline-specific training modules that Dr. Mason and his team have developed to improve the service aspects of patient care in pharmacy, nursing, home health, behavioral health and chaplaincy in order to ensure their therapeutic environments are welcoming and hospitable.  They have also adopted training on how to create welcoming environments through recognizing unconscious bias and interrupting bias speech. It is based upon a curriculum called “Ouch”, by Leslie C. Aguilar. 

“We have all been in a position where we have seen someone experience micro aggression. For example, if I insult you in front of someone else, you’re mad at me and you’re also mad at someone else for not saying anything in your defense. Through training, we look at how we can interrupt or stop micro-aggressions. In our case, it’s how to prepare our caregivers, so that when people come into our service areas, they feel protected. Then, if somebody starts funny language around race, gender, piercings or whatever, we want our people to be able to say “ouch”, meaning “stop that”, so that we are not complicit. It also lets the offending person know that something was wrong, or that they may not have known their impact.”

Internally, as they continue to look for ways to build a healthy and diverse workplace climate, Dr. Mason and Providence have come to acutely realize how this work can be used as a resource for the community outside of their walls.

“The cool thing about Providence is that my leaders trust me, believe in me, recognize that we are all connected and that by empowering ourselves, we empower our community,” states Dr. Mason.

In an effort to further the improvement of climate and culture in the workplace, Dr. Mason speaks publicly, both locally and across the nation. As an organization, they do a lot of investing in farmers markets, green groceries and food education classes, noting that it's hard to talk about healthy eating if you don’t have access to it. He also helps to plant seeds for young people to pursue medical and STEM careers by volunteering regularly at workshops and, through a partnership with Univision, to assist first-generation college students with filling out FAFSA and scholarship forms.

“The question is, how are we going to invest in young people in a way that is going to benefit the family, community and make us all better?” mused Dr. Mason. 

As with any conversation where biometric factors (i.e. gender, race) and economic opportunities for advancement (i.e. paying jobs) come into play, deploying equitable strategies will inevitably attract scrutiny and criticism. For example, the term “diversity” is still often yoked to Affirmative Action and as a result, some detractors cry out that this programming is actually a form of  ‘reverse discrimination’.  Adding still another complex layer are the recent flood of reports regarding sexual misconduct in the workplace that have been ripping through Hollywood and shedding a light on how a negative and exploitative office and workplace climates, if left unchecked, can destroy employee morale, a company’s reputation and the lives/careers of those closest to the impact zone.

“I think a lot of us were raised on information that our parents may have had and it may not have been the best information. You might have been told not to play with someone or to trust someone and when there’s no contact, a lot of those myths or misinformation take root. I think once we start learning to hang out and talk to one another, once we have the relationship, our wants are pretty consistent. The secret to the world is not so much our diversity, but what we have in common. We go there first, so that now when we broach our differences, we do so while drawing upon a relationship of commonalities.”

It’s these “differences” that are often responsible for striking so many emotional chords during the conversations that many of us are struggling to have with one another in today’s politically, racially and sexually charged world. To approach these dialogues with each other in healthy ways, Dr. Mason shares some parting advice.

“You have to ask each other,  ‘Are we having a ‘logic and reason’ conversation, or are we having an emotional one?’ If I’m talking from a ‘logic and reason’ perspective and you tell me you are acting from an ‘emotional’ standpoint, then we are not talking the same language and I am probably going to refrain from talking to you right now.  Don’t have conversations when you’re emotional or angry, because you are not the same person. Wait until you can talk in a reasonable way. This advice can sometimes be easier for me when I am advocating for others, rather than for myself, ” Dr. Mason said with a chuckle. “When I am on the road and working in a community where you see things aren’t so wonderful, I can’t abdicate a response and that’s why becoming more exacting on how communities are vulnerable is so important.  I am proud with respect to Providence, we are having these conversations internally and externally and I would expect the other systems to begin or continue to do the same.”