Coaching for D&I does not mean having a “D&I Coach” title

The second theme that came up within the discussions, was that many of the coaches, although talking about the fact that they practice coaching focused on diversity and inclusion related topics, did not want to be associated with the term “D&I Coach.”

What is important to note is that coaches were not asked about this specific question, however, when they heard the term “D&I coaching”, they started explaining why they did not want to be perceived as D&I coaches specifically. Below, you will find examples of the different perceptions on being referred to as a D&I Coach.

Firstly, the interviewed coaches believe that they should have the capability to work across many different topics, therefore, there is no need to separate and distinguish D&I coaching on its own.

“Coaches should be doing this work for everyone because that's how we make coaching inclusive. And I feel like the coaching industry is making diversity and inclusion an othering thing. So, I felt like it's just the splitting up of things.” (Trisha) Similarly, Jessica also talks about “segmenting coaching too much” and offers a more in-depth view on this problem in the quotes below.

“I don't market myself as a diversity and inclusion coach, because I'm not sure that's helpful, because what happens is topics become sexy. And I think that the very best coaches can work across all of them. So, what I do think, though, is that by having the ability, the capacity to work across all of them, you bring them in when they are most effective for the client.”

Importantly, she made a crucial point about

“My concern for our profession, is people to give a title to something and then that unintentionally, I'm sure, could narrow down their thinking about what it is.”

Juliet also mentioned that it can be dependent a lot on a particular coach, how much diversity and inclusion they decide to bring into their coaching and vice versa.

“There isn't a formal D&I coaching role at [my company], the way that I bring my D&I knowledge into coaching is purely because that's what I enjoy. Not all coaches

63 take a D&I perspective, and not all people working in D&I take a coaching perspective. It's something that I think could have more impact and influence if we're able to do it more.”

Secondly, coaches bring in the concern of labelling the process under “D&I coaching”.

“I never used the words, or the initials D&I just don't because it's too um.. it for business, it's too psychobabble. It's too close consulting ish. Not it's not real business.

Now, I will say that there are many companies who are establishing a function within their organisation for D&I.” (Priscilla)

She also added that

“I think that it's a profession that is needed globally, seriously needed. My concern is that people are gonna keep calling it D&I coaching. And you're gonna keep alienating the people that pay for it.”

Additionally, Claire stated that putting topics into boxes and labeling them was not all that common before as it is now.

“When I started 20 years ago, people were not putting names on it. At that time, it was called justice, discrimination and human rights.”

Nora shared a different reason for her to not perceiving putting names on D&I coaching as a good idea.

“And I think the labelling D&I coaching, I think we'd have to be careful with that.

Because almost, you'd get people thinking, Oh, well, what's my checklist of D&I?

You know, have I done this? Have I ever done this?”

Claire and Matthew only highlight the point that it might not always be a good idea to put things under the D&I umbrella and add another perspective.

“Sometimes they are really allergic to diversity because they get bombarded from HR.” (Claire)

“It is dangerous to give it the branding of pure D&I, it gives that idea that […] we will be talking about something imported. The kind of problems we don’t have here.

However, if you give them topic they resonate with, they will tell you they need to solve it too.” (Matthew)

64 Together with sharing Matthew’s point of view, Paula also sees the advantage of bringing something that is more easily imaginable for the people.

“I find that usually growing parallels to matters that the supervisors already are familiar with helps. It's sort of tricky. You shouldn't belittle any discrimination by sort of making unequal examples, you know, like, I don't know, discrimination based on dyslexia, maybe, […] but by comparing this, like the difficulties with dyslexia, to be always perceived through your race can sort of increase empathy.”

In addition, Erica believes that D&I and issues that might arise must be integrated into the local social context.

“You have to understand that what history is like if it wants to talk about these issues, you have to be connected to the history of the country. […] I mean, you're an idiot, if you think that you can just go with your package and just put it, that's imperialism, that's not understanding the D&I thing at all.”

Thirdly, another very important point within this chapter is that even though in many cases, diversity and inclusion was not the reason the clients came to the coaching session, but rather it was an issue that came up later in the process. That can be demonstrated in the following examples.

“There hasn't been a specified articulated need for D&I coaching. But what I find is that it often comes out throughout the process. So for example, I'm working with someone at the moment who's really struggling to find work life balance as a mom, and she's experiencing some challenges around her gender and her cultural background, which is only just starting to realise they're actually playing out in the process” (Juliet)

“A majority of the problems I was approached with didn't relate to diversity and inclusion as such, but always it was given as a probable cause or a possible cause.”

(Paula)

“The main guy said so many things that showed a very non inclusive mindset. And I started to think this is all about inclusion, actually, but they don't realise it.” (Joy)

Additionally, as Joy mentioned during the inteview when discussing the topic of D&I coaching

“I didn't even know it was a thing. I just pitched coaching. And then they started calling it inclusion coaching themselves. […] In fact, I'm not even sure that there's a definition of D&I coaching.”

65 That led to a fourth interesting finding, and that is that everyone defines D&I slightly differently and especially, imagines various things under the terms D&I coaching. As Paula, Nora and Erica shared.

“I think one of the biggest challenges is understanding what D&I is, and what does it mean? For the individual? Because it means different things to different people.

And that's fine. But I think that's a challenge.” (Nora)

“Also, I mean, what is diversity? I mean, you can talk about everything, because it can be the size of a body, it can be if you're in the city, or if you're like in the center in the periferia, if you're sitting in a particular building, it can be if you're in a particular department.” (Erica)

“I discovered that diversity, and especially inclusion, really are the buzzwords for equity and equality in corporate world.” (Paula)

“And I think t's hard to define for me. When we say D&I, I see diversity, equity and inclusion. […] I'll say, ‘so how diverse are your team?’ Or ‘how diverse are your circle of friends?’ And they'll say, ‘Oh, you know, I’m from this part of India and he’s from this part of India, that's diversity to them.’ ‘Okay, but think beyond that,’

I think it can be quite difficult to have that D&I loose description because what does diversity mean to an individual can be different. Inclusion, however, tends to be the same, right? I feel inclusion is much easier, more direct route than diversity.” (Nora)

Also, for the coaches it was at some point a little difficult to draw a line between where diversity and inclusion topics end, and other topics begin, as there are a lot of activities, which could be or do not have to be part of D&I, but it depends on one’s definition of diversity. Such as for Matthew or Nora.

“That is the question, how are you going to frame D&I? We don’t have it directly under the D&I umbrella but we have there things like how to adjust the leadership styles based on the individual. […] Whether leadership is tied to D&I or not, I don’t know because all of them are tools that help you to lead a heterogenous team. If you would have a team of clones, you do not need to adjust your leadership style.”

(Matthew)

“I coach my boss on dealing with women, and on dealing with overly charged alpha males. But that's a D&I topic, right? But we never called it that. So the perception would be [Nora] has helped me work on a few things, to help me lead, coach my team

66 better, or help work with different individuals better, that I get frustrated with or whatever.” (Nora)

On top of that, it is evident that the interviewed coaches have slightly different perspectives on what coaching is. While some of the coaches see coaching solely as having one on one conversations, others considered group coaching as well, and some even took their initial discussions with leaders or other stakeholders as coaching.

The shared examples suggest that the diversity and inclusion topic might be very popular in the present times, and therefore, a lot of organisations might be using the words “diversity and inclusion coaching” to keep up with the trend, while others are not putting things under the D&I umbrella, even though such topics could be considered as diversity and inclusion ones.