There is still a surprising… well, diversity of opinion when you ask people what diversity means. Sometimes people come right out and say it means race. And gender. Maybe age or ability. Sometimes there’s a subtext: “It means we did something wrong.” Or: “It means we’re finally going to get it right.” Other times, a veneer of indifference persists. “I just accept all people,” some say. “We’re really post-diversity now,” say others.

Yet diversity continues to be a hot-button topic in companies and communities, and many of the hottest topics before us have a diversity connection. The military’s policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” of course centers on the diversity dimension of sexual orientation. Immigration policies are inseparable from the dimensions of race, class, nationality and language. Go back a few months to the debate on health care reform. Who would have predicted that divides of opinion, no matter how wide, would be grounds for epithets, spitting and racial slurs against gay and black Congressional representatives? And though BP Chair Carl-Henric Svanberg of Sweden may legitimately have stumbled into a translation error when he said, “We care about the small people” (people in the U.S. do, after all, call ourselves “the little guy” and “the common folk” sometimes), the instant outrage about his remark speaks to a rawness about some differences that can derail any communication.

photo © C. A. Eichengreen

Diversity lives right next to each of our hearts, all the time. It affects the ways we live and work together. It affects the way your organization functions. It’s not going to go away. And it means many different things to many different people.

To be successful in any effort to build good diversity practices and a high-functioning workplace culture, it is important to start the conversation and encourage exploration of key terms like “diversity,” “inclusion,”   “cultural competence” and “bias”.

What do these terms mean to you?