The First-Time Manager: DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by Alida Miranda-Wolff, EXCERPT

The essential resource for new managers who want to foster a safe, inclusive, and productive space for their teams.

Being an inclusive manager boils down to finding ways to balance power and love day-to-day. When do we prioritize the needs of an individual employee over that of the whole team? When do we hold firm that what the team needs is more important than what the individual wants? How do we ensure that we uphold one person’s boundaries without compromising another’s? How do we live up to the promises we make to ourselves and to each other, all while driving results and hitting our earnings targets?

Alida Miranda-Wolff has worked with hundreds of organizations to help them create cultures of belonging and successful DEI initiatives, which means she knows the common pitfalls to avoid and action items required to make DEI work. In this practical guide, she shares both the mindset and actions required for new managers to build inclusive teams. This one-of-a-kind guide will:

• Help you define your inclusive management style.
• Provide practical guidance on how to create a healthy culture on your teams through equitable practices.
• Teach you the basics of inclusive language.
• Offer guidance on how to give and receive feedback.
• Help you manage identity-based conflict.

EXCERPT

The first time I ever led a management class, I played a music video called “Ladyboss.” In the video, comedian and actress Rachel Bloom parodies #girlboss empowerment while also naming the very real struggles of managing others while navigating gender dynamics at work. I paused at the lyric “Take big swings and suppress the fear of catastrophic failure” to take the room’s pulse. Much to my relief, my audience of first-time managers laughed in recognition. While we identified as different genders, races, ethnicities, life stages, and even specializations, we shared something vital in common: the ever-present pressure of being responsible for our employees’ performance and experience at work. 

Being a manager is often challenging, thankless, and confusing. This is a lesson I’ve learned several times over the course of my career. From the moment I graduated from college I knew I wanted to “be in charge.” Unlike many of my peers, I did not come to management because of a lack of other career progression options or pressure from my organization or manager. I wanted to be a manager, partly because I had been led by some talented ones early on in my career. These were managers who, I would later learn, honed their craft because they came from marginalized groups and did not want to see the harm they had personally experienced reproduced. Naturally, as I navigated my career, I experienced my own biased managers and inequitable work environments; I also, unfortunately, acted on my biases and either unconsciously or misguidedly created exclusive work environments. 

As a person who has been a manager longer than I have been anything else professionally, perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned about management comes from an unexpected place. The theologian Paul Tillich, best known for his influence on his most famous pupil, Martin Luther King Jr., taught that power is the ability for a person to self-actualize, and love comes from wanting to be connected to something greater than oneself. Power without love can be abusive and selfish, while love without power can lead to the suppression of difference and the loss of self. It’s my belief that being an inclusive manager means finding ways to balance power and love on a daily basis. When do we prioritize the needs of an individual employee over that of the whole team? When do we hold firm that what the team needs is more important than what the individual employee wants? How do we ensure that we respect one person’s boundaries without compromising another’s? How do we live up to the promises we make to our- selves and to each other, all while driving results and hitting our earnings targets? 

These are not simple questions. In a world where social upheavals, individual experiences, and complex team dynamics come into constant contact, the answers we might have once held up as “right” leave much to be desired. Since management careers first came into being more than a century ago, managers have been faced with moving targets and rapid changes in what “good” management is. I don’t pretend to have the definitive answer. Instead, I have an invitation: imagine what it would look like to cocreate a community of people who, by respecting and appreciating their differences, together achieve a sense of togetherness. What would it mean to nurture those conditions? To throw out the playbook of “standard, best practice” management, and instead, honor the humanity and dignity of those who you have been charged to bring together? 

When offered the chance to contribute to The First-Time Manager series, I vowed to take everything I’ve learned about doing that kind of management and capture it in one place. These lessons come from the firsthand experiences of managing and being managed, secondhand learning through reading, research, and management training, and from my time as a coach and facilitator of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging management programs. 

You don’t need a PhD in googling to access information on inclusive management. What you want to know is out there. The real value in a project like The First-Time Manager: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is not in the information itself but the work of guiding you in its application. That’s my highest aspiration for this book— that it provides you with some insights, encouragement, and guidelines to help you do one of the hardest jobs there is, managing for the first time while cultivating a culture of belonging. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alida Miranda-Wolff is a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) practitioner committed to teaching love and cultivating belonging. She is an Amazon-bestselling author of two books with HarperCollins Leadership, Cultures of Belonging: Building Inclusive Organizations That Last (February 2022) and The First-Time Manager: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (May 2024). She is the founder and CEO of Ethos, a full-service DEIB and employee advocacy firm, which serves hundreds of clients across the world. She hosts Care Work with Alida Miranda-Wolff, a podcast about what it means to offer care for a living.

In 2021, Alida received The University of Chicago’s Early Career Achievement Award. She is a graduate of The University of Chicago and holds certificates from the School of the Art Institute (graphic design) and Georgetown University (DEI). She lives in Chicago with her partner, toddler, rabbits, and cats. When she’s not working, reading, writing, or parenting, Alida is wild gardening, interior designing, and falling down research rabbit holes.

Web: AlidaMirandaWolff.com, EthosTalent.com
X: @AlidaMW
LinkedIn: AlidaMW

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing