January/February Dilemma Results:
A Promotion - is it because of Affirmative Action?Peter and Dave, who work for an accounting firm, are applying for the same Business Development manager position. Peter has worked for the company for eight years. Dave, an African American and recent college graduate, was hired to work at the accounting firm a year ago.
Peter is confident he will get the position as he has more marketing experience than Dave. When Peter speaks to his friend Andrew about having a celebratory drink after work, Andrew responds, "Well, just know that if you don't get the position, they only want Dave because of his color. You know how we're trying to seem diverse."
Two weeks later Peter discovers that Dave was in fact promoted to the Business Development Manager position. Peter will have the opportunity to serve on the outreach team underneath Dave, but will not work directly with clients. Peter is not looking forward to working under what he sees as an "Affirmative Action hire." In order to be an effective member of the outreach team, Peter feels he must reconcile his conflicting emotions about Dave's promotion.
If you were Peter, what would you do?
- Nothing. Make minimal effort to engage Dave while working on the outreach team as expected of you. Talk to an HR manager about what you see as an unfair hire. Request that you are given some sort of promotion, since you have more experience and have been with the company longer. You don't want to work under Dave anyway.
- Ask Dave to have lunch with you. Find out what his experiences have been. You have nothing to lose, and it can only help you to develop a relationship with this person who you will, under the current circumstances, be working with.
- Ask an HR manager to mediate a conversation between you and the Business Development hiring manger. You want to know where you were lacking and where Dave excelled. From there you can work on improving your skills so you have a better chance next time a Business Development Manager position arises.
- Other
Results:
Top choice: Just over half of respondents (about 57 percent) chose option C, believing the best way to address the situation is to ask HR to mediate a conversation with the Business Development Hiring manager. This discussion would allow you to discover Dave's strengths as well as receive feedback on how personal improvements could be made in order to increase the opportunity of a future promotion.
Second choice: Following this, 32 people (about 40 percent) chose option B, having lunch with Dave. This would allow for a conversation during which you could discover his experiences while at the same time build a working relationship.
No respondents opted for choice A, which included minimal interaction with Dave, talking to HR about unfair hiring and requesting a promotion due to experience and length of career with the company.
Three people had other solutions to this dilemma. They include:
"In addition to having lunch with Dave, go to current/recent manager (not HR) to ask for feedback on ways to improve."
"Invite Dave to be present at the meeting while the issue is being addressed."
"I would set up a meeting directly with the hiring manager, and ask them where I was lacking and how I could improve my skills for when a future opportunity came up. In this scenario, we don't know if Peter has a college degree, we just know he has 8 years of experience. It was not helpful of Andrew to comment on the "diversity" of Dave; which may have tainted Peter's feelings. Peter needs to discuss this asap, as this could fester over time and give him bad feelings about Dave overall, and cause him not to work as a team player. Production, creativity and morale could all suffer. Separately, it would be a dis-service to the company, employees, and Dave if he was ONLY hired into the position due to AA. To help avoid something like this, perhaps a strong diversity initiative could be started within the company. The focus could be to help provide opportunities and hone skills for anyone needing this, which can help address and reduce the disparity. Hiring someone into a position just to fulfill AA is like putting a bandaide on the symptom and not addressing the cause. It will only serve to cause ill feelings between all (race, culture, gender, etc), rather than bringing everyone together. The company can maybe offer training or a mentoring program within to help address this."
A total of 81 people participated in the January/February Diversity Dilemma at DiversityCentral.com.
Read more:
- View the results of Sep/Oct 2007 Dilemma, Pierced nose? Wild clothes? What to do with a productive "punk?"
- View the results of Jul/Aug 2007 Dilemma, What would you do in the face of an unclear law?
- View the results of May/Jun 2007 Dilemma, Who would you promote? A dilemma about class, merit, and identity
- View the results of Mar/Apr 2007 Dilemma, What to do about a speech impairment
- View the results of a previous Jan/Feb 2007 Dilemma, "Delivering the goods" without losing your integrity
- View the results of a previous Nov/Dec 2006 Dilemma, How would YOU handle negative feedback?
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