The Secret to Highly Effective DEI Councils
Be the first to know! Join the authors for a free webinar September 5 at 12pm EST to launch their new DEI Council Resource Guide. The thought paper summarizes wisdom of 50+ council members and consultants into practical tips, tools, and no-nonsense advice to move your council from performative to high-performing. This blog previews our findings and recommendations.
*Scroll to the bottom of the resource for key definitions.
Across the country, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) councils* are forming within organizations, only to fall into a familiar pattern of initial enthusiasm followed by burnout and frustration. Passionate staff galvanize support, leaders overpromise change, and eventually, both parties end up more stressed and disappointed than before.
It doesn’t have to be this way. As a current DEI council leader and a consultant who has helped launch and sustain more than a dozen DEI councils, we’ve experienced first-hand the magic a high-functioning council can bring to an organization. Yet, we continue to witness recurring roadblocks to culture-change. Frustrated by the similarities of the challenges council members experience, we embarked on a journey to help organizations fix this broken system.
Over several months, we conducted a survey and one-on-one interviews with more than 50 current and former council members and consultants in and outside of the public media ecosystem. Participants were unflinchingly honest in their reflections on why councils often break down and what exactly is needed to set them up for success.
Whether you are just starting out or looking to reinvigorate an existing group, our new resource offers you practical tools and actionable steps to help you build and sustain an effective DEI council. Here is a preview of what you’ll find in the DEI Council Resource Guide:
Benefits of DEI Councils
DEI councils can be transformative for public media organizations, signaling a genuine commitment to culture change and creating a more equitable workplace. DEI councils help by:
- Retaining & Engaging Staff: Only 30 percent of U.S. employees report being engaged at work, with 17 percent reporting active disengagement. Many participants shared that serving on their council encouraged them to stay at their organization, despite wanting to leave for other reasons. DEI councils also offer a structured way to ensure staff feedback and concerns are addressed, strengthening their connection to the workplace.
- Promoting Cross-Team Collaboration: In a hybrid workplace, DEI councils combat loneliness and isolation by fostering meaningful connections. Councils build trust across differences and provide opportunities for staff to meet and collaborate with colleagues from many parts of the organization.
- Mitigating Risk & Save Money: Effective DEI councils create psychological safety for staff to raise serious concerns, saving organizations valuable time and money. While councils are not a substitute for HR, they offer a strategic outlet for leaders to proactively identify and address serious business risks.
DEI councils are an organization’s competitive advantage, but many organizations fail to see a return on their investment.
Barriers to Council Success
Most tensions arise when staff and leadership are not aligned on what “DEI work” entails or how to approach it. Participants shared that staff and leaders often do not understand that DEI is fundamentally large-scale systemic culture-change work. We learned the biggest barrier to DEI council success is a fundamental lack of change management expertise.
Effective DEI interventions require a systemic change management approach — intentional methods to manage how people react and respond to change.
Our survey and interviews revealed the specific ways that a lack of change management skills — among leaders and staff alike — prevents meaningful culture-change in organizations.
Where Leaders Lack Change Management Expertise:
They don’t actively sponsor change: A lukewarm or neutral response from leaders does not incentivize change. Without proactive, engaged leader support, culture change will always be treated as optional.
They fail to hold bad faith actors accountable: Participants shared that feigned support, pushback, or defensive responses from leaders are major barriers. Leaders who discount or complain about DEI derail culture-change efforts, wasting valuable resources.
They neglect to secure adequate bandwidth and capacity: Most staff who volunteer for DEI work do so in addition to their regular job responsibilities, leading to burnout, especially for historically excluded staff.
They do not allocate financial support and resources: Changing deep-rooted behaviors and systems does not happen for free. DEI initiatives are often underfunded, with many councils operating on a $0 budget, resulting in hundreds of hours of free labor annually.
They don’t elevate change as a strategic priority: Broad support from leaders and staff is nearly impossible if DEI is not named as an organization priority. When framed as an “add-on” rather than a business priority, DEI will always be last on the to-do list.
They fail to create structure to anchor change: Councils without clear mandates, role clarity, or governance structure lead to confusion and hurt feelings.
“The biggest barrier is a lack of ACTUAL leadership buy-in and doing DEI work on top of our regular jobs for no extra pay and without making actual room in our schedules. We would advise leadership and then they would either not do what we advised or literally do the exact opposite.”
Where Staff Lack Change Management Expertise
They struggle to build change coalitions: Staff often struggle to identify and collaborate effectively with key stakeholders. Effective change requires strategic relationship and trust building.
They don’t strongly define and communicate the vision: Council members often lack the positional power to make decisions or move work forward. Effective change efforts need advocacy from people with power, but many staff struggle with seeking leader support.
They fail to set and prioritize clear goals: Councils exhaust themselves by doing too much or become paralyzed by the enormity of the task. Being “inclusive” often gets misinterpreted as needing to say yes to everything, leading to scattered efforts and little progress.
“It was chaotic trying to set up a new council during the pandemic. We thought the DEI council had to 'fix DEI' and 'solve racism.' We were naive and thought we had to do everything all at once. People were very eager, but also very stressed and didn't have a lot of training. We ended up trying to do too many things. I think we had a list of 30 DEI initiatives in 2020.”
What Success Looks Like
Our research and experience has taught us that regardless of sector, industry, or size, DEI undergoes a predictable evolution in most organizations:
Change management principles enable organizations to unlock the full potential of their DEI councils. Just like every other business function, organizations should aim to make their council as strategic as possible. Councils must reach a proactive level of DEI maturity to experience the benefits of a DEI council.
Council Success Factors
Participants identified “leadership buy-in” as the number one success factor to any DEI council. Unfortunately, in organizations where leaders lack change management expertise, there is a strong disconnect between what leaders think their culture is like and how staff really feel. Many leaders think they are “bought into DEI” because they approved a DEI council, but the mere existence of a council does not guarantee staff feel valued or respected.
Effective DEI councils don’t happen by accident. Our new resource details the six behaviors and systems we learned set DEI councils up for success. We bring “leadership buy-in” to life by mapping specific tips, tools and examples to each success factor. The resource features a new DEI Council Maturity Benchmarks tool that will allow leaders and staff to assess how effective their council is and identify what is needed to improve.
Be the First to Know
Ready to elevate your DEI council? Join the authors for a webinar on September 5 at 12 pm EST to launch the new DEI Council Resource Guide. Participants will get a preview of the resource’s findings and the real-talk strategies for success. Registrants will be the first ones to receive the resource when it launches that week.
Level Up Your Change Management Skills
Register for Brevity & Wit’s 8-week Change Agent Certification program to equip staff with fundamental change management strategies, tools, and skills to make culture change stick. Participants will leave this cost-effect course with a customized action plan, tailored to their unique role and scope of influence.
Key Terms
DEI work: The “work” of DEI means changing your organization’s culture to be more fair. We define diversity, equity, and inclusion as outcomes you work to achieve.
- Diversity: The extent of the differences (both visible and invisible) in your organization.
- Equity: The extent to which employees feel they are treated fairly and have what they need in order to thrive.
- Inclusion: The extent to which employees feel safe, valued, respected, and heard.
DEI Councils: Any official committee of staff that work together to advise leaders and advance DEI at their organization.
