(Illustration by Nyanza D)
Last summer, institutions across sectors were called to account for their failure to address systemic racism. Many organizational leaders addressed the backlash by requesting trainings and consultations from professionals like myself in the field of racial equity. Unfortunately, many of these same leaders failed to recognize that hosting a training series on anti-racism or producing a set of public-facing DEI statements and benchmarks were not enough to address the root causes of systemic and structural racism at work in their organization. In the early stages of change, preparing staff members to engage productively in conversations about racism and developing policies and practices that uproot racial inequity is important work. But without a culture of accountability, any effort to prevent racial harm or provide proper redress when it occurs will fall short of accomplishing repairing harm and deepen distrust and disconnection among staff.
Imagine this scenario: Two coworkers, a white man (let’s call him Jonathan) and a Black woman (let’s call her Melissa), collaborate on a project, which they present at an all-staff meeting. At the end of their presentation, the company’s CEO, also a white man, praises their work, and then announces to the entire room to direct any suggestions or questions about this new initiative to Jonathan. “Great work, Jonathan,” he adds, before leaving the room. Some people miss the slight, while others realize that the CEO failed to acknowledge Melissa’s work. As people leave the meeting, they talk among themselves about what they just witnessed, feeling uncertain about how to address it. Melissa speaks with her supervisor and expresses her shock about what just happened. That supervisor, a member of the senior leadership team, brings her concerns to the CEO. While he acknowledges that it was wrong to disregard Melissa’s contributions, he justifies this oversight by saying that he just knows Jonathan better. In the end, he emails an apology to Melissa. But nothing else happens. This was a racial microaggression witnessed by the entire organization. Colleagues continue to discuss what happened in order to make sense of it, and, as time passes, tension continues to build. Staff members begin taking sides: Some make excuses for his behavior, while others cite it as an example of organizational racism.
This one act of racial harm has had ripple effects across the entire organization. A single microaggression, compounded with many other acts of interpersonal racism and institutional policies that perpetuate unequal access to opportunities for staff of color—that one act which seems so insignificant on the surface—can have sweeping consequences. An email apology is like applying a Band-Aid to a systemic issue. As a highly visible person in a position of power, the CEO needed to acknowledge the impact of his behavior with the entire staff as a first step in the process of accountability.
What Is Accountability?
The consequences of failing to create a culture of accountability are pervasive. The lack of accountability affects employee retention, collegial relationships, and team performance. A 2019 Center for Talent Innovation study found that Black employees report racial discrimination at rates as high as 79 percent in some parts of the United States, and a third of Black employees to leave their jobs in two years presumably because of racial discrimination. Companies that fail to recognize the unique talents of Black employees and cultivate their trust stifle creativity and innovation. They also erode the quality of relationships between coworkers, undermine collaboration, and hamper performance and productivity.
High turnover also weakens institutional memory and wastes valuable time and energy on constant recruitment efforts and onboarding of new staff. A 2018 study on diversity and authenticity in the workplace published in the Harvard Business Review revealed that employees of color often attend company social events out of a sense of obligation or to prove they align with the culture. Once at these events, they brace themselves for the discomfort of navigating awkward social interactions with white colleagues who lack racial literacy. When team members are unable to bond with each other out of fear that a microaggression will occur and go unaddressed, they will have a difficult time building trust necessary to collaborate effectively. The next time that Melissa has to collaborate with Jonathan, for instance, she will remember that he didn’t speak up when their boss failed to acknowledge her work.
Building a culture of accountability is essential to an organization’s efforts to address racism and advance racial equity. The failure to define structures of accountability before they are needed will undermine any progress toward cultivating an inclusive and equitable workplace. In order to practice accountability with integrity and care, organizations must distinguish accountability from punishment. “In this society, accountability is often synonymous with punishment, shame and/or retaliatory harm,” says Ann Russo, Women and Gender studies professor at DePaul University, in her essay on practices of accountability. “What if it became synonymous with taking responsibility for harm, making things right, being willing to understand, change, and transform the harmful behavior and its underlying motivations?” The difference between accountability and punishment has to do with relationships. Punishment breaks a relationship; it’s rooted in isolation, shame, and disconnection. Accountability, by contrast, requires communication, negotiation of needs, the opportunity to repair harm, and the chance to prove that we can change and be worthy of trust again. Organizations committed to racial equity must recognize that this work requires new practices for talking about race and racism and new strategies for addressing acts of racial harm that seek repair and strengthen trust.
There are three types of accountability that are essential to this work. The first is self-accountability, the practice of taking responsibility for your actions and the consequences of those actions. Every single member of a team must recognize that they have a role to play in building a culture committed to inclusion, belonging, and equity, and this recognition begins with taking responsibility for their own contributions to that culture. For example, instead of making an excuse for his dismissive behavior in the meeting, the CEO should take a moment to receive the feedback and reflect on his responsibilities to his staff and the impact that his actions had on everyone. As a white man in a position of power, the CEO must avoid weaponizing vulnerability to protect himself from discomfort. Self-accountability for a white man in power must also include recognizing that traditional leadership norms, grounded in white patriarchal supremacy, prioritize his safety and comfort at the expense of others. When he behaves in ways that are harmful, his colleagues are more likely to empathize with him, affirm that he is a good person, encourage those harmed to see him as a fallible human being with good intentions, and tell those who are offended that they are overreacting, being too sensitive, or misinterpreting the situation.
The second is mutual accountability, which is based on defining a shared agenda for change, rather than using a top-down policing model rooted in punishment. Anti-racism grassroots organizers Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones describe defensiveness as a major characteristic of white supremacy culture. Mutual accountability challenges team members to move beyond defensiveness, to focus on the effects of their behavior instead of hiding behind their proclaimed good intentions, and to work to repair the harm caused. Mutual accountability requires a commitment to putting relationships ahead of the need to be right or be perceived as a “good person.” After reflecting on the impact of his actions, the CEO would next reach out to Melissa to set a time that is convenient for her to meet and discuss what happened. He’d ensure that the meeting happened on her terms and that she was comfortable. Melissa might request someone else join the conversation as a facilitator, witness, or ally. During the meeting, the CEO would listen to Melissa describe her experience and acknowledge the harm he caused. Together they would determine next steps to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
The third is community accountability, an approach pioneered by feminists of color working to end gender-based violence in the early 2000s. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence defines it as a process in which a community—in this case, a workplace—works together to do the following:
- Provide safety and support to those who have been targeted.
- Create and affirm values and practices that resist abuse and oppression, and encourage safety, support, and accountability.
- Develop sustainable strategies to address the abusive behavior of community member(s) and facilitate a process for them to account for their actions and transform their behavior.
- Commit to the ongoing development of all members of the community and the community itself to transform the conditions that reinforce oppression.
When racial harm happens in the workplace, it is not just about the individuals involved—it affects the entire community. Whether the harm takes the form of microaggressions, biased decision-making, or abuse of power, the whole organization, grounded in the first two forms of accountability, must come together to address this harm. Since the CEO’s microaggression happened in front of the entire staff, the group must also have the opportunity to come together and reflect on how they were affected by his behavior. If Melissa is comfortable with it, they would also report out on their conversation and actions taken to repair harm. This community conversation also affords the opportunity to review the conditions that made this incident possible. Does it reflect a pattern of behavior, not just for the CEO, but across the organization? What are other ways that interpersonal and institutional racism are playing out in the organization? These are the kinds of questions that every institution must contend with to understand the root causes of racial harm. While the ultimate goal is to prevent racist acts, the journey toward becoming a fully inclusive anti-racist organization requires building a culture rooted in accountability.
7 Practices for Building a Culture of Accountability
An organization can create a culture of accountability by implementing a set of practices rooted in anti-racism.
Acknowledge harm | First, you have to acknowledge that when harm happens, it doesn’t just affect the individuals involved but everyone within the organization. Too often, tepid attempts to address acts of racism only trigger deeper divides among team members because the full community was not engaged in the process of repairing the harm. An acknowledgement of harm is clear, direct, and focuses on the impact, not the intent.
Establish a set of internal anti-racist norms | Many organizations have a set of public-facing values that guide their work. But organizations must also define the internal behavioral norms that inform how staff treat each other. While values represent ideals that we want to live up to, norms are acceptable behaviors and attitudes that are socially enforced. In a culture of accountability, norms must set the standard for anti-racist practice and set clear boundaries in relationships. Accountability structures must also be in place if those norms are not honored. In the case of the CEO’s microaggression, there were no established standards; so the organization’s first act of community accountability needed to establish those group standards. Once standards are established, everyone, including the most powerful person in the room, must be held accountable to those standards.
Work to repair the harm | Repairing damaged relationships and broken trust will require time and regular check-ins to understand what people need and how those needs can be met. It’s important to center the needs of the person who has experienced the harm while also engaging others in thinking about what change needs to look like. What does redress for this particular act look like? Termination of employees may become necessary when the incident represents a pattern of abuse that violates antidiscrimination statues. These laws place the burden of proof on the harmed party and demand evidence of racist intent. But in a culture of accountability, termination is not the only form of redress. By depending solely on the law for accountability, an organization will fail to account for most acts of racism in the workplace. Repairing harm may require an apology, paid leave for the harmed staff person, and moving one person to a new office or team.
Skilled facilitation | Bring in a skilled facilitator to lead a process of conflict transformation with the parties involved or of community restoration with the entire organization. Facilitation only works if both parties are invested in preserving the relationship. In the case of a termination, the person who committed the harm may not even participate. Facilitating a process that addresses racial harm begins with an assessment of who is involved, takes their accounts of the incident, and asks what they hope to achieve. People should not be coerced into participating in the process, lest it breaks down and deepens the fractures in their working relationships.
Racial affinity groups | The formation of racial affinity groups can create space for peer learning, healing, and mutual accountability. White affinity groups must have an explicit agenda focused on anti-racist learning and practice. In this group, white staff can reflect on the ways they will participate in dismantling white supremacy and be more effective allies to their colleagues of color. These steps are not about shame or blame but about taking responsibility for improving the culture of the organization for everyone. For employees of color, affinity groups can provide a space to process instances of racial harm, offer mutual support, and identify strategies to eliminate conditions that made racial harm possible.
Create feedback loops | Creating accessible structures for giving and receive feedback is another vital component. These might range from anonymous surveys to a regular practice of mutual feedback in supervisory meetings. In fact, in the initial stages of addressing racial harm, leaders should be prepared to check-in regularly with updates on the process and follow-up whenever questions arise that they aren’t able to answer immediately.
Practice generative conflict | Organizations with a culture of accountability understand the difference between generative conflict, harm, and abuse. Most of us have been conditioned to avoid conflict or see it as a sign of failure. This fear and avoidance of conflict makes punishment all the more seductive. By punishing another person, we don’t have to experience the messy vulnerability that conflict produces. We also don’t have to account for the ways we’ve contributed to the breakdown in the relationship. Conflict—not harm or abuse—is a natural and necessary part of all relationships, including our professional ones. At work, team members don’t avoid conflict or hide behind professional standards rooted in white supremacy that prioritize politeness and impassivity over being clear and direct. In a culture of accountability, teams understand that conflict can deepen trust and advance relationships rooted in mutuality, self-awareness, and repair.
Establishing a culture of accountability requires a substantial investment in all employees. As writer and organizer Mia Mingus explains, “We need to move away from ‘holding people accountable’ and instead work to support people to proactively take accountability for themselves. It is not another person’s job to hold you accountable—that is your job.” While we are each responsible for practicing accountability before it is demanded of us, organizations can help individuals and teams practice accountability by implementing policies that prioritize accountability and make it a cultural norm.
Dismantling racism in the workplace cannot be achieved without disrupting norms of behavior, policies, and practices that preserve existing power dynamics. This is messy, challenging work, and you will make lots of mistakes along the way. But this is what is required to create an anti-racist organization. Because a truly anti-racist organization is an accountable one.
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Read more stories by Piper Anderson.