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According to one Executive Jobs Website, an article talking about workplace discrimination states that discrimination starts at the top in many organizations. A survey the article features reports that people still find discrimination in their workplace – about 54% of the respondents!
However, the article is not clear as to what type of discrimination the respondents are experiencing. I find it interesting that most people think that discrimination is visible, as if it’s something you can easily identify, punish the bad guys and protect the innocent. I find in most of my experiences that discrimination is rarely blatant and rarely that evident, and that the most powerful way to practice discrimination today is simply to ignore the career of an executive or a manager.
In today’s marketplace, if you are not being actively promoted and championed, you’re not likely to be on any fast career track or any kind of successful career track. And what I have seen and actually experienced is that rather than blatantly and explicitly discriminating and denying people opportunities, what senior leaders do is simply don’t spend any energy at all or make any effort to champion people. And, by most definitions, that wouldn’t be discrimination.
It’s a subjective response that executives can make all the time as to who they want to spend their time with and why. In today’s hypersensitive areas of legality around discrimination, rarely do I find overt discrimination. What I see is more of a “sin of omission,” where executives simply let careers in their company languish from a lack of effective succession planning.
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