How Should We Confront a Lack of Fairness to Make the World a Better Place?

In the past few weeks, I’ve read several nonfiction books that promote how women can improve their standing in the world, to create more parity. That’s great, but the writers surprised me. That content was not part of the title or the blurb—and that’s not why I chose to read the book.

I’ve also listened to several (previously technical) podcasts that focused on how to serve various types of less-privileged people (anyone who wasn’t white, male, or upper middle class) and make their lives more fair. That wasn’t the point of those podcasts either.

I have very mixed feelings about these works. Part of me appreciates the writers and speakers for bringing these kinds of unfairness to my attention. The other part realizes the writers and speakers broke their explicit promises to me. Instead of offering me the value I expected, they decided to offer me something else—a problem they could not and did not solve. I can’t solve that problem either.

That’s because the writers and speakers framed the unfairness at the world level, not within the circle of their or my control.

When writers and speakers frame unfairness outside of our circle of control, I feel helpless. What can I do? Especially since I’ve known about and tried to change some of these unfair practices for decades.

If the writers and speakers can’t offer me even just one solution, something I can do, I don’t want to hear about the unfairness. We need more than seeing unfairness to make the world a better place. We need action, too.

That’s why I like guidelines about how to discuss unfairness and the state of the world.

My Guidelines for How to Confront the Lack of Fairness

Here are my guidelines:

• Write or speak to the people with the most influence to make structural changes first. Offer them solutions.
• Support the people with less influence by suggesting how they can coach (up) the people with the most influence. Or, take some of the responsibility from the people with the most influence and choose one reasonable thing to do.
• Create some action that the people with the least influence can do. Often, that’s about feedback (early and often).

When I wrote Hiring Geeks That Fit, I offered data about how diverse teams create better products. Then, I explained what diversity meant and how to achieve it. (Effective product development requires diversity of experience and personality, not just obvious diversity of color and background.)

Even if hiring managers didn’t choose to change, the team members who read the book could make other choices. Not really to go around the hiring manager, but to offer enough value with new and different people, that the hiring manager would think it was their idea. That’s the idea of taking a small piece of the responsibility to do one reasonable thing.

I wrote about the “Bring Me a Problem, Not a Solution” idea in Practical Ways to Manage Yourself (and in Do You Encourage People to Bring You Problems?). Sometimes, those of us with the least influence can coach up. More often, we need to offer feedback to the people making the various decisions.

In the case of insufficient female speakers, I have offered frequent—and private—feedback to conference organizers. I can’t influence people if they don’t want to hear from me.

We Can Make the World a Better Place with Influence

The more we use our influence, at whatever level, the more we can confront the unfairness we all see. But screaming into the void or at the audience does not help anyone solve these problems. Writers and speakers, if you break your promise by effectively screaming at me, I will stop reading and listening.

Instead, consider which choices your audience can take—within their circle of influence. When you, as a writer or speaker, suggest actions, we can all address the various kinds of unfairness and make the world a better place.

That’s the question this week: How should we confront a lack of fairness to make the world a better place?