Who makes your dinner guest list?

During breakfast on Monday, my son turned to me and said “Last night was really fun. Thank you for having them over.” That is an exact quote and, I think we can all agree, an utterly bizarre thing for a nine-year-old to say. It was sandwiched between two long soliloquies about anime, so I’m fairly sure he’s still my child and not a clone.

“Them” was Di Le, Asli Aydin, Misti Cain, and Diana Wolosin. We all met (along with the absent but beloved Kevin Bethune) at the speaker dinner for DDX San Diego and it became a rollicking WhatsApp group that resulted in a followup dinner at my house. I asked them before tagging but won’t say more; the Chatham House rule applies.

My son is used to explicit discussions of diversity, because my co-parent, my partner, and I are all aligned on being clear with him about our beliefs and how we came to them. And most parents spend at least some anxious midnight hours worrying about how we talk to our children.

Ditto executives. CEOs often have multi-person executive communications teams responsible for helping them with messaging for employees, investors, and the public.

But I know of few executives who have an equally sized team responsible for making sure they are behaving in line with that communication. Exec comms is a role; exec behavior change isn’t. And this represents a misallocation of resources.

Imagine four CEOs. CEO A talks about diversity and has a diverse set of leaders around them. B talks about diversity but doesn’t have it on their team. C doesn’t talk about diversity but has a diverse team. D neither talks about diversity nor has a diverse team.

Intuitively, A is the best and D is the worst; as with any 2×2, the matching corners are easy. And in the mixed corners, intuitively C is better than B: it is better to walk than talk, given the choice.

The surprising finding is that B is actually often just as bad as D, and some situations may even be worse. This isn’t irrational. If someone doesn’t do or talk about something, the possibility at least exists that they are unaware and that they might change their behavior with awareness. But if they talk about it and don’t do it, that possibility is closed off; our brain naturally says “if they are aware but still not doing it, there must be good reasons I shouldn’t do it either.”

There are exceptions: leaders can talk about their struggle with a behavior rather than an accomplished reality and that tends to reduce the anti-signal. But ultimately, behaviors rule. Which means we need to be investing both time and money in making sure that we are behaving in ways that are congruent with the messages we send.

At home, you can use the dinner party test. Who was the last group of non-family people that your kid saw around your table? Do they accurately represent the values and beliefs you have expressed? Certainly those four women do and I am grateful for their friendship.

At work, consider the same. What shows people that you mean what you say? Are you sure you’re doing it?