Is Your Workplace Culture Too “Woke” to Joke?

Is your workplace too woke to joke? I hope not! A culturally competent workplace should be fun and relaxed. If everyone worries about being canceled, you have a toxic workplace. I remind my clients that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are for everyone. The goal is to create an environment where all employees can thrive, use their gifts, and rise to the highest levels of the organization.

Should your workplace be “woke?” Should your company be “anti-woke”?

Is wokeness a good thing or a bad thing? Well, the term is definitely popular in the political sphere, but what does woke mean in the workplace? Let’s look at a few definitions of woke.

• Equity in the Center defines a woke organization as: “an organization focused on culture and creating an environment where everyone is comfortable sharing their experiences and is equipped to talk about race equity and inequities. The primary goal is inclusion and internal change in behaviors, policies, and practices.”

I like this definition because it is inclusive and focuses on skills and systemic changes.

• The Google dictionary defines woke as: “alert to injustice in society, especially racism. ‘we need to stay angry, and stay woke‘”

While I agree that we need to fight racism and injustice in the workplace, I am not sure we need to be constantly angry. That is not sustainable or empowering for anyone. An angry workplace is a dangerous and unproductive workplace.

• One of the earliest use of the term in the mainstream comes from an article written by the Black New York City novelist William Melvin Kelley titled, ‘If you’re woke, you dig it’ – meaning if you’re in the know, you understand.

I like the original intent of the term. Being woke means you get it. You aren’t asleep at the wheel of life like Rowdy Roddy Pipper, pre-sunglasses, in the movie They Live. Plus, the 60’s African American vernacular is so cool, baby. It’s all peace, love, and platform heels.

Don’t Sacrifice Diversity & Inclusion for Woke Culture

As your cultural competency navigator, my five tips for creating a diverse and inclusive culture are:

1. Create your internal definitions for terms. Don’t let popular culture, politicians, the media, or haters define your DEI terms. You know your goals and what you want to communicate to your team based on your strategic goals. Here is a free download to get you started.
2. Focus on workplace skills and systemic changes. Workplace DEI and training are not about feelings and personal preferences but about workplace goals, expectations, and systems. You are not the morality police; keep the main thing the main thing, as they say. Be specific about what you are doing and why you are doing it in the workplace.
3. Don’t focus on being woke; be alert and strategic. Strategy wins the day, and culture will even trump that. Being a culturally competent organization means doing the right thing and creating a culture where everyone can thrive. You maximize the “fit” for those that you hire. You hire the best, most creative people, and your search process is deep and wide.
4. Your training needs to be engaging and foster communication. Communication is the key to any successful DEI training. The Way We Talk Can Change the Way we work; the first program I offer to my clients is a communication program. If we can’t first talk to each other as human beings, it will be impossible to move past our identity differences to have a productive and harmonious workplace.
5. Be human. Many of us spend more time being awake working than we spend at home engaging our family. Life is too short not to enjoy it. In our effort to be culturally competent, let’s create a culture where people enjoy coming to work and being a part of the team. We are all human with fears, dreams, insecurity, and bias. Our DEI efforts need to recognize our human factor and the imperfection of being human. We will make mistakes, we need reassurance, and we need clear policies and procedures that consider our human shortcomings.

Hey, don’t be too woke to joke. We can reach our strategic DEI goals without canceling folks and creating an inhospitable workplace.

Are you struggling with how to make that happen?

Check out my DEI workshops and speaking topics. They are practical, engaging, and fun.

I have worked with and built diverse teams while maintaining a hospitable and enjoyable workplace. Reach out to find out how you create a culturally competent work environment.