Judging People by Ancestry Wastes Your Talent

How Leaders Build Fair Opportunity, Credible Standards, and Stronger Teams

I traveled to South Africa recently and visited Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum. I came across a display noting that more than 1,000 people changed color. Racism’s increasing absurdity during the regime’s final days was a telltale sign of its impending collapse.

Closer to home, Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner, recently posted a picture of South Asian students celebrating at a University of Texas football game. He presented their presence as evidence of a problem.

The picture showed students cheering for their university. French saw their ancestry and questioned their place.

That is the failure at the heart of racism: treating identity as evidence of an individual’s worth.

Bigotry can benefit the people who control a system. That helps explain why it persists. But those benefits come at others’ expense and impose organizational costs: a smaller talent pool, less reliable judgment, and weaker trust. For leaders building capable teams, racism, like every form of bigotry, works against the mission.

The same scrutiny applies to many DEI practices. Good people wanted to address discrimination and expand opportunity. Sadly, ideology often replaced common sense, and DEI was used as a cudgel, promoting what author John McWhorter termed Woke Racism. The divisiveness is a key reason so many companies are dismantling these programs.

I’ve struggled for years to find solid footing on this delicate issue. Trying to be “color-blind” can overlook how familiarity shapes affinity. That doesn’t make you a closet bigot. It makes you human.

Yet giving some groups preferential treatment at others’ expense creates resentment, encourages tokenism, and undermines confidence in the organization’s integrity.

Here’s the key question: How can you create a diverse team where everyone feels welcome and contributes their best? In my work with leaders in combat units, NFL teams, and businesses pursuing growth or turnarounds, three practices stand out.

1. Set Clear Standards

People should understand your performance and behavioral standards, knowing what’s acceptable and what’s not. I use the “Strike Zone” or Pressure Gauge model to show what meets expectations and what doesn’t, and I use real employee examples so people can see themselves meeting the standards.

Relying on familiar credentials, communication styles, or resemblance to the boss, for example, undermines the integrity of your standards.

Hire people who have demonstrated buy-in for your standards, and avoid those unlikely to buy in. People want to work alongside colleagues who share the same norms.

A standard earns credibility when it measures what matters and gives people a real opportunity to demonstrate it.

2. Open Opportunity and Support Success

Workplace diversity comes in three broad forms: cognitive, experiential, and biological. To expand workforce diversity, adjust your inputs: recruit beyond familiar networks, remove requirements that don’t predict success, and seek people who buy into your standards.

Avoid legislating specific outputs. Identity-based quotas damage your company’s integrity and undermine the people who were perceived as the beneficiaries of the favoritism.

I do believe that representation can serve a legitimate purpose. A company may need people who understand communities it struggles to reach and can earn their trust. Shared background may help, but identity alone does not establish that relationship.

Support and develop the people you hire. As we’ve seen too many times, “the first [insert identity group]” appointment risks tokenism if you neglect the person’s ability to succeed.

Learn what each person needs. It may be clearer feedback, training, a challenging assignment, or removing a barrier. Ask rather than infer those needs from a person’s identity.

Honest feedback is part of that support. Avoiding a difficult conversation can leave someone exposed to a problem their leader recognized but never helped them address.

3. Create Shared Contribution

Everyone deserves respect. Advancement should depend on contribution.

Work builds trust when people keep commitments, solve problems, offer fresh ideas, and speak kindly (that’s respectful, supportive candor).

How well are you building integrated, high-performing teams where everyone feels they belong and contributes their best? I walked past a company party last week and noticed six groups of people talking together. Each group was entirely male or female. People self-segregating like that could indicate challenges with belonging.

Substantive off-sites that get people working together outside their comfort zones are powerful opportunities to build trust and create shared contribution. I see this effect every time I host off-sites at places like Gettysburg and Normandy.

Racism is morally repugnant. It’s also strategically foolish: judging people by ancestry rather than ability wastes talent and weakens trust.

For decades, baseball’s racial barrier excluded extraordinary players. Jackie Robinson’s performance exposed the waste, but someone had to open the door.

About Author

Chris Kolenda

I work with leaders who want to build unshakeable business endurance.

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