Our decisions in negotiation depend greatly on our predictions about how the future will unfold. But, as has never been more apparent than in 2020, the future has a way of surprising us. In his new book Perfectly Confident: How to Calibrate Your Decisions Wisely (Harper Business, 2020), University of California, Berkeley professor Don Moore draws on his research and personal obsession with confidence to explain how we can make better decisions about the future, our counterparts, and other critical factors in negotiation and beyond.

Negotiation Briefings: People often fear negotiation, which suggests they lack confidence in their ability. But you’ve found that overconfidence causes real problems in negotiation. When are we overconfident versus underconfident in negotiation?

Don Moore: Underconfidence in negotiation is a real issue. It’s common for people to be reluctant to initiate negotiations; they may feel inadequate or be aware of their own constraints and lack of knowledge of the other side. This is just one of many circumstances in which the average person fears that they are below average on a difficult task because they are more aware of their own challenges than they are of others’ challenges. It’s easy to see this dynamic at work if you tell both sides in a negotiation that they’re facing a deadline. Both will think, Oh, that’s bad for me and good for the other side. In fact, the deadline must affect both sides equally if it ends the negotiation for both sides. That’s one of many circumstances in which when the task gets harder, everyone becomes less confident about their performance relative to that of their rivals.

NB: How serious a problem is overconfidence in negotiation?

DM: Overconfidence leads to a number of important results. It’s worth clarifying the different forms of overconfidence. My research distinguishes overestimation, or thinking you’re better than you actually are, from overplacement, which describes exaggerated beliefs that you’re better than others. The third variety of overconfidence is overprecision, which my research highlights as the most persistent, robust, and pervasive form of overconfidence. It manifests as negotiators being too sure that they know what’s going on and investing too little in investigating and understanding the perspective, interests, constraints, and motives of the other side. Because of overprecision, when the other side does something that you don’t understand, you’ll be tempted to decide they’re crazy, irrational, stupid, or somehow evil. By asking questions and gathering information, you can understand their behavior better and get a road map for working out a mutually acceptable arrangement.

NB: How else can negotiators better calibrate their confidence?

DM: Debiasing often involves asking, Why might I be wrong? What assumptions am I making that are misguided? and How can I better orient and calibrate my judgments? When it comes to overplacement, better calibration might involve thinking hard about your BATNA [best alternative to a negotiated agreement] and theirs. How bad would it be if you don’t come to agreement? What will the other side do? If you can get some inside information about the strength of the other side’s BATNA, that can be very useful in calibrating your confidence.

NB: How can we be appropriately confident when assessing the future, including parties’ ability to meet deal terms?

DM: Every negotiation, every big decision depends on a forecast of the future. Too often, negotiators fall into the trap of trying to predict the future, as if they could anticipate exactly what is going to happen. Such predictions are a fool’s errand. It is much better to think about the future as a distribution of possible outcomes where there is real uncertainty about how the product will sell, your counterpart’s future profitability, how much the issues in the negotiation are worth, and even your future preferences. You have to prepare for a range of possible outcomes, from the very good to the very bad, and consider how likely each one is and how you might insulate yourself from the risks posed by that uncertainty. Then talk explicitly with the other side about building contingencies into your contract to help form a more durable agreement.

NB: What should I do if I sense that my negotiating counterpart is overconfident?

DM: Such people are potentially exploitable because they are making a mistake, but you shouldn’t prefer an overconfident counterpart. They will make mistakes that may be costly to both of you, such as holding out for too much or behaving rudely or aggressively, making it harder for you to negotiate for mutual gain.

A useful tool for calibrating your confidence and helping others calibrate theirs comes from poker player Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets. Duke writes about how poker players challenge each other’s confidence by inviting each other, “Wanna bet?” There are lots of circumstances in negotiation where you could say, “Wanna bet?” The other side makes some claim or offers some assurance, and you can build a contingent contract around that. Each side bets on what they think is going to happen. Be aware that a well-informed counterpart could take advantage of your overconfidence by inviting you, “Wanna bet?” So you’d better be pretty sure that you’re willing to stand by your claim before placing a bet.

Our decisions in negotiation depend greatly on our predictions about how the future will unfold. But, as has never been more apparent than in 2020, the future has a way of surprising us. In his new book Perfectly Confident: How to Calibrate Your Decisions Wisely (Harper Business, 2020), University of California, Berkeley professor Don Moore draws on his research and personal obsession with confidence to explain how we can make better decisions about the future, our counterparts, and other critical factors in negotiation and beyond.

Negotiation Briefings: People often fear negotiation, which suggests they lack confidence in their ability. But you’ve found that overconfidence causes real problems in negotiation. When are we overconfident versus underconfident in negotiation?

Don Moore: Underconfidence in negotiation is a real issue. It’s common for people to be reluctant to initiate negotiations; they may feel inadequate or be aware of their own constraints and lack of knowledge of the other side. This is just one of many circumstances in which the average person fears that they are below average on a difficult task because they are more aware of their own challenges than they are of others’ challenges. It’s easy to see this dynamic at work if you tell both sides in a negotiation that they’re facing a deadline. Both will think, Oh, that’s bad for me and good for the other side. In fact, the deadline must affect both sides equally if it ends the negotiation for both sides. That’s one of many circumstances in which when the task gets harder, everyone becomes less confident about their performance relative to that of their rivals.

NB: How serious a problem is overconfidence in negotiation?

DM: Overconfidence leads to a number of important results. It’s worth clarifying the different forms of overconfidence. My research distinguishes overestimation, or thinking you’re better than you actually are, from overplacement, which describes exaggerated beliefs that you’re better than others. The third variety of overconfidence is overprecision, which my research highlights as the most persistent, robust, and pervasive form of overconfidence. It manifests as negotiators being too sure that they know what’s going on and investing too little in investigating and understanding the perspective, interests, constraints, and motives of the other side. Because of overprecision, when the other side does something that you don’t understand, you’ll be tempted to decide they’re crazy, irrational, stupid, or somehow evil. By asking questions and gathering information, you can understand their behavior better and get a road map for working out a mutually acceptable arrangement.

NB: How else can negotiators better calibrate their confidence?

DM: Debiasing often involves asking, Why might I be wrong? What assumptions am I making that are misguided? and How can I better orient and calibrate my judgments? When it comes to overplacement, better calibration might involve thinking hard about your BATNA [best alternative to a negotiated agreement] and theirs. How bad would it be if you don’t come to agreement? What will the other side do? If you can get some inside information about the strength of the other side’s BATNA, that can be very useful in calibrating your confidence.

NB: How can we be appropriately confident when assessing the future, including parties’ ability to meet deal terms?

DM: Every negotiation, every big decision depends on a forecast of the future. Too often, negotiators fall into the trap of trying to predict the future, as if they could anticipate exactly what is going to happen. Such predictions are a fool’s errand. It is much better to think about the future as a distribution of possible outcomes where there is real uncertainty about how the product will sell, your counterpart’s future profitability, how much the issues in the negotiation are worth, and even your future preferences. You have to prepare for a range of possible outcomes, from the very good to the very bad, and consider how likely each one is and how you might insulate yourself from the risks posed by that uncertainty. Then talk explicitly with the other side about building contingencies into your contract to help form a more durable agreement.

NB: What should I do if I sense that my negotiating counterpart is overconfident?

DM: Such people are potentially exploitable because they are making a mistake, but you shouldn’t prefer an overconfident counterpart. They will make mistakes that may be costly to both of you, such as holding out for too much or behaving rudely or aggressively, making it harder for you to negotiate for mutual gain.

A useful tool for calibrating your confidence and helping others calibrate theirs comes from poker player Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets. Duke writes about how poker players challenge each other’s confidence by inviting each other, “Wanna bet?” There are lots of circumstances in negotiation where you could say, “Wanna bet?” The other side makes some claim or offers some assurance, and you can build a contingent contract around that. Each side bets on what they think is going to happen. Be aware that a well-informed counterpart could take advantage of your overconfidence by inviting you, “Wanna bet?” So you’d better be pretty sure that you’re willing to stand by your claim before placing a bet.

Since 2013, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been organizing nonviolent action to defund police forces and invest in Black communities. For years, many Americans—particular White Americans—viewed BLM as a radical fringe group. That swiftly changed in May. Horrified by a bystander’s video of the death of George Floyd, millions of people worldwide have flocked to the BLM cause, taking to the streets to protest police brutality. For many, what had seemed like a niche political movement became a civil rights crusade.

The groundswell of support is giving BLM the power to effect significant societal change, and negotiation will be a crucial tool in those efforts. Not surprisingly, many of the heroes of social-justice activism—including Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Václav Havel—have also been masterful negotiators. We look at how the two fields of nonviolent action and negotiation intertwine and can bring about broader change together.

Beyond hashtags and marches

Community organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi launched the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2013 as a hashtag in an online campaign protesting the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. BLM members held their first nonviolent protest in Ferguson, Mo., after the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a White police officer.

A decentralized movement that eschews hierarchy, BLM has 16 chapters in U.S. and Canadian cities that have organized thousands of demonstrations and protests. Chapters commit to the organization’s guiding principles, which include working for freedom and justice for all, acknowledging and respecting people’s differences and commonalities, and practicing empathy. BLM’s policy demands have included community control of the police, reparations for slavery, and ending the death penalty.

To further its goals, BLM began branching out from protests to legal action. In March 2018, for example, BLM Chicago and other activist groups sued the City of Chicago and its police department for condoning and covering up officers’ use of excessive force against racial minorities. The plaintiffs agreed to call off their suits in exchange for being included in negotiations for federally mandated reforms of the Chicago Police Department. Ultimately, however, BLM Chicago was dissatisfied with the final consent decree, saying it failed to meet many of their concerns. BLM has also participated in negotiations that have led to new drug intervention programs in Washington, D.C., and a pilot program in Dallas that puts social workers, rather than the police, in charge of responding to mental-health-related 911 calls.

Where nonviolent action and negotiation overlap

Nonviolent action and negotiation have much more in common than theoristsand practitioners from each field might assume, write University of St. Thomas professor Amy C. Finnegan and Program on Negotiation managing director Susan Hackley in a 2008 article in the Negotiation Journal. “Both are action-oriented strategies for persuading others to act in a way that meets one’s needs and interests,” they write.

Nonviolent action encompasses protests, strikes, economic boycotts, civil disobedience, media campaigns, and other methods of engaging in conflict without using physical violence. Civilian-based groups carry out nonviolent action to motivate powerful parties to agree to political or social change. In negotiation, meanwhile, individuals or groups try to influence others through direct engagement— including haggling, joint problem solving, and persuasion techniques.

Finnegan and Hackley identify the following three areas of overlap between nonviolent action and negotiation:

1. Engaging with conflict. Both fields—in theory and practice— view conflict as something to be actively engaged in rather than avoided. When conflict is handled constructively, they assert, meaningful change can occur.
2. An emphasis on power. Negotiation theorists and practitioners highlight the importance of assessing one’s relative power in a bargaining situation and working to improve it. Likewise, activists carefully analyze their counterpart’s strengths and weaknesses, looking for vulnerabilities.
3. Strategic action. Both fields focus closely on the processes people use to try to reach their goals. Thorough preparation, framing, coalition building, and active listening are common process strategies in both.

A powerful combination

Nonviolent action and negotiation are often more powerful when combined than they are on their own, note Finnegan and Hackley.

The day after Floyd’s death, the four officers who had been on the scene were fired but did not face criminal charges. As protests and media attention grew nationwide, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minnesota arrested Derek Chauvin for third-degree murder and manslaughter but did not charge the other three officers. Facing pressure from community activists, Floyd’s family, and Minneapolis City Council members, Minnesota governor Tim Walz took the unusual move of assigning state attorney general Keith Ellison to take over the case. Ellison then had the other three officers arrested and added second-degree murder to the charges against Chauvin. Both nonviolent action and negotiation—in the form of personal appeals and pressure—prompted leaders to act.

Now that the BLM movement has gone “mainstream,” to quote the Washington Post, its leaders and members have abundant opportunities to exert influence through negotiation.

Indeed, one strategist for the movement, Thenjiwe McHarris, told the Post that it is “meaningless and harmful” for people to join marches and post “Black Lives Matter” on social media without advocating directly for policy change.

What comes next?

Activists will need to debate when to protest and when to negotiate. Nonviolent action often is a precursor to negotiation, as Martin Luther King Jr. observed in his famous 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” Amid the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, some activists accused Nelson Mandela of engaging in negotiations prematurely, before nonviolent protest had achieved sufficient gains. Others believed that after 27 years in jail, he had waited long enough to negotiate.

Social-justice activists sometimes resist negotiation because they assume it will require them to sacrifice their beliefs through capitulation or appeasement. Activists can avoid this pitfall by being clear about their goals and aspirations.

“Many internal negotiations will likely need to happen within the BLM community,” Hackley told Negotiation Briefings. “Given that it’s a presidential election year, the media will play a role in framing the issues, Congress may or may not act, and ‘defunding the police’ is easily mischaracterized, there is a lot of work to do when it comes to strategizing about next steps.” Social-justice activists sometimes resist negotiation because they assume it will require them to sacrifice their beliefs through capitulation or appeasement. Activists can avoid this pitfall by being clear about their goals and aspirations, says Hackley. “What is the greatest achievement they could aspire to? What are their short-term and long-term goals? How much are they willing to settle for?” she asks. “There will always be people who say activists gave in too much and others who say they fought too hard. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.—were they sellouts?”

The power of yes—and no

Activists also need to acknowledge the likely advantages of collaborating with their opponents to create value rather than just competing. “Negotiations often succeed when the opposing parties agree, together, to face the problem, not face off against each other in an adversarial way,” says Hackley. “How you frame the problem matters. President Trump, Congressional Republicans, and some municipal leaders view the protests for social justice as a law-and-order issue. Protesters argue that it is past time to address systemic racism in the United States and ensure ‘equal justice for all.’ Where is there common ground? Shared interests? Points of influence and persuasion? Engaging constructively with conflict is how we bring about
change, and it is hard work.”

As for business negotiators, there is a great deal they can learn from activists, including the power of building coalitions with like-minded others, the importance of keeping one’s principles front of mind, and the value of working to resolve interteam conflict.

Negotiation often revolves around “getting to yes,” while nonviolent action often focuses on saying “no”—no to injustice, no to brutality, noted William Ury, a distinguished senior fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project, in a 2005 interview. “We need both yes and no in this world,” Ury said. “Yes without no is appeasement, and no without yes is war. … We need both yes and no together.

Since 2013, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been organizing nonviolent action to defund police forces and invest in Black communities. For years, many Americans—particular White Americans—viewed BLM as a radical fringe group. That swiftly changed in May. Horrified by a bystander’s video of the death of George Floyd, millions of people worldwide have flocked to the BLM cause, taking to the streets to protest police brutality. For many, what had seemed like a niche political movement became a civil rights crusade.

The groundswell of support is giving BLM the power to effect significant societal change, and negotiation will be a crucial tool in those efforts. Not surprisingly, many of the heroes of social-justice activism—including Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Václav Havel—have also been masterful negotiators. We look at how the two fields of nonviolent action and negotiation intertwine and can bring about broader change together.

Beyond hashtags and marches

Community organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi launched the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2013 as a hashtag in an online campaign protesting the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. BLM members held their first nonviolent protest in Ferguson, Mo., after the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a White police officer.

A decentralized movement that eschews hierarchy, BLM has 16 chapters in U.S. and Canadian cities that have organized thousands of demonstrations and protests. Chapters commit to the organization’s guiding principles, which include working for freedom and justice for all, acknowledging and respecting people’s differences and commonalities, and practicing empathy. BLM’s policy demands have included community control of the police, reparations for slavery, and ending the death penalty.

To further its goals, BLM began branching out from protests to legal action. In March 2018, for example, BLM Chicago and other activist groups sued the City of Chicago and its police department for condoning and covering up officers’ use of excessive force against racial minorities. The plaintiffs agreed to call off their suits in exchange for being included in negotiations for federally mandated reforms of the Chicago Police Department. Ultimately, however, BLM Chicago was dissatisfied with the final consent decree, saying it failed to meet many of their concerns. BLM has also participated in negotiations that have led to new drug intervention programs in Washington, D.C., and a pilot program in Dallas that puts social workers, rather than the police, in charge of responding to mental-health-related 911 calls.

Where nonviolent action and negotiation overlap

Nonviolent action and negotiation have much more in common than theoristsand practitioners from each field might assume, write University of St. Thomas professor Amy C. Finnegan and Program on Negotiation managing director Susan Hackley in a 2008 article in the Negotiation Journal. “Both are action-oriented strategies for persuading others to act in a way that meets one’s needs and interests,” they write.

Nonviolent action encompasses protests, strikes, economic boycotts, civil disobedience, media campaigns, and other methods of engaging in conflict without using physical violence. Civilian-based groups carry out nonviolent action to motivate powerful parties to agree to political or social change. In negotiation, meanwhile, individuals or groups try to influence others through direct engagement— including haggling, joint problem solving, and persuasion techniques.

Finnegan and Hackley identify the following three areas of overlap between nonviolent action and negotiation:

1. Engaging with conflict. Both fields—in theory and practice— view conflict as something to be actively engaged in rather than avoided. When conflict is handled constructively, they assert, meaningful change can occur.
2. An emphasis on power. Negotiation theorists and practitioners highlight the importance of assessing one’s relative power in a bargaining situation and working to improve it. Likewise, activists carefully analyze their counterpart’s strengths and weaknesses, looking for vulnerabilities.
3. Strategic action. Both fields focus closely on the processes people use to try to reach their goals. Thorough preparation, framing, coalition building, and active listening are common process strategies in both.

A powerful combination

Nonviolent action and negotiation are often more powerful when combined than they are on their own, note Finnegan and Hackley.

The day after Floyd’s death, the four officers who had been on the scene were fired but did not face criminal charges. As protests and media attention grew nationwide, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minnesota arrested Derek Chauvin for third-degree murder and manslaughter but did not charge the other three officers. Facing pressure from community activists, Floyd’s family, and Minneapolis City Council members, Minnesota governor Tim Walz took the unusual move of assigning state attorney general Keith Ellison to take over the case. Ellison then had the other three officers arrested and added second-degree murder to the charges against Chauvin. Both nonviolent action and negotiation—in the form of personal appeals and pressure—prompted leaders to act.

Now that the BLM movement has gone “mainstream,” to quote the Washington Post, its leaders and members have abundant opportunities to exert influence through negotiation.

Indeed, one strategist for the movement, Thenjiwe McHarris, told the Post that it is “meaningless and harmful” for people to join marches and post “Black Lives Matter” on social media without advocating directly for policy change.

What comes next?

Activists will need to debate when to protest and when to negotiate. Nonviolent action often is a precursor to negotiation, as Martin Luther King Jr. observed in his famous 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” Amid the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, some activists accused Nelson Mandela of engaging in negotiations prematurely, before nonviolent protest had achieved sufficient gains. Others believed that after 27 years in jail, he had waited long enough to negotiate.

Social-justice activists sometimes resist negotiation because they assume it will require them to sacrifice their beliefs through capitulation or appeasement. Activists can avoid this pitfall by being clear about their goals and aspirations.

“Many internal negotiations will likely need to happen within the BLM community,” Hackley told Negotiation Briefings. “Given that it’s a presidential election year, the media will play a role in framing the issues, Congress may or may not act, and ‘defunding the police’ is easily mischaracterized, there is a lot of work to do when it comes to strategizing about next steps.” Social-justice activists sometimes resist negotiation because they assume it will require them to sacrifice their beliefs through capitulation or appeasement. Activists can avoid this pitfall by being clear about their goals and aspirations, says Hackley. “What is the greatest achievement they could aspire to? What are their short-term and long-term goals? How much are they willing to settle for?” she asks. “There will always be people who say activists gave in too much and others who say they fought too hard. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.—were they sellouts?”

The power of yes—and no

Activists also need to acknowledge the likely advantages of collaborating with their opponents to create value rather than just competing. “Negotiations often succeed when the opposing parties agree, together, to face the problem, not face off against each other in an adversarial way,” says Hackley. “How you frame the problem matters. President Trump, Congressional Republicans, and some municipal leaders view the protests for social justice as a law-and-order issue. Protesters argue that it is past time to address systemic racism in the United States and ensure ‘equal justice for all.’ Where is there common ground? Shared interests? Points of influence and persuasion? Engaging constructively with conflict is how we bring about
change, and it is hard work.”

As for business negotiators, there is a great deal they can learn from activists, including the power of building coalitions with like-minded others, the importance of keeping one’s principles front of mind, and the value of working to resolve interteam conflict.

Negotiation often revolves around “getting to yes,” while nonviolent action often focuses on saying “no”—no to injustice, no to brutality, noted William Ury, a distinguished senior fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project, in a 2005 interview. “We need both yes and no in this world,” Ury said. “Yes without no is appeasement, and no without yes is war. … We need both yes and no together.

As a model of how negotiators can make lemonade out of lemons amid the global pandemic, the agreement
between the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) to wrap up their disrupted 2019–20 season appeared to stand out as a nearly textbook case. The two sides reached a deal in early June aimed at allowing 22 of the league’s 30 teams to finish out their season beginning in July as safely as possible—and in Disney World, no less. But as news of the agreement emerged, displeasure with it began building within the rank and file.

Nothing but blue skies?

When the NBA season was halted on March 11, about 80% of the season had been played. The league soon began scouting out sports complexes where, to reduce transmission of Covid-19, the rest of the season could be carried out in isolation. Games would be played without spectators and televised.

Disney World’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, a sprawling 220-acre facility near Orlando, Fla., quickly emerged as the front-runner, Brooks Barnes reports in the New York Times. The self-contained nature of the complex was immediately appealing. Players, coaches, and staff could stay at hotels in a gated area of the Disney World resort, creating a semiprotective bubble from the virus. (The resort was set to begin a phased reopening on July 17.) Three arenas could be divided into 20 basketball courts, and the complex is already wired for broadcasting, according to the Times.

The fact that NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Disney executive chairman Robert Iger had already established a “bromance” built on successful past negotiations helped move talks forward, the Times reports. Disney pays the NBA an estimated $1.4 billion annually to broadcast games on ESPN and ABC; NBA would pay tens of millions of that back to rent the ESPN facilities. The NBA’s presence would give Disney an implicit public-safety stamp of approval around the time tourists return to its major theme parks.

A significant number of players were frustrated by their lack of say in decisions that put their health on the line.

Closing in on a deal

The NBA’s talks with Disney were intertwined with negotiations with the NBPA, led by president Chris Paul, a point guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder. The thorniest question was how many teams to bring to Florida. Given that basketball is an indoor contact sport likely to have a relatively high risk of Covid-19 transmission, the parties agreed not to bring all 30 NBA teams to Florida. However, bringing only the 16 teams in playoff positions would be unfair to teams that had been close to securing playoff spots when the season was halted and, perhaps a bigger concern, would limit broadcast revenue.

Spending most of May “looking for a compromise ranging from 20 to 24 teams,” the two sides split the difference at 22, Marc Stein reports in the Times. Following a training period, each team is scheduled to play eight regular-season games for a total of 88 games, followed by the league’s usual four best-of-seven-games playoff rounds. The remainder of the season is set to unfold from July 31 to October 12.

To reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission, each team would be limited to about 35 people, including players, down from the usual 50-plus. A limited number of family members would be able to join team members after the first round of playoffs. The parties held off on negotiating specific coronavirus-protection measures, such as a possible quarantine upon arrival at the resort and the mode and frequency of coronavirus testing.

Mounting objections

As talks were wrapping up, everything changed. George Floyd was killed on May 25, and many NBA players—about three-quarters of whom are Black—sank into grief, anger, and frustration. The league and the leadership of most teams reached out to employees to acknowledge their pain. But New York Knicks owner James Dolan, a friend of President Donald Trump, declined to release a statement denouncing Floyd’s killing or supporting the Black Lives Matter movement—a decision deeply troubling to many.

Still, plans to restart the season went forward. On June 4, NBA owners approved the negotiated agreement in a 29-to-1 vote. NBPA representatives approved the deal the same day.

Misgivings arise

The story was not over, however.

To begin with, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts told ESPN that she was concerned about the NBA’s tentative plan to open training camps for the 2020-21 season on November 10. That was only about a month after the scheduled end of the NBA Finals in Orlando, two months less than the usual break between seasons. Starting the season in early December would allow players to play in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

But a bigger problem was brewing: A significant number of players were frustrated by their lack of say in decisions that put their health on the line and that would isolate them from their families. The NBPA comprises nine executive committee members, led by Paul, and one player representative from each of the 30 teams, reports CBS Sports. Some players felt they were not adequately consulted during the approval process. All players who would be going to Florida should have had a vote, they argued, particularly given that Covid-19 was surging in the Orlando area. Each player may decide whether to join his team, but those who don’t come to Florida won’t be paid. Team doctors are also assessing players’ health and may decide to hold back those who are at high risk of being harmed by the coronavirus, such as those with asthma.

An uncertain outcome

In light of the George Floyd tragedy, “some players believe it’s bad optics for a league comprised predominantly of Black men to be sequestered in one location for up to three months merely to entertain the masses and ease the league’s economic burden,” Chris Haynes wrote in Yahoo Sports.

“We’re out here marching and protesting,” one Black player told Haynes, “and yet we all leave our families in these scary times and gather to perform at a place where the owners won’t be at? What type of sense does that make? We’ll be going backwards. That place isn’t that magical.”

The fact that the league hadn’t yet laid out its safety protocols when the agreement was reached added to the players’ concern. A growing group of them reportedly began meeting on Zoom to discuss how they might take a stand. Meanwhile, some of the game’s top players had the opposite concern—that the Disney “bubble” was too restrictive, according to CBS Sports, making for “very little common ground in an already divisive situation.”

The situation highlights the importance in negotiation of being responsive to changing events. Both the pandemic and the upheaval sparked by Floyd’s death have created immense uncertainty for negotiators.

Although the parties to the NBA deal may have believed they arrived at a win-win agreement, players’ heightened awareness of the health risks and constraints they are being expected to assume in the service of profit cast doubt on that belief. By late June, several NBA players had decided to sit out the rest of the season for various reasons, such as guarding against injury, protecting vulnerable family members from Covid-19, and protesting racial injustice. With several NBA players testing positive for the disease even before teams headed to Florida, it remains highly uncertain whether players and staff can stay safe—and whether the league’s gamble will have been worth it.

As a model of how negotiators can make lemonade out of lemons amid the global pandemic, the agreement
between the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) to wrap up their disrupted 2019–20 season appeared to stand out as a nearly textbook case. The two sides reached a deal in early June aimed at allowing 22 of the league’s 30 teams to finish out their season beginning in July as safely as possible—and in Disney World, no less. But as news of the agreement emerged, displeasure with it began building within the rank and file.

Nothing but blue skies?

When the NBA season was halted on March 11, about 80% of the season had been played. The league soon began scouting out sports complexes where, to reduce transmission of Covid-19, the rest of the season could be carried out in isolation. Games would be played without spectators and televised.

Disney World’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, a sprawling 220-acre facility near Orlando, Fla., quickly emerged as the front-runner, Brooks Barnes reports in the New York Times. The self-contained nature of the complex was immediately appealing. Players, coaches, and staff could stay at hotels in a gated area of the Disney World resort, creating a semiprotective bubble from the virus. (The resort was set to begin a phased reopening on July 17.) Three arenas could be divided into 20 basketball courts, and the complex is already wired for broadcasting, according to the Times.

The fact that NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Disney executive chairman Robert Iger had already established a “bromance” built on successful past negotiations helped move talks forward, the Times reports. Disney pays the NBA an estimated $1.4 billion annually to broadcast games on ESPN and ABC; NBA would pay tens of millions of that back to rent the ESPN facilities. The NBA’s presence would give Disney an implicit public-safety stamp of approval around the time tourists return to its major theme parks.

A significant number of players were frustrated by their lack of say in decisions that put their health on the line.

Closing in on a deal

The NBA’s talks with Disney were intertwined with negotiations with the NBPA, led by president Chris Paul, a point guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder. The thorniest question was how many teams to bring to Florida. Given that basketball is an indoor contact sport likely to have a relatively high risk of Covid-19 transmission, the parties agreed not to bring all 30 NBA teams to Florida. However, bringing only the 16 teams in playoff positions would be unfair to teams that had been close to securing playoff spots when the season was halted and, perhaps a bigger concern, would limit broadcast revenue.

Spending most of May “looking for a compromise ranging from 20 to 24 teams,” the two sides split the difference at 22, Marc Stein reports in the Times. Following a training period, each team is scheduled to play eight regular-season games for a total of 88 games, followed by the league’s usual four best-of-seven-games playoff rounds. The remainder of the season is set to unfold from July 31 to October 12.

To reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission, each team would be limited to about 35 people, including players, down from the usual 50-plus. A limited number of family members would be able to join team members after the first round of playoffs. The parties held off on negotiating specific coronavirus-protection measures, such as a possible quarantine upon arrival at the resort and the mode and frequency of coronavirus testing.

Mounting objections

As talks were wrapping up, everything changed. George Floyd was killed on May 25, and many NBA players—about three-quarters of whom are Black—sank into grief, anger, and frustration. The league and the leadership of most teams reached out to employees to acknowledge their pain. But New York Knicks owner James Dolan, a friend of President Donald Trump, declined to release a statement denouncing Floyd’s killing or supporting the Black Lives Matter movement—a decision deeply troubling to many.

Still, plans to restart the season went forward. On June 4, NBA owners approved the negotiated agreement in a 29-to-1 vote. NBPA representatives approved the deal the same day.

Misgivings arise

The story was not over, however.

To begin with, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts told ESPN that she was concerned about the NBA’s tentative plan to open training camps for the 2020-21 season on November 10. That was only about a month after the scheduled end of the NBA Finals in Orlando, two months less than the usual break between seasons. Starting the season in early December would allow players to play in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

But a bigger problem was brewing: A significant number of players were frustrated by their lack of say in decisions that put their health on the line and that would isolate them from their families. The NBPA comprises nine executive committee members, led by Paul, and one player representative from each of the 30 teams, reports CBS Sports. Some players felt they were not adequately consulted during the approval process. All players who would be going to Florida should have had a vote, they argued, particularly given that Covid-19 was surging in the Orlando area. Each player may decide whether to join his team, but those who don’t come to Florida won’t be paid. Team doctors are also assessing players’ health and may decide to hold back those who are at high risk of being harmed by the coronavirus, such as those with asthma.

An uncertain outcome

In light of the George Floyd tragedy, “some players believe it’s bad optics for a league comprised predominantly of Black men to be sequestered in one location for up to three months merely to entertain the masses and ease the league’s economic burden,” Chris Haynes wrote in Yahoo Sports.

“We’re out here marching and protesting,” one Black player told Haynes, “and yet we all leave our families in these scary times and gather to perform at a place where the owners won’t be at? What type of sense does that make? We’ll be going backwards. That place isn’t that magical.”

The fact that the league hadn’t yet laid out its safety protocols when the agreement was reached added to the players’ concern. A growing group of them reportedly began meeting on Zoom to discuss how they might take a stand. Meanwhile, some of the game’s top players had the opposite concern—that the Disney “bubble” was too restrictive, according to CBS Sports, making for “very little common ground in an already divisive situation.”

The situation highlights the importance in negotiation of being responsive to changing events. Both the pandemic and the upheaval sparked by Floyd’s death have created immense uncertainty for negotiators.

Although the parties to the NBA deal may have believed they arrived at a win-win agreement, players’ heightened awareness of the health risks and constraints they are being expected to assume in the service of profit cast doubt on that belief. By late June, several NBA players had decided to sit out the rest of the season for various reasons, such as guarding against injury, protecting vulnerable family members from Covid-19, and protesting racial injustice. With several NBA players testing positive for the disease even before teams headed to Florida, it remains highly uncertain whether players and staff can stay safe—and whether the league’s gamble will have been worth it.

The death of George Floyd beneath the knee of a White Minneapolis police officer provoked many Americans to protest police brutality and racial injustice for the first time. Floyd’s killing has also prompted U.S. organizations, most of which are led by Whites, to reckon with the fact that they have failed to create workplaces where African Americans are adequately represented, treated equitably, and feel a sense of belonging. Black Americans continue to be paid less than members of other racial groups for the same work, are severely underrepresented in leadership roles, and regularly confront racist policies and behavior.

Racially diverse organizations outperform homogeneous organizations on most metrics, research shows, yet companies’ diversity initiatives have often been half-hearted and misguided. “Big wins will come from interrogating seemingly mundane practices and processes,and holding managers and leaders accountable for progress toward your organization’s aspirations,” Melissa Thomas-Hunt, Airbnb’s head of global diversity and belonging, recently told Harvard Business Review. Virtually every aspect of organizational life needs close scrutiny. We focus here on how to make hiring and promotion negotiations more diverse, inclusive, and equitable; how realigning diversity goals can improve progress; and how employees can apply their negotiation skills to better support Black colleagues.

Acknowledge our racial bias and complicity in racism

Explicitly racist policies and behaviors—slavery, segregation, police killings of unarmed Black people—are easy to condemn. What is often less apparent to White Americans is that, because of their lifelong immersion in an inherently racist society, most have internalized negative racial stereotypes about Black Americans that inflict immense harm.

“Most of us have implicit attitudes that differ from the beliefs we consciously understand ourselves to hold,” writes New York University professor Dolly Chugh in her book The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias (HarperCollins, 2018). Psychologists Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), Anthony Greenwald (University of Washington), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) devised a clever online test that is believed to reveal our unconscious, or implicit, attitudes. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) requires test takers to pair words and pictures as quickly and accurately as possible, a task that becomes difficult for most people when we’re asked to make nonstereotypical choices. For example, many White test takers struggle to quickly pair the word good with a Black person’s face, but do so effortlessly when the face is a White person’s. About 75% of all people who take the race IAT in the United States show an implicit racial bias toward Whites; 85% of White Americans do. (You can take an IAT yourself at https://implicit.harvard.edu.)

Becoming aware of one’s implicit bias can be unsettling, but it’s a critical early step in acknowledging one’s role in perpetuating and tolerating racist organizational practices.

Far from benign, implicit bias can “leak into microaggressions and behaviors that are consequential in the real world,” writes Chugh. It can lead White managers—without recognizing their racial bias—to conclude that a particular Black candidate might not be a “good fit” for the organization, to call on Whites more often than Blacks in meetings, or to penalize Black colleagues, but not White colleagues, when they make mistakes.

Becoming aware of one’s implicit bias can be unsettling, but it’s a critical early step in acknowledging one’s role in perpetuating and tolerating racist organizational practices.

Look for other pipelines

Organizations often protest that there isn’t a strong enough pipeline of qualified African American candidates for professional roles, Thomas-Hunt and Wharton School dean Erika James told University of Virginia professor Laura Morgan Roberts at a March panel at the Darden School of Business. As a result, says Roberts, “the issue of inclusion becomes framed as a question of accommodating and lowering standards, rather than a question of enhancing, strengthening, and amplifying the organization.”

To move beyond the false conclusion that there aren’t enough qualified African Americans available, leaders need to carefully study how candidates enter the organization, said Thomas-Hunt. If an organization is recruiting only from the Ivy League, it might branch out to state schools and historically Black colleges and universities. An organization might also institute a policy of leaving names off of résumés to keep evaluators’ implicit racial biases from creeping in during the initial screening phase. And if White people are relying on their personal networks and connections to find talent, they need to recognize that they are likely drawing from a primarily White pool—and disadvantaging racial minorities who lack such connections.

Debias the interview process

In a study of students from elite universities applying for jobs at top consulting and investment banking firms, Kellogg School of Management professor Lauren Rivera found that interviewers focus keenly on assessing candidates’ “fit” with the organization. But rather than gauging candidates’ talent and aspirations, fit is often used as a code word for passion-oriented hobbies, such as marathon running, and alma maters where people of color are underrepresented.

Instead of identifying the best person for the job, assessments of employee fit simply judge how well individuals are likely to conform to the current White male–centric organization—thus perpetuating the homogeneous status quo, write Courtney (Darden School of Business) and Verónica Caridad Rabelo (San Francisco State University) in a chapter in the edited book Race, Work & Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience (Harvard Business School Press, 2019).

Greater structure can help make job interviews more uniform, rational, and equitable, writes Harvard Kennedy School professor Iris Bohnet in What Works: Gender Equality by Design (Belknap Press, 2016). Bohnet advises interviewers to draw up lists of questions to be presented to all candidates, with each question weighted according to its importance. All questions should be asked in the same order and scored in the moment so that faulty memories don’t later bias the process.

Lists of questions also need to be debiased. Skip those that assess fit, and include questions aimed at identifying any hardships and struggles that candidates have had to overcome. “It’s important to recognize the various obstacles that many African American candidates had to traverse to get to where they are,” Roberts said in an interview in the January issue of Negotiation Briefings. “For instance, when you’re evaluating two graduates from an MBA program, look not only at their degree and class placement but also at their journey to and through the entire educational system.” That doesn’t mean lowering the bar for Black candidates, but viewing the “incredible talent, endurance, and ingenuity” that has been required of many African Americans for years as a “source of strength,” she says.

Move from a business case to a moral case

Although many organizations have appointed diversity and inclusion (D&I) officers, once in the door, Black employees “continue to face sticky floors, glass ceilings, and labyrinthine career paths,” write McCluney and Rabelo.

Here again, a preoccupation with “fit” harms racial minorities. “D&I officers are tasked with monitoring and constraining the behaviors and appearance of Black employees” to fit within White norms and behavioral expectations, according to McCluney and Rabelo. To try to blend in with the dominant workplace culture, African Americans might feel they need to “chemically relax (straighten) their hair, conform with coworkers’ behavior, ‘whitewash’ their résumés by deleting ethnic-sounding names or companies, hide minority beliefs, and suppress emotions related to workplace racism,” write Roberts and Anthony Mayo in a recent Harvard Business Review article.

This focus on superficial conformity reflects the orientation of many organizations toward making the “business case for diversity”—that is, valuing diversity primarily as a means of opening up more diverse markets and thus increasing profitability, according to McCluney and Rabelo. In the aftermath of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., Starbucks, then led by Howard Schultz, launched an initiative that included dialogues with police chiefs and having baristas (many of them Black) write the hashtag #RaceTogether on millions of Starbucks cups. In the end, the campaign came across as a shallow publicity stunt aimed at increasing revenue for Starbucks.

Rather than focusing on profit maximization and “managing Blackness,” D&I efforts should be “oriented around fairness, equity, and justice,” write McCluney and Rabelo. “We can’t simply ask, ‘What’s the most lucrative thing to do?’” write Roberts and Mayo in Harvard Business Review. “We must also ask, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’”

Leaders need to engage in the difficult but ultimately more rewarding work of addressing systemic barriers to Black workers’ engagement and development. In 2018, three years after Starbucks’ #RaceTogether initiative, the branch manager of a Philadelphia Starbucks store had two Black men who were waiting for an associate to arrive arrested for trespassing. The incident spurred Starbucks to launch deeper efforts to address racial bias experienced by customers and employees, including closing all stores for a day of anti-bias training.

Managers should also regularly be asking each employee (regardless of race) what they need and whether they feel safe and supported, Thomas-Hunt told HBR. She notes that White managers often feel uncomfortable giving feedback to their Black employees. Failing to receive adequate guidance, Black workers are often shown the door without explanation. “Like everyone else, Black employees need honest feedback in order to grow and to get access to leadership opportunities down the line,” she said.

Be a better listener and ally

Fearful of saying the wrong thing, Whites often “shy away from conversations about implicit biases that disadvantage Black candidates and leaders,” Roberts told Negotiation Briefings. That puts the burden on Black employees to initiate conversations about race.

Leaders need to give employees opportunities to hold difficult conversations where members of minority groups can feel safe opening up about experiences of exclusion, ostracism, and undermining, write McCluney and Rabelo. It’s especially important to check in with African American employees during this time of social unrest. African Americans have a “steady, shared intergenerational practice of masking the pain of racism, injustice, grief, and loss,” Roberts said during a Wall Street Journal podcast. “Now people in the workplace all over the world are saying, ‘I can’t do that right now. I can’t paste on the smile.’”

White employees also can be effective allies by drawing senior leaders’ attention to homogeneity, exclusion, and identity suppression in their organization. That includes stepping in to defend Black colleagues facing subtle microaggressions and more overt racist incidents.

Suppose that in a meeting you’re attending, a Black male colleague offers feedback to a White colleague on her work. You consider his remarks to be fair and professional, though likely difficult to hear. The White colleague later complains to you that she felt “threatened” by the feedback. This type of complaint about a Black man could be “career ending” if it’s not corrected or addressed, said Roberts during a LinkedIn Live interview with Harvard Business Review editors. She says, “Here’s where you step in, clarify, and call people to consciousness: ‘Wait, did you just characterize him as being threatening? … Because I thought he was just giving you feedback on your work. Maybe we should think about how we’re framing this because I find his feedback to be quite valuable.’”

Looking inward and scrutinizing the status quo at your organization is difficult but essential work. For more advice, consult the books and articles we’ve mentioned, and reach out to diversity experts whose guidance is grounded in the latest research.

The death of George Floyd beneath the knee of a White Minneapolis police officer provoked many Americans to protest police brutality and racial injustice for the first time. Floyd’s killing has also prompted U.S. organizations, most of which are led by Whites, to reckon with the fact that they have failed to create workplaces where African Americans are adequately represented, treated equitably, and feel a sense of belonging. Black Americans continue to be paid less than members of other racial groups for the same work, are severely underrepresented in leadership roles, and regularly confront racist policies and behavior.

Racially diverse organizations outperform homogeneous organizations on most metrics, research shows, yet companies’ diversity initiatives have often been half-hearted and misguided. “Big wins will come from interrogating seemingly mundane practices and processes,and holding managers and leaders accountable for progress toward your organization’s aspirations,” Melissa Thomas-Hunt, Airbnb’s head of global diversity and belonging, recently told Harvard Business Review. Virtually every aspect of organizational life needs close scrutiny. We focus here on how to make hiring and promotion negotiations more diverse, inclusive, and equitable; how realigning diversity goals can improve progress; and how employees can apply their negotiation skills to better support Black colleagues.

Acknowledge our racial bias and complicity in racism

Explicitly racist policies and behaviors—slavery, segregation, police killings of unarmed Black people—are easy to condemn. What is often less apparent to White Americans is that, because of their lifelong immersion in an inherently racist society, most have internalized negative racial stereotypes about Black Americans that inflict immense harm.

“Most of us have implicit attitudes that differ from the beliefs we consciously understand ourselves to hold,” writes New York University professor Dolly Chugh in her book The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias (HarperCollins, 2018). Psychologists Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), Anthony Greenwald (University of Washington), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) devised a clever online test that is believed to reveal our unconscious, or implicit, attitudes. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) requires test takers to pair words and pictures as quickly and accurately as possible, a task that becomes difficult for most people when we’re asked to make nonstereotypical choices. For example, many White test takers struggle to quickly pair the word good with a Black person’s face, but do so effortlessly when the face is a White person’s. About 75% of all people who take the race IAT in the United States show an implicit racial bias toward Whites; 85% of White Americans do. (You can take an IAT yourself at https://implicit.harvard.edu.)

Becoming aware of one’s implicit bias can be unsettling, but it’s a critical early step in acknowledging one’s role in perpetuating and tolerating racist organizational practices.

Far from benign, implicit bias can “leak into microaggressions and behaviors that are consequential in the real world,” writes Chugh. It can lead White managers—without recognizing their racial bias—to conclude that a particular Black candidate might not be a “good fit” for the organization, to call on Whites more often than Blacks in meetings, or to penalize Black colleagues, but not White colleagues, when they make mistakes.

Becoming aware of one’s implicit bias can be unsettling, but it’s a critical early step in acknowledging one’s role in perpetuating and tolerating racist organizational practices.

Look for other pipelines

Organizations often protest that there isn’t a strong enough pipeline of qualified African American candidates for professional roles, Thomas-Hunt and Wharton School dean Erika James told University of Virginia professor Laura Morgan Roberts at a March panel at the Darden School of Business. As a result, says Roberts, “the issue of inclusion becomes framed as a question of accommodating and lowering standards, rather than a question of enhancing, strengthening, and amplifying the organization.”

To move beyond the false conclusion that there aren’t enough qualified African Americans available, leaders need to carefully study how candidates enter the organization, said Thomas-Hunt. If an organization is recruiting only from the Ivy League, it might branch out to state schools and historically Black colleges and universities. An organization might also institute a policy of leaving names off of résumés to keep evaluators’ implicit racial biases from creeping in during the initial screening phase. And if White people are relying on their personal networks and connections to find talent, they need to recognize that they are likely drawing from a primarily White pool—and disadvantaging racial minorities who lack such connections.

Debias the interview process

In a study of students from elite universities applying for jobs at top consulting and investment banking firms, Kellogg School of Management professor Lauren Rivera found that interviewers focus keenly on assessing candidates’ “fit” with the organization. But rather than gauging candidates’ talent and aspirations, fit is often used as a code word for passion-oriented hobbies, such as marathon running, and alma maters where people of color are underrepresented.

Instead of identifying the best person for the job, assessments of employee fit simply judge how well individuals are likely to conform to the current White male–centric organization—thus perpetuating the homogeneous status quo, write Courtney (Darden School of Business) and Verónica Caridad Rabelo (San Francisco State University) in a chapter in the edited book Race, Work & Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience (Harvard Business School Press, 2019).

Greater structure can help make job interviews more uniform, rational, and equitable, writes Harvard Kennedy School professor Iris Bohnet in What Works: Gender Equality by Design (Belknap Press, 2016). Bohnet advises interviewers to draw up lists of questions to be presented to all candidates, with each question weighted according to its importance. All questions should be asked in the same order and scored in the moment so that faulty memories don’t later bias the process.

Lists of questions also need to be debiased. Skip those that assess fit, and include questions aimed at identifying any hardships and struggles that candidates have had to overcome. “It’s important to recognize the various obstacles that many African American candidates had to traverse to get to where they are,” Roberts said in an interview in the January issue of Negotiation Briefings. “For instance, when you’re evaluating two graduates from an MBA program, look not only at their degree and class placement but also at their journey to and through the entire educational system.” That doesn’t mean lowering the bar for Black candidates, but viewing the “incredible talent, endurance, and ingenuity” that has been required of many African Americans for years as a “source of strength,” she says.

Move from a business case to a moral case

Although many organizations have appointed diversity and inclusion (D&I) officers, once in the door, Black employees “continue to face sticky floors, glass ceilings, and labyrinthine career paths,” write McCluney and Rabelo.

Here again, a preoccupation with “fit” harms racial minorities. “D&I officers are tasked with monitoring and constraining the behaviors and appearance of Black employees” to fit within White norms and behavioral expectations, according to McCluney and Rabelo. To try to blend in with the dominant workplace culture, African Americans might feel they need to “chemically relax (straighten) their hair, conform with coworkers’ behavior, ‘whitewash’ their résumés by deleting ethnic-sounding names or companies, hide minority beliefs, and suppress emotions related to workplace racism,” write Roberts and Anthony Mayo in a recent Harvard Business Review article.

This focus on superficial conformity reflects the orientation of many organizations toward making the “business case for diversity”—that is, valuing diversity primarily as a means of opening up more diverse markets and thus increasing profitability, according to McCluney and Rabelo. In the aftermath of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., Starbucks, then led by Howard Schultz, launched an initiative that included dialogues with police chiefs and having baristas (many of them Black) write the hashtag #RaceTogether on millions of Starbucks cups. In the end, the campaign came across as a shallow publicity stunt aimed at increasing revenue for Starbucks.

Rather than focusing on profit maximization and “managing Blackness,” D&I efforts should be “oriented around fairness, equity, and justice,” write McCluney and Rabelo. “We can’t simply ask, ‘What’s the most lucrative thing to do?’” write Roberts and Mayo in Harvard Business Review. “We must also ask, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’”

Leaders need to engage in the difficult but ultimately more rewarding work of addressing systemic barriers to Black workers’ engagement and development. In 2018, three years after Starbucks’ #RaceTogether initiative, the branch manager of a Philadelphia Starbucks store had two Black men who were waiting for an associate to arrive arrested for trespassing. The incident spurred Starbucks to launch deeper efforts to address racial bias experienced by customers and employees, including closing all stores for a day of anti-bias training.

Managers should also regularly be asking each employee (regardless of race) what they need and whether they feel safe and supported, Thomas-Hunt told HBR. She notes that White managers often feel uncomfortable giving feedback to their Black employees. Failing to receive adequate guidance, Black workers are often shown the door without explanation. “Like everyone else, Black employees need honest feedback in order to grow and to get access to leadership opportunities down the line,” she said.

Be a better listener and ally

Fearful of saying the wrong thing, Whites often “shy away from conversations about implicit biases that disadvantage Black candidates and leaders,” Roberts told Negotiation Briefings. That puts the burden on Black employees to initiate conversations about race.

Leaders need to give employees opportunities to hold difficult conversations where members of minority groups can feel safe opening up about experiences of exclusion, ostracism, and undermining, write McCluney and Rabelo. It’s especially important to check in with African American employees during this time of social unrest. African Americans have a “steady, shared intergenerational practice of masking the pain of racism, injustice, grief, and loss,” Roberts said during a Wall Street Journal podcast. “Now people in the workplace all over the world are saying, ‘I can’t do that right now. I can’t paste on the smile.’”

White employees also can be effective allies by drawing senior leaders’ attention to homogeneity, exclusion, and identity suppression in their organization. That includes stepping in to defend Black colleagues facing subtle microaggressions and more overt racist incidents.

Suppose that in a meeting you’re attending, a Black male colleague offers feedback to a White colleague on her work. You consider his remarks to be fair and professional, though likely difficult to hear. The White colleague later complains to you that she felt “threatened” by the feedback. This type of complaint about a Black man could be “career ending” if it’s not corrected or addressed, said Roberts during a LinkedIn Live interview with Harvard Business Review editors. She says, “Here’s where you step in, clarify, and call people to consciousness: ‘Wait, did you just characterize him as being threatening? … Because I thought he was just giving you feedback on your work. Maybe we should think about how we’re framing this because I find his feedback to be quite valuable.’”

Looking inward and scrutinizing the status quo at your organization is difficult but essential work. For more advice, consult the books and articles we’ve mentioned, and reach out to diversity experts whose guidance is grounded in the latest research.