Turn meritocracy around in your workplace
Here are 7 ways to provide opportunities beyond merit.
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Accumulating merits has become an everyday activity. From childhood, we are taught to value effort as a way of earning things. Effort makes you worthy. However, this perspective has led us to make value judgments: "If someone hasn't achieved anything, it's because they haven't tried hard enough.”
While values like perseverance and effort are essential to personal and team development, the concept of meritocracy can feed an obsession with a "deserving or not deserving" narrative. It can create the illusion that we can apply our own systems of value to others without recognizing their context.
We know that no one starts from the same place. Social, economic, gender, or racial contexts can largely determine how easily we access the opportunities presented to us. Meritocracy inevitably ends up becoming a conversation about privilege, opportunity, and awareness.
Don't worry; this time, we won't dive too deeply into the philosophical and social debates around meritocracy. However, we would like to share some tips on how to shift, from within, the way we understand this concept and open up opportunities for others.
1. Define clear evaluation criteria: Clearly define what counts as a merit within your team: KPIs, goals, objectives, and expectations. Avoid favoritism and subjectivity.
2. Rationalize your biases: Be aware of your beliefs and biases. Question them and avoid letting them influence hiring, opportunity assignment, or promotion decisions. Make sure to consider diversity in gender, age, background, and socioeconomic status.
3. Shift your perspective on DEI: It's a common misconception that DEI hiring (diversity, equity, and inclusion) means hiring less qualified candidates. Hiring for diversity expands the talent and strength spectrum. A strictly meritocratic lens can exclude valuable candidates.
4. Focus on long-term skills: Go beyond "shark skills." Look for team members with valuable soft skills, such as creativity, adaptability, emotional intelligence, or growth potential.
5. Invest in development: Help your team members reach their potential. Support them in improving current skills, learning new ones, and developing a growth mindset.
6. Provide tools and feedback: Utilize objective feedback models and consider equipping your team with the same tools and training to enable them to perform their work effectively.
7. Recognizes diverse achievements: Acknowledge soft or "invisible" skills such as leadership, proactivity, teamwork, and empathy. Beyond numerical results, value well-executed processes, even if they didn't achieve the expected outcomes.
💡Pro tip for navigating meritocracy. Although development opportunities aren't always under our control, American author Ayodeji Awosika suggests focusing on cultivating traits that don't rely on luck: patience, persistence, impulse control, ability to iterate, curiosity, risk assessment and optimism.
Some of these tips come from Joanne Lockwood, an expert in inclusion culture. Here's a thought-provoking quote from her to spark conversations about meritocracy and the privileges we might unconsciously hold:
Privilege isn't a dirty word. It's not an insult or something to be ashamed of (...) The key is understanding that privilege isn't about what you've done; it's about what you haven't had to endure to get where you are.
-Joanne Lockwood
Share this information with anyone you think could benefit from it.
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This helps them better recognize their skills, manage failures, identify opportunities for innovation, and prevent future mistakes.
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Let's transform our perception of failure and use it as a catalyst for growth.
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