Esther Mollema, auteur op Esther Mollema

Let’s stop the language lesson around diversity and inclusion

Do you agree with me? If you stumble over the abbreviation LGBTQIA+, that says nothing about your heart for people who aren’t heterosexual. And if you don’t know what the “E” in DEI stands for, or what intersectionality means, that doesn’t mean you should be dismissed.

But sometimes it does feel that way. In the world of diversity, equity, and inclusion, a language lesson seems almost obligatory. A field full of abbreviations and new terms where the “experts” navigate effortlessly — and the rest are left trailing behind, feeling a bit lost.

I was recently at an organization that specifically asked me not to call it DEI, because they preferred to put the “I” first. It better matched their image. To me, that’s focusing more on the packaging than on the substance.

It seems like there’s a new term every month. Where five years ago we still debated whether to say “inclusion” or “inclusivity,” now the buzzwords come flying from all directions.

If I’m honest: I sometimes check out too. In meetings, a new abbreviation will be thrown in, and I don’t always dare to ask what it means. For a moment, I feel like an imposter — even though this is literally my field.

The problem is that we’ve made it unnecessarily complicated. The language around diversity and inclusion has become HR jargon. It pushes people away from the topic, while what we really need is connection. And that’s what inclusion and diversity are all about.

At its core, it’s actually quite simple. Diversity means bringing in more perspectives to make better decisions. Inclusion is about making sure people stay, grow, and feel seen. Together, they are essential for innovation, speed, and high performance.

So let’s stop with the buzzwords and acronyms. Not to oversimplify the issue, but to make it more accessible. The acronyms can go, the urgency must stay.

The Pleasant Self-Image of the Netherlands: Tolerance with Blind Spots

by Esther Mollema

Image: Trouw

This article contains my personal reflection on Uitverkoren by Saskia Pieterse and Janneke Stegeman. The book offers an in-depth analysis of the themes I discuss here, and I encourage everyone to read it for themselves. This will help you ground yourself in the background of the perspectives I share. By purchasing and reading the book, you support this important research. You can find Uitverkoren here.

The Dutch like to see themselves as tolerant, progressive, and democratic. This pleasant self-image has deep historical roots, particularly in Calvinism, which has shaped the Netherlands for centuries. But beneath this apparent openness lies a degree of self-satisfaction. Dutch tolerance is often selective, moral superiority is deeply ingrained, and women play a strikingly invisible role in this narrative.

Moral Superiority: Calvinists as the Chosen Ones

Calvinism taught that God had already determined before birth who would be saved and who would not. True believers would naturally lead a pious and successful life. This gave Calvinists not only a sense of spiritual superiority but also a moral carte blanche: if they did something, it could by definition not be wrong. This reasoning, for example, justified the slave trade and the violent domination of the colonies.

This belief still resonates in the modern Dutch self-image. The Netherlands enjoys presenting itself as an enlightened and progressive guiding nation in human rights, but this is not always accompanied by critical self-reflection. The country positions itself as a moral leader in the international community while struggling to acknowledge its own blind spots. A striking example of this is its liberal tax policies: the Netherlands promotes itself as a prosperous and fair trading nation while simultaneously playing a key role in international tax avoidance. This illustrates how the sense of moral superiority persists, without always taking responsibility for the less flattering sides of this self-image.

Diversiteit Nederland Geschiedenis Esther Mollema

The Illusion of Tolerance

Tolerance is a core value in the Dutch self-image, but this tolerance is often pragmatic rather than truly inclusive. Historically, tolerance was applied in a way that did not challenge the status quo. Catholics, Jews, and other minorities were tolerated, as long as they followed the rules and remained relatively invisible.

This pattern persists today. Diversity and inclusion are celebrated, but only as long as they fit within existing structures and norms. Discussions on racism and discrimination are often dismissed as an “imported American issue,” as if the Netherlands were somehow immune to these problems. The outrage over international criticism of Zwarte Piet or the colonial past reveals how deeply rooted the belief is that the Netherlands is already “good enough.”

When it comes to Islam, the Dutch attitude is also ambivalent. On the one hand, freedom of religion is praised; on the other hand, Islamic traditions and practices are frequently dismissed as “backward” or “not fitting Dutch culture.” The acceptance of Muslims often remains superficial, as long as they conform to a secular norm. The ban on face-covering clothing (burqa ban) was introduced under the guise of neutrality and security but in practice mainly affects Muslim women, revealing how tolerance has its limits.

Dutch tolerance also has boundaries when it comes to race and ethnicity. Structural inequalities in the labor market, ethnic profiling by the police, and the disadvantaged position of people with a migration background are often downplayed or denied. This lack of acknowledgment prevents critical self-reflection.

Vrouw diversiteit geschiedenis Esther Mollema

The Invisible Woman in the Dutch Self-Image

A striking aspect of the Dutch self-image is the invisible role of women. Calvinism long upheld the idea of the man as the head of the family and society, while the woman had a serving role—because, according to religious doctrine, this was God’s will. This pattern remains visible in Dutch society today. Women were prohibited from working after marriage well into the 20th century and have historically held a subordinate position in politics and business.

Despite its progressive reputation, the Netherlands lags behind in gender equality in the workforce and leadership positions. Part-time work among women is extremely high, the gender pay gap persists, and women are underrepresented in influential roles. Feminism is often dismissed with the argument that women “choose” to be less ambitious or take on caregiving roles, without recognizing the deeply ingrained societal structures that influence these choices.

What makes this problem for women even worse is the lack of discussion about it. Because gender equality is assumed to be a given, there is little room for critical reflection on how societal expectations shape women’s decisions. As a result, many women do not even realize that their choices are not entirely free but are strongly influenced by a system that imposes specific roles and expectations.

The Legacy of Calvinism Today

The Calvinist principles of sobriety, hard work, and anti-hierarchy still form the backbone of Dutch culture. A strong work ethic is upheld, boasting is frowned upon, and authority is often viewed with skepticism. But this culture also has a dark side: a tendency to moralize, a blind spot for inequality, and a deeply rooted belief in its own moral superiority.

This is what makes the Netherlands unique, but also what sometimes holds the country back. The pleasant self-image can become an obstacle to real progress—if uncomfortable aspects of the national identity remain ignored, true tolerance cannot be fully realized.

Asking for help more often is great for both you and your organization.

by Esther Mollema

This is the first column in the #InclusieDoen series, where we focus less on discussing inclusion in organizations and more on showing concrete actions. In this column, we explore how asking a colleague for help benefits you, them, and the team. If you’re interested in implementing more inclusive practices, we’re here to support you.

As part of the #InclusieDoen initiative, we’ve developed a program to help you build daily inclusive habits. With short videos and WhatsApp reminders, you’ll receive tips and support to make inclusion a part of everyday life—completely free during the initial phase! You can read all the columns here.

The shift away from asking for help
In the past, asking for help—borrowing a cup of sugar, getting a ride to the station, or seeking advice from a colleague—was a natural part of daily life. Today, we often turn to impersonal options like delivery services, Uber, ChatGPT, or repair services instead of reaching out to a neighbor or coworker. Unfortunately, this shift means missing out on the personal connection that used to accompany these requests.

And that’s a shame, because helping others fulfills a fundamental human need. It brings joy and leads to better outcomes, both at home and work. Behavioral science research shows that people are more willing to help than we think. Why? Helping gives others a sense of purpose, creating a positive ripple effect of connection and kindness.

Why asking for help is beneficial
Colleagues who ask for help strengthen their bonds and build mutual trust. Small acts of kindness foster informal networks where people share knowledge and skills. Additionally, those who ask for help often learn faster by gaining insights and expertise they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. This contributes to a culture where everyone works together to improve.

Overcoming the hesitation to ask
Why do we hesitate to ask for help? Many view it as risky, fearing they might seem incompetent or burdensome. However, studies show that people are far more willing to help than we assume.

Asking for help is good for both the seeker and the helper. By seeking advice, you signal respect for the other person’s expertise, strengthening your relationship and fostering a more connected and supportive work environment.

Fostering a culture of connection
In a time when technology promotes self-reliance, it’s important to remember the value of human connection. Colleagues feel appreciated when their expertise is sought and gain satisfaction from helping others. A simple question can spark a chain reaction of kindness, reinforcing a positive workplace culture.

Next time you’re stuck or need advice, remember: just ask for help. Collaboration isn’t just more productive—it makes everyone a little happier.

Below, you’ll find a detailed explanation of why asking for and offering help is a fundamental human need.

Asking for help is actually really good for you, according to science, Annika Horn, National Geographic, August 2024

How Humans Depend on Cooperation for Survival and Mental Health

Our innate ability to cooperate and socialize with others may date back over 3.5 million years to one of the earliest hominins, or human species, the australopithecines.

When australopithecines branched off from other primates and left the rainforests for drier, predator-rich environments, they needed large groups to survive, explains Peter Richerson, a biologist and emeritus professor at the University of California, Davis. They learned to collaborate with individuals outside their biological family to ensure survival. These social networks enabled strategies, the development of weapons, and the formation of large groups capable of fending off powerful predators, Richerson adds.

Becoming bipedal also made childbirth more difficult and dangerous for australopithecines. This likely encouraged mothers to help one another during labor, says Lesley Newson, evolutionary biologist and co-author of A Story of Us: A New Look at Human Evolution. Mothers “really benefited from cooperation, saying, ‘I’ll help deliver your baby if you help deliver mine,’ ” Newson explains.

Sarah Hrdy, evolutionary anthropologist and author of Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies, explains that cooperation advanced further in the context of child-rearing. Early humans relied on family members beyond the mother to help care for children—a concept known as “cooperative breeding,” which is not observed in other primates genetically related to us.

Group members participated in this caregiving “in exchange for acceptance within the group,” Hrdy notes. Babies, aware of their multiple caregivers, learned to observe, socialize, and ingratiate themselves with non-family members. This behavior, Hrdy says, “lays the groundwork for cooperation.”

Psychologists suggest that this evolutionary background explains why social rejection and isolation remain painful for humans today. The brain circuits that process emotional pain are built on the same circuits that handle physical pain. In one experiment involving a virtual ball-tossing game, participants who were suddenly excluded from receiving the ball reported experiencing physical pain.

From an evolutionary standpoint, “it makes sense that social exclusion would feel unpleasant, right?” says Gaurav Suri, experimental psychologist and computational neuroscientist at San Francisco State University. “The pain of social exclusion acts as a signal for us to fix the issues causing it.”

Carewashing – organizations that talk about psychological safety but do little or only superficially address it.

by Esther Mollema

“This year, psychological safety is really on the agenda. We’re considering mindfulness training and a ping-pong table.”

Below, you’ll find a great Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that debunks the idea that simple actions like these truly address psychological safety. I call it carewashing. I believe many Dutch organizations are also guilty of this. According to a recent Gallup survey, the percentage of employees who believe their organization cares about their well-being has dropped from 49% in 2020 to 21% in 2024.

Employees see through carewashing, and it leads to turnover and unmotivated employees. Does that sound familiar?

My favorite solutions from this HBR article are:

Truly prioritize human connection.
Seriously measure psychological safety and act on the outcomes at the team level.
Have leaders lead by example and tie consequences to their position if they don’t.

Click here to read the HBR article.

This article was previously published on Esther’s LinkedIn page. Want to follow Esther’s thoughts on current events there? Click here. Esther is a Certified Top Voice on LinkedIn.”

From Resistance to Gain: The Untapped Power of Diversity in Organizations

by Esther Mollema

Image Juan Moyano/ Getty Images through Harvard Business Review

Naar aanleiding van haar observaties dat veel organisaties nog steeds worstelen met het werken aan meer diversiteit, zet Esther in dit artikel de noodzaak, kracht en uitdagingen ervan op een rij. Diversiteit: Briljant of Belemmerend? Onze geschiedenis is doordrenkt van ideeën die aanvankelijk werden weggewuifd, maar uiteindelijk cruciaal bleken voor vooruitgang. Hieronder enkele historische voorbeelden van revolutionaire denkers die eerst werden bespot voordat de waarde van hun ideeën breed werd erkend:

Galileo Galilei was prohibited from teaching in 1620 after claiming that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe.
Ignaz Semmelweis was dismissed in 1850 after suggesting that better hygiene in hospitals, such as handwashing, could drastically reduce the number of deaths.
Pregnant women who, in 1860, preferred to have their deliveries attended by a doctor rather than a priest or minister were considered ungrateful and not devout.

Josephine Cochrane invented the dishwasher in 1886, but her invention was ridiculed as useless because women would supposedly have nothing left to do.
Svante Arrhenius first calculated the potential warming effects of carbon dioxide in 1896, but his findings were hardly taken seriously at the time.
In the 1960s, doctors who warned about the dangers of smoking were mocked by their colleagues, who promoted smoking as healthy, stress-reducing, and even a remedy for asthma.

This list shows that brilliant discoveries, which we now utilize, were dismissed as ridiculous at the time of their inception. Their findings did not align with the prevailing views of the time, and the majority hindered progress by ridiculing innovative thinkers.

The resistance to change, a human trait as I will explain shortly, led in many cases to delaying or even blocking developments that ultimately would have benefited society as a whole. This raises the question of what progress we are currently blocking due to resistance to change—both in society at large and within organizations.

How Diversity Can Transform Your Organization – If You Allow It

In today’s complex world, the ability to integrate diverse perspectives is crucial for the success of organizations. Effectively dealing with the many challenges we face, both internally and externally, requires careful exploration and development of options to ultimately make well-considered decisions. To make these decisions in a sound way, it is essential for organizations to bring in diverse viewpoints by actively building diverse teams. This diversity ensures that all options are thoroughly weighed and that decisions are more widely supported.

Countless studies have increasingly demonstrated the value of diversity in teams. Research from reputable institutions such as McKinsey, Glassdoor, Deloitte, and others [1] shows that organizations open to diverse perspectives perform significantly better. Not only do they excel in innovation and decision-making, but they also expand their market share and increase customer satisfaction. Furthermore, such organizations are more successful at attracting and retaining talent, as they create an environment where different ideas are valued and employees feel challenged and supported.

Despite the compelling evidence of the benefits, diversity remains a sensitive and often difficult theme to implement in many organizations. This sometimes seems due to a lack of understanding of the advantages, but more often to the challenge of truly embracing and integrating diverse perspectives into the organizational culture. Finally, it also requires courage and perseverance from leaders to implement this change, leading to a worthwhile reward: a more resilient, innovative, and successful organization.

HBR Staff/ Westend61/ simonkr/ Getty Images

Image by HBR Staff – through Harvard Business Review

The Diversity Paradox: Understanding that What is Good Does Not Come Easily

If the benefits of diversity are so clear, why does it remain a difficult topic in many organizations? This phenomenon is known as the “diversity paradox.” Despite overwhelming evidence from numerous studies showing that diversity leads to better innovation, decision-making, and competitive advantage, many organizations and individuals remain hesitant to fully embrace it. This reluctance stems from a deeply ingrained tendency to choose the familiar: ease and stability, even if it means ignoring and not reaping the proven benefits of diversity.

There are two key reasons that explain this paradox:

Power and Preservation of the Status Quo
One major factor explaining the diversity paradox is the fear of change within the established order and the potential loss of power and status that comes with it. This resistance, driven by self-interest, hinders progress and blocks new ideas and developments that could actually lead to more growth and success for the organization as a whole.

An example of this was the resistance within Eindhoven University of Technology (TU Eindhoven) to plans aimed at addressing the gender imbalance among academic staff. For years, various plans failed to take off, until as of July 1, 2019, professor positions were opened exclusively to women for the first six months. The majority group fiercely resisted: by late October 2019, as many as 54 men had filed complaints with the anti-discrimination bureau Radar and the Dutch Human Rights Commission (CVRM). Although the plan had to be adjusted slightly, it largely proceeded as intended. The majority group had to give up its resistance, and now TU Eindhoven fills half of its vacancies with women.

Unilever also demonstrated that if the will is truly there, it is possible to achieve 50% of top management roles being held by women in a short period of time. Similarly, the supervisory board of Wilde Ganzen recently chose three new members with culturally diverse backgrounds to better align the board with Wilde Ganzen’s vision.

Human Nature and the Desire for Comfort
A second factor explaining the diversity paradox is the natural tendency of humans to feel more comfortable in homogeneous groups, where there are fewer conflicts and challenges. This sense of comfort is historically rooted, as people traditionally survived in close-knit, like-minded communities. In a prehistoric context, belonging to a homogeneous group with common norms and values was essential for your survival, safety, and cooperation. This evolutionary preference for homogeneity has persisted through the centuries, causing the unconscious brain to still feel more at ease in groups where it sees itself reflected in others.

Although people often say they seek more diversity, research shows that their brain feels more at peace in environments with like-minded individuals, even if such an environment leads to less effective decision-making. This is why the unconscious brain, which governs most of your daily decisions, prefers people who are similar to you. It’s also the reason why new employees in such homogeneous environments often quickly adapt to prevailing norms and behaviors. Does this sound familiar?

If, before 2005, you went to work as a man without a tie, you were not seen as ambitious and probably did not hold an important position. So, you kept wearing the tie.
If, in 1989, you drank non-alcoholic beer or a soft drink because you wanted to drive responsibly, you were labeled as a boring person and became the subject of much mockery, ridicule, and jokes by the majority. So, you joined the others in drinking.

If around 2010 you allowed working from home to help employees better and more efficiently combine their private lives and ambitions, thereby proving to motivate and value employees more, you were seen as a weak manager. So, you didn’t allow working from home either.
If all team members say ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ to the manager, you swallow your own feedback that points in a different direction.

We unconsciously want to belong. Your unconscious brain, perhaps more often than you think, prefers the comfort of a homogeneous team over pursuing better results for the organization. So, we often unconsciously choose comfort, which means the benefits of diversity are ignored.

Where Does Your Organization Stand? Will You Find Your Galileo?

Do you recognize the above reasons for the diversity paradox, either within your organization or within yourself? Do you recognize the possible resistance from the established order? Are there unwritten rules in place that benefit them but not others or the organization as a whole?

I still remember that at the beginning of my career (and with me, many women) I got entangled in the unwritten rules about motherhood and ambition. The established order expressed that it wasn’t considered normal for a mother to work full-time, and they also maintained the rule that you couldn’t become a manager if you didn’t work full-time. Nowadays, I hear from many newly promoted women that they receive comments suggesting they got the promotion only because a woman had to be appointed. Especially when that remark comes from the mouths of those in power in your organization, it is a very harmful comment and an unconscious attempt to maintain or restore old interests.

Do you also recognize the destructive unconscious preference in your organization for people who resemble those at the top? This is evident in who gets hired for teams, what evaluations they receive, and who has or gets promotion opportunities—and who doesn’t. But it also shows in who is listened to during meetings and how work is distributed within the team. Especially in the Netherlands, this remains a major challenge because most Dutch people still believe they are unaffected by unconscious biases (if you want to learn more about this, read my blog).

The future of your organization depends heavily on the ability to harness the opportunities diversity brings. How is this going in your organization? Which people and which unwritten rules are hindering progress? What difficult conversations need to be had, and what tough decisions need to be made? How can you make these topics discussable with one another? These are crucial questions, as the future of your organization is at stake.

[1] McKinsey (2015, 2018, 2020, 2023), Glassdoor (2014), Deloitte (2022), Boston Consulting Group (2018), Center for Talent Innovation (2013), EEOC (2016), Credit Suisse (2016), PwC (2019), HBR (2016)