AS DEI Disappears, We Must Embrace FAIR Leadership: Building a More Equitable Future

Over the past few years, traditional DEI policies have come under intense scrutiny—and now, they are being actively rolled back. 

In some organizations, these rollbacks reflect the original performative nature, and are a shedding of symbolic policies that had no real intent to address the underlying issues. In others, leaders are preemptively dismantling DEI efforts out of fear of authoritarian backlash, effectively caving before they’ve even been asked. And for some, the retreat from DEI is a defensive maneuver, designed to protect business interests and employees in unpredictable, turbulent times. 

No matter the motivation, the rollback creates a void for people—those who deserve fairness, access, inclusion, and representation, and those who hold these values dear.

As Lily Zheng shared in her necessary HBR article, the FAIR framework she proposes—focusing on fairness, access, inclusion, and representation—offers a vital blueprint for meaningful change. Zheng’s work exposes the shortcomings of traditional DEI initiatives and provides a foundation on which we can build. 

Today’s conscious leaders and those who engage in leadership development–like we do–have an opportunity and an imperative to carry forward these principles, transforming abstract ideals into everyday practice.

FAIR Leadership in a Post-DEI World

DEI should have meant more than a checklist of written policies and performative initiatives, yet all too often it became just that. The initiatives all too often lacked the critical mindset shifts needed for real change, and were no more than superficial, band-aid fixes that were applied as a temporary “solution”–how else do you explain the ease of such rollbacks?

So now, for leaders committed to authentic transformation, the questions become:

• How do we ensure that the values of fairness, access, inclusion, and representation guide us?

• How do we embody, operationalize, and integrate these values so deeply into our leadership practices, operational systems, and core organizational processes such that they would be impossible to roll back without a complete disintegration of our organization?

These questions underscore the urgent need for a new paradigm in leadership.

Conscious leadership in the post-DEI world means moving beyond surface-level commitments and instead integrating these principles into every decision, every conversation, and every process within the organization.

Conscious leadership in the post-DEI world requires leaders to embrace vulnerability, cultivate deep self- and systems-awareness, challenge entrenched biases, practice rigorous accountability, use data to drive tangible outcomes, and commit to continuous learning.

Consider the following shifts required for truly integrating FAIR leadership into your personal and organizational practices:

• Mindset Shifts: Leaders must evolve the broader mental framework that shapes how they approach their work. In the DEI to FAIR transition, this means shifting from seeing equity as a box-ticking exercise to understanding it as a continuous journey of ongoing growth and refinement. This involves a secondary mindset of resilience and openness, recognizing that to affect meaningful change, they must engage in constant self-assessment and hold a willingness to acknowledge and address personal and systemic biases.

• Belief Alignment: Different from mindsets, beliefs are specific convictions that one holds to be true. For leaders to drive transformation and build a FAIR world, they need to re-examine long held assumptions. This involves shifting recognizing fixed notions and challenging them in ways that allow new beliefs to take hold.

• Skill Development: It’s not enough to simply desire fairness and inclusion; leaders need the skills to measure progress and drive change. This includes developing the capacity to build effective, values-driven systems and processes, to analyze data for meaningful trends, to set clear and measurable goals, and to adapt strategies as needed. It also means cultivating the ability to facilitate vulnerable, collaborative, and values-aligned conversations that uncover hidden biases and inspire collective action.

• Taking Action: It’s also not enough for leaders to know what to do. They then need to do it. Conscious leadership means taking action in order to implement processes and practices with courage and conviction and consistently follow through on commitments. It means acting with integrity to challenge the status quo, regulate when things get hard, and drive change when faced with entrenched mindsets and practices.  

• Measuring Metrics: A FAIR leadership approach demands that outcomes be visible and accountable. Leaders committed to integrating FAIR practices track improvements in representation, ensure equitable compensation, and monitor other key indicators. They measure what matters, using clear metrics to hold themselves accountable until they achieve tangible success.

• Reflect and Adapt: It’s not enough to have the data, leaders must learn from and use the data. By treating themselves as reflective practitioners and engaging in continuous action research, they can use data insights to refine their mindsets, beliefs, skills, and actions—ensuring that each step forward is informed by past experiences.

By focusing on these actionable shifts, leaders can integrate the essence of the FAIR framework into daily practice—transforming ideals into concrete practices and measurable results.

How Conscious Leadership Provides the Foundation for a FAIRer World

Our Conscious Leadership Framework is a solid bedrock on which FAIR leadership can be built. 

Our transformative approach that increases both self- and systems-awareness, enabling leaders explore their own identity, values, and beliefs while considering contextual and societal undercurrents, power dynamics, and organizational and societal systems in order to drive meaningful and sustainable change. 

At its core, conscious leadership is about being radically honest. It involves engaging in deep self-reflection, questioning long-held assumptions about self and others, having the courage to face uncomfortable truths about oneself and the world, and acting with purpose and intention to create the more equitable and just world that could and should exist. Conscious leaders understand the very real barriers that have long impeded true inclusion and understand that dismantling these barriers requires more than surface-level policies; it requires a fundamental change in how leaders lead, how processes are designed, how decisions are made, how successes are measured, and how people are valued within the organization.

Integrating FAIR Leadership into Daily and Operational Practices

This approach is highly practical. It demands measurable change. 

Adopting a FAIR leadership approach isn’t about overhauling everything overnight–quick fixes only provide a temporary bandage. Real change takes time. Real organizational operational shifts take time. Real change means engaging in real, adaptive change management processes that work, including strategic planning, coalition building, continuous feedback loops, and iterative improvement. 

Leaders can start by embedding equity into their team’s daily operations—ensuring that every decision, whether related to hiring, promotions, or strategic planning, is evaluated through the lens of fairness and inclusion, and drive systemic and cultural transformation.

A Call to Action for Conscious Leaders

The rollback of DEI policies may seem like a step backward, but it also presents a unique opportunity for those committed to real change. This moment exposes the weaknesses in current practices, inviting leaders to overhaul actions, processes, and systems to ensure they are FAIR by design.

The challenge now is not to lament the disappearance of traditional DEI frameworks, but to advance the principles they represent through innovative, measurable, FAIR leadership practices.

Conscious leadership provides the foundation for a FAIRer world—a world where self-awareness, systems-awareness, accountability, and continuous improvement lead to lasting, systemic change. 

If you are a leader who believes in equity and is ready to transform abstract ideals into everyday realities, consider this an invitation to reflect on your own practices. 

Explore how integrating a FAIR-aligned, conscious leadership mindset can drive meaningful change in your organization: Let’s continue this conversation and work together to ensure that, even in a post-DEI world, the promise of fairness, access, inclusion, and representation remains at the heart of our collective efforts.

If these ideas resonate with you and you’re interested in exploring how to integrate these practices into your leadership approach, we invite you to get in touch. 

Together, we can build organizations where equity isn’t just an ideal, but a daily reality.

Let’s transform theory into action, and build a future where every individual has the opportunity to thrive.