From Calling Out to Calling In: How Entrepreneurs Can Build Better Businesses with Effective DEI

 

Meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work isn't just about doing the right thing—it's about unlocking the full potential of your teams and serving your communities more effectively. 

"I find there can be really great energy around occasions like Pride and Indigenous History Month, where folks want to activate their power, show up as allies, and contribute to the community,” says Gwenna Kadima, Founder and CEO of Center Desk Consulting. “But don’t end it there. Keep that energy going through the rest of the year.” 

Gwenna is an award-winning diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant who’s spent the last eight years transforming workplace cultures across Canada. Before becoming Founder of Center Desk, she was a Talent & Organization Consultant at a global management consulting firm, where she founded and led multiple employee resource groups and delivered client projects on DEI strategy and programming. 

Gwenna's journey into DEI work was sparked by two key factors: her passion for the human side of organizational dynamics and her personal experience navigating systems of oppression, which helped her recognize where she could make the most meaningful impact.

Calling In and Building Psychologically Safer Workplaces

One of the most significant barriers to authentic DEI progress is the fear of making mistakes. 

When people are shamed for making mistakes, they tend to shut down rather than use it as a valuable learning opportunity. That’s why Gwenna advocates for a different approach: moving from "calling out" to "calling in."

"Some of the tactical practices that I find really help is normalizing the idea of calling folks in instead of calling folks out," she explains. "We're all going to make mistakes, especially when we're engaging with lived experiences that might be different than our own.”

The difference between calling in and calling out lies in the approach. Instead of publicly acknowledging when someone makes a mistake, calling in involves private, compassionate correction that allows for learning and growth.

Gwenna offers a concrete example: 

"Say a couple of folks are on a call with an external vendor or somebody new, and one of the people on the call is misgendering the new individual in the room. Instead of stopping the whole call and saying, ‘you're misgendering this person,’ consider sending them a private message saying ‘FYI, this person's pronouns are XYZ.’ Calling in means addressing it in more subtle ways that don’t cause the person who made the mistake to feel humiliated, while still holding them accountable for inclusive, respectful behaviours.” 

Gwenna also explains that in order to create psychologically safer spaces, leaders need to model vulnerability and acknowledge their own power and influence. "It's really important to recognize that just because somebody may have the most senior title doesn't mean that they have all the answers. It doesn't mean that their voice is more important than other folks." 

Through this approach, leaders can help individuals see each other as team members rather than threats.

"So often, we operate in divisive spaces where we view someone different as foreign or threatening—someone we keep our guard up around," Gwenna observes. "Leaders need to take time to normalize differences within our groups. We should help people understand that while someone may be different and have different perspectives, we still share a foundation for how we treat each other with respect."

Building Truly Equitable Systems, Not Just Inclusive Culture

While creating psychologically safer environments is crucial, Gwenna emphasizes that true DEI work needs to go beyond interpersonal dynamics to examine and transform organizational systems.

"Inclusion is really focused on the interpersonal—creating an environment where we treat each other with respect and where everyone can fully participate," Gwenna explains.

"Equity, however, examines our processes and systems. It looks at how people experience different outcomes based on their identity or group belonging, even within the same systems. Equity is about creating interventions that acknowledge these disparities and actively address them."

For growing businesses, this means moving beyond "gut feel" decision-making to create standardized, transparent processes. 

"One of the places where things can get really sticky is when your organization is growing and you're expanding your team. If you don't have a standardized process—like clear questions you ask every [interview] candidate, transparent expectations, defined pay bands, and reasoning for why you'd give one compensation package versus another—that's where things can get really inequitable, really quickly."

The solution lies in what Gwenna calls a "co-creative approach"—involving the people who will be impacted by policies and processes in their design.

"The more you can engage the groups who will be affected by your mission, priorities, and policies in actually defining them, the more effective they'll be," she explains. "You need to understand what success looks like not just from your perspective, but from theirs as well."

This prevents the paternalistic assumption of knowing what others need or want. Instead of saying "I'm going to assume what your needs are and I'm going to decide for you," organizations can partner with their communities to create truly responsive systems.

Overcoming Implementation Challenges

Despite good intentions, many DEI initiatives fail due to common implementation challenges. Gwenna has observed these patterns repeatedly in her consulting work and shares guidance for overcoming them.

One of the biggest obstacles is the gap between stated commitment and actual investment. 

"Many organizations, especially from 2020 onwards, now list diversity or inclusion as one of their organizational values—it's become one of their strategic pillars and priorities," Gwenna notes. "But when you look behind the curtain, DEI teams and initiatives are deeply underfunded. Often this work is being done by volunteers or by individuals for whom DEI isn't even technically part of their job description."

Another common pitfall is assuming that lived experience automatically translates to expertise in dismantling oppressive systems. 

"A lot of people assume that because somebody has lived experience with a system of oppression, that they are well-versed in educating others on how to disrupt that system of oppression. That's where we get into these really messy situations, where the one Black person in the organization is expected to teach everybody about anti-Black racism."

For entrepreneurs and small business owners, the key is to start early rather than trying to retrofit culture later. 

"There's a lot to be said for the benefits of investing in DEI early—you actually serve and perform better as an organization," Gwenna explains. "Many organizations get into difficult situations because they haven't invested in DEI from the beginning. It becomes really hard to rewrite a culture after it's already been established."

The Innovation Advantage of Diverse Voices

While DEI work is fundamentally about justice and human dignity, it also delivers tangible business benefits—particularly when it comes to innovation and problem-solving.

"So much of this work is around understanding whose perspective isn't there," says Gwenna. "If we look at examples of women-led businesses or organizations that have high representation of women in leadership, we see that their involvement drives innovation because they're bringing in perspectives that are often overlooked or outside the lived experience of traditional decision makers."

"The more we can create space for equity-deserving groups to have a voice in decision making and guide the direction of outputs, the better we all are served, because it's a better representation of the diversity of who we are as people."

The Government of Canada backs this up, explaining that organizations that are more diverse are: “more likely to outperform their peers; twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets; and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes.” 

Canadian business leaders are invited to take part in the 50 – 30 Challenge, an initiative between the Government of Canada, Canadian businesses, and diversity organizations. Its goal is to “increase the representation and inclusion of diverse groups within their workplaces, while highlighting the benefits of giving all Canadians a seat at the table.”

As AFOA Canada reports, a recent study also showed that diverse teams experience a 60% improvement in decision-making skills compared to more homogeneous groups.

Effectively Integrating DEI as an Entrepreneur

Building an inclusive workplace requires more than good intentions—it needs consistent, thoughtful action. 

You can move from passive support to active allyship by: 

  1. Sharing the Load of DEI Work: Remember that equity-deserving team members shouldn't bear the sole responsibility for educating others or fixing systemic issues. "It is not the responsibility, period, of the individuals who are experiencing and being harmed by those systems of oppression to be responsible for undoing them," Gwenna emphasizes. As a leader, actively take on DEI learning and implementation.

  2. Practicing "Calling In" Instead of "Calling Out": When team members make mistakes, address them privately and compassionately. Send a private message, have a one-on-one conversation, or gently redirect rather than creating a public moment of shame that shuts down learning. However, Gwenna notes that "if somebody is causing active direct harm or violence, we call that out, we shut it down, and we step in whatever way makes most sense in the immediacy of that moment."

  3. Centreing Equity-Deserving Voices in Decision-Making: Actively seek out and amplify perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked in meetings, hiring decisions, vendor selection, and strategic planning. This goes beyond tokenism—it means creating space for these voices and really listening to them so they can genuinely influence outcomes.

  4. Seeking Out Feedback: Create regular opportunities for honest input from your team, customers, and partners. "Whether it's internal organizational practices or service and product delivery, the biggest thing is establishing a consistent pathway for transparent and honest feedback," Gwenna emphasizes. "Your people know what's working and what isn't. Whether it's your staff, employees, customers, or clients." 

  5. Maintaining Year-Round Commitment: Schedule quarterly DEI check-ins, incorporate inclusion goals into annual planning, and resist limiting diversity efforts to awareness months. True allyship means consistent action, not just seasonal gestures.

  6. Investing in Systems, Not Just Intentions: Move beyond "gut feel" decisions to create standardized, transparent processes. This means defined pay bands, consistent interview questions, and clear criteria for promotions that prevent unconscious bias from influencing critical decisions. If you need support, consultants like Gwenna can be hugely helpful in creating and evolving sustainable systems. 

  7. Creating Co-Creative Processes: When developing policies that will impact different communities, involve those communities in the process. Tapping into diverse community meet ups like The Forum’s Weekly Virtual Connects can be a great way to seek out support.

  8. Continuously Educating Yourself: DEI work is never finished. "I always like to say, until you can tell me the stories and the needs of all 8 billion people on this planet, this work is not done. There's always more to learn," Gwenna says. Some of her recommended resources include:

Authentic DEI work isn't just about checking boxes—it's about unlocking the full potential of every team member and better serving communities. By implementing these strategies, you're building a stronger business and contributing to a more equitable future for everyone.

Center Desk Consulting was founded out of a desire to transform the common approach to DEI work—one that often overlooks the complexities of creating systems that truly work for everyone.

Supporting clients across the full spectrum of DEI interventions, Center Desk Consulting specializes in anti-oppressive employee resource group enablement and equitable employee experience design. Their work centers on developing sustainable workplace systems that foster truly inclusive and equitable cultures. Taking a "for us, by us" approach, Center Desk Consulting partners with clients of various sizes and sectors to deliver practical, tailored interventions that drive meaningful, systemic change.

 
 
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