Companies frequently hire me as a consultant to teach their teams how to set up sustainable collaboration and design system practices. In order to do that, I have 2 lessons I consider prerequisites for almost every team I’ve worked with.

The first is going through my “Make Design Systems People Want to Use” 2-hour video course. It becomes a team building activity and a way for the team to develop some shared vocabulary and understanding of design systems and design system process.

The second prerequisite is understanding subtle acts of exclusion, so I teach it.

The term comes from the excellent book of the same title: Subtle Acts of Exclusion by Dr. Tiffany Jana and Dr. Michael Baran.

The term “subtle acts of exclusion” is a welcome and necessary rebrand of the idea of “microaggressions.” Why? Because the term “microaggression” is rebuffed by both parties. For the aggrieved, there’s nothing “micro” about it; it feels big. For the unintentional aggressor, they weren’t trying to be aggressive, and, often times, still don’t think they are.

So Drs. Jana and Baran suggest calling it a “subtle act of exclusion”—SAE for short—as it’s more descriptive, even if admittedly less catchy. These infractions are often subtle, they are acts, and they serve to exclude, both intentionally and unintentionally.

When an SAE has been committed against someone, they often feel one or more of these sentiments:

• You are invisible
• You (and/or people like you) are inadequate
• You are not an individual
• You don’t belong
• You are not normal
• You are a curiosity
• You are a threat
• You are a burden

These kinds of things happen all the time on teams. I talk about collaboration a lot, and SAE are some of the most common and biggest blockers to collaboration on multi-disciplinary teams. To clear that blocker, we have to be able to identify when an SAE is happening and have a protocol to stop and resolve it.

SAE typically have two direct parties involved:

1. The initiator, the person who says or nonverbally does the SAE
2. The subject, the person (or group) excluded by the SAE

There’s also typically an important third party involved: the observers, people who see or hear an SAE. If an observer speaks up, they become an ally. If an observer stays silent, they become a bystander. Often times, when all observers are bystanders, the subject has no other choice than to become their own ally by speaking up for themselves, which may put them in a dangerous situation.

There are 4 guidelines for speaking up and addressing an SAE to become an ally:

1. Pause the action. Stop an SAE as soon as you can to prevent further damage by saying something like “hold on,” “wait,” “pause,” “ouch,” or other phrases like it. Some teams have developed their own shared protocol for SAE and use custom phrases like “yellow card“ or “time out.”
2. Assume good intent. The point isn’t to make the initiator feel bad. (If it was, you may actually be committing an SAE against them and become an initiator yourself.) It’s not about calling them out; it’s about calling them up to a higher standard.
3. Explain why the action was paused. It could be a simple and clear statement, like, “I don’t know if you meant anything by it, but that made me feel like I’m not part of this group.” There are also times you might not know as a subject or an ally, which might sound like, “Something about that doesn’t feel right to me. Can we talk about that?”
4. Have patience but expect progress. All of this is awkward and difficult. Do your best to balance the grace that changes may not happen right away with the expectation that they eventually need to.

If you’re the unintentional initiator of an SAE, there are 3 guidelines for how to handle this situation:

1. Acknowledge the feedback with gratitude. Something as simple as “thanks for speaking up about this” or “thanks for letting me know” will suffice. You don’t have to apologize, but you can if you want.
2. Replace defensiveness with curiosity. This is tough, especially in the moment. Instead of “what did I do?” try to shift more toward “what can I do?” If you’re not in a place to be able to say that, try committing to commit.
3. Follow through and follow up. Whether in the moment or returning back later, close the loop. If someone told you they don’t like you using a particular word or phrase, commit to them that you won’t any more, or whatever change you’re able to.

I’ve been on every side of this myself many times as subject, initiator, observer, ally, and bystander:

• Over the course of multiple meetings a few years ago, a co-worker of mine repeatedly followed up many of my comments with, “What Dan is trying to say is…” After a few occurrences, I paused the SAE to let him know that made me feel like I wasn’t as smart as everyone else and needed a translator. He immediately apologized, thanked me for saying something, and committed to not doing it again. Our collaboration became better from that point on, and I consider him one of my best collaborators to this day, partially because we had that interaction.
• In a meeting a few weeks ago, I made a comment intended to bring the team closer together. One of my co-workers spoke up to tell me that my comments made him feel invalidated and erased. He said he needed to leave the meeting as it was no longer productive for him to be there. I asked what I said to make him feel that way, immediately realized my defensiveness, apologized, and offered to talk about it either now or later depending on what was better for him. We talked a few days later, I apologized again and committed to not saying any more things like I had said.

When I share these SAE protocols with teams, there are usually a few people who have the sentiment that this is all overblown and making a mountain of a molehill. (Perhaps you feel that way right now reading this.) But we designers do this in other areas—and even pride ourselves on it. We design error states for forms and 404 pages for websites. We hope we’ve designed clear form labels or understandable information architectures so our users don’t see error states or end up at a “Page not found” dead end, but we make contingency plans anyway. Why not do the same thing with our conversations and interactions?

Overall, the best way to address a subtle act of exclusion is to not commit one in the first place. That means simple and powerful things like thinking before we speak and doing the pre-work to understand others not like us and the things that typically make them feel excluded. Despite our best efforts, though, that may only be enough to reduce but not eliminate SAE, so let’s at least be prepared when they inevitably do happen. Perhaps that can provide some necessary strides that make every team member feel valued, heard, and respected.

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