“The fingers of one hand are not equal, but each one is valuable to the “hand”—West African proverb
In Part 1, I wrote about diversity: growing up as one of nine children, each of us different in temperament, talent, and dreams. Diversity is the fact of difference. But a fact does not tell you what to do. Equity is the answer to that question. Once you see that people are different, how do you treat them fairly?
My father answered that question every day, long before anyone used the word “equity” in a boardroom.
Same love, different support
With nine children, the easiest path would have been to treat us all exactly the same. The same rules. The same expectations. The same path to success. Many parents, and many organizations, mistake that for fairness.
My father did not. He studied each of us. He knew who was strong with words and who was strong with numbers. He knew who needed a push and who needed patience. He knew who led from the front and who led quietly from the side.
His love was the same for all nine of us. His support was not. Each of us received what we needed to grow into who we were, not into a copy of someone else.
That is the heart of equity. Equality gives everyone the same thing. Equity gives everyone what they need to reach the same level of opportunity.
Why “the same” is not always fair
The proverb says the fingers of one hand are not equal. Yet the hand works because each finger does its job. Nobody asks the thumb to become a little finger. Nobody calls the thumb privileged because it is shaped differently.
In families and in workplaces, we often expect the opposite. We hand everyone the same tools and call it fair. Then we are surprised when some people thrive and others fall behind.
Identical treatment rewards the people the system was designed for. Everyone else has to work twice as diligently to get half as far. Equity corrects that. It asks a simple question: What does this person need to do their best work?
Recognizing strengths is a leadership skill
What my father practiced was not softness. It was discipline. To provide each child what they need, you must first pay attention. You must listen. You must be willing to see people as they are, not as you assume they are.
This is also what transformational leaders do. They practice what researchers call individualized consideration: they treat each person as a unique individual with distinct needs and abilities. They coach. They adjust. They invest differently in different people, with the same goal of helping everyone grow.
My father never read a leadership textbook on the subject. He simply believed that each of his children carried a gift and that his job was to help that gift come out.
Equity built respect, not resentment
Some people worry that equity creates jealousy. “Why does she receive more help than me?” In our home, the opposite happened.
Because my father openly recognized each child’s strengths, we learned to recognize them too. We knew who to call for advice on a contract and who to call when the family needed someone to calm a tense conversation. Our differences became a shared resource, not a competition.
Equity, done well, builds mutual respect. When people see that support is based on need and not on favoritism, trust grows. When they see their strengths valued, they stop measuring themselves against everyone else.
Bringing equity from home to work
Here is what my father’s example teaches leaders today:
- Know your people individually. You cannot provide people what they need if you do not know what that is. Ask. Observe. Listen.
- Separate fairness from sameness. Equal outcomes in opportunity sometimes require unequal inputs. That is not bias; it is wisdom.
- Be transparent about why. Explain your decisions. Support that is understood builds trust; support that is hidden breeds suspicion.
- Name strengths out loud. When you recognize what each person brings, the whole team learns to value it.
- Measure growth, not uniformity. Success is not everyone looking the same. It is everyone becoming their best.
Equity begins at home
Before equity was a policy, it was a practice. It lived at dinner tables, in the way a parent noticed which child was struggling, and in the quiet decision to give that child a little more time.
Diversity showed us that we were different. Equity taught us that our differences deserved different kinds of care. But equity alone is still not enough. A person can be supported and still feel like an outsider. This leads to part 3, which is inclusion