Reconstructing DEI

What if diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) weren’t just buzzwords, but teachable skills—things you could actually practice, measure, and improve? In Reconstructing DEI: A Practitioner’s Workbook, strategist and consultant Lily Zheng asks this transformative question. They argue that DEI has suffered from being treated as an abstract moral ideal, or worse, a checklist of performative quick fixes. To build truly equitable organizations, DEI needs reconstruction—not as ideology, but as discipline, skill, and sustained practice guided by outcomes.

Zheng contends that the DEI industry has lost its way by prioritizing optics over impact. Executives make grand statements, practitioners offer isolated training sessions, and organizations mistake motion for progress. But “doing DEI right,” Zheng warns, means replacing performative intent with operational precision—moving from slogans like “we care about inclusion” to measurable shifts in trust, belonging, fairness, and representation. The workbook follows their 2022 book DEI Deconstructed, turning theory into guided exercises that anyone—from senior leaders to DEI officers to employee advocates—can apply.

A Field Guide for Practitioners

Where most DEI books argue for inclusion, Zheng’s workbook trains you to operationalize it. They lay out a “self-to-systems” roadmap divided into three parts: Self Work, Hone Your Skills, and Achieve Outcomes. The idea is to start with inner grounding—understanding your values, identity, and limits—before building outward toward organizational and systemic transformation. Each part contains practical exercises, from identifying your core values to mapping power structures and designing measurable change strategies.

For example, in the first section, you learn to identify personal biases, embrace humility, and practice boundaries and emotional regulation. In the second, you apply those inner tools outward—diagnosing inequity, learning conflict resolution, influencing culture, and empowering others. By the final section, you’re designing DEI strategies, crafting theories of change, evaluating trust, and developing long-term systems for accountability.

From Intent to Outcomes

Zheng’s central thesis is simple but radical: DEI should produce outcomes, not intentions. An inclusive workplace isn’t one filled with slogans or monthly observances; it’s one where people actually experience belonging, equitable evaluation, and psychological safety. “Diversity” must move beyond representation to measurable parity at every level. “Equity” should mean fair processes and outcomes, not moral aspiration. “Inclusion” must be evident in day-to-day culture—the actual behaviors, decisions, and accountability that shape employees’ lived experiences.

“This isn’t just the book that will teach you how to think about changing your organization,” Zheng writes. “This is the book you keep on you while you do it.”

A Toolbox for the Doers

Zheng positions the book for what they call “the do-ers”—the mid-level managers, DEI committee members, and practitioners who need concrete next steps. Rather than lofty philosophy, you’ll find prompts, charts, and reflection questions. You’ll be asked to define your “DEI compass,” evaluate your organization’s culture and structure, and even design your own mini-theory of change. The workbook’s sequencing mirrors professional learning: it doesn’t assume expertise but scaffolds practice through repetition and integration.

Each exercise interconnects with others, allowing individuals and teams to revisit practices as they evolve. Zheng insists this is lifelong work—not because DEI is endless, but because systems change requires feedback loops. As practitioners improve, so do their interventions. In this sense, DEI becomes a muscle to strengthen, not a speech to memorize.

Why This Reconstruction Matters

The book arrives at a crucial moment. In the years following the global racial justice uprisings of 2020, countless organizations scrambled to declare diversity commitments. Yet research (from McKinsey, Catalyst, and Harvard Business Review) shows that many DEI initiatives plateaued or backfired because they lacked structure and accountability. Zheng’s workbook provides the missing operational layer—a translation of values into systems, metrics, and behavioral norms. It offers a compassionate realism for leaders exhausted by symbolic gestures and for marginalized practitioners burnt out by exploitation.

Ultimately, Reconstructing DEI reframes the discipline as both personal and procedural. It insists that transformation begins with practitioners who know their values and limits; who can diagnose inequity analytically, not intuitively; and who treat inclusion not as moral charity but as operational excellence. By its end, you understand DEI not as a never-ending “journey,” but as a disciplined, achievable form of organizational change—one that starts with rigorous self-work and ends with measurable equity, inclusion, and trust across systems.

Zheng begins with a challenge that feels deceptively simple: before you can fix an unjust system, you must understand yourself as a practitioner inside it. The first section, “Self Work,” guides you through twelve exercises that reveal who you are, why you’re doing DEI, and how your experiences shape the way you lead. It’s not an abstract reflection—it’s survival training for people doing emotionally taxing equity work.

Understanding Your Values and Identity

The first exercise, “Establish Your Values,” asks you to name your eight core values out of sixty possibilities. Why start here? Because burnout and moral injury in DEI often stem from misaligned values—when you’re forced to compromise what matters most (Zheng cites moral injury research from Syracuse University). For example, if you value “justice” and “integrity,” but your organization rewards compliance, every compromise erodes your emotional foundation.

You then claim your identity with an intersectionality lens inspired by Kimberlé Crenshaw. By mapping which of your identities are privileged or marginalized, you learn to see how your experiences of power and exclusion dance together. Zheng’s exercise prompts you to analyze not just what identities you hold, but how they interact in context—a queer Black woman’s work meeting feels and is received differently than that of a straight White colleague. Practitioners become better advocates when they know where they stand.

Turning Experience into Expertise

Zheng reframes your life story as an “identity-informed expertise.” Every identity, privileged or marginalized, carries knowledge. A disabled employee understands access systems differently; a White man raised in corporate America can decode organizational politics. Recognizing your own expertise—and your blind spots—helps you work with humility while owning your voice. Zheng warns against the “curse of knowledge,” the bias that assumes others know what’s obvious to you.

Unpacking Trauma Without Overidentifying

The final layer of Self Work, “Unpack Your Experiences,” asks you to confront how personal hardship has shaped your practices. Many practitioners enter DEI from direct pain—racism, exclusion, sexism—but unhealed trauma can blur ethical clarity. Zheng distinguishes between centering your experiences and projecting them. Naming your triggers helps prevent burnout and compassion fatigue (researchers like Jason Newell call this “secondary trauma”).

“Working from a place of knowing who we are and where we come from,” Zheng writes, “is one of the most powerful ways to ground our efforts.”

By the end of this section, you’ve charted a psychological and ethical compass. You understand your motivations, limits, and support systems. And you realize that DEI work isn’t about martyrdom—it’s about stewardship. This self-awareness becomes the foundation for every strategy and policy you’ll build later. As Zheng notes, “Skipping this step can result in avoidable harm to ourselves and those we’re working to benefit.”

Once you understand yourself, you must learn to sustain yourself. In the second cluster of exercises, Zheng helps practitioners build personal capacities essential for long-term impact: emotional regulation, humility, compassion, and boundaries. These are not soft skills—they are survival tools in high-stakes work.

Tuning Your DEI Compass

The exercise “Tune Your Compass” helps you articulate your why. You define the world you’re trying to create and the moral code guiding your actions. Zheng’s own sample reads like a manifesto: commitment to accountability, impact, and humility. This compass is what you return to when frustration hits—a personal constitution that prevents compromise.

Mastering Emotional Regulation

Emotional labor defines DEI, but empathy without regulation quickly leads to burnout. Zheng provides a framework drawn from dialectical behavior therapy—distancing, attention control, mindfulness, and taking action. The key insight: empathy is a superpower when balanced by self-regulation. It allows you to stay emotionally present without absorbing others’ turmoil.

Practicing Humility and Compassion

Zheng reinterprets “cultural humility,” a concept from Melanie Tervalon and Jann Murray-García, as both a learner’s mindset and a teacher’s awareness. They use the metaphor of the cultural iceberg—visible “surface” customs and invisible “deep” values—to show how misunderstanding often happens below the surface. Recognizing these layers turns humility into competence. When you meet others with curiosity, not performance, you model inclusion as behavior, not branding.

Finally, “Extend Compassion” moves compassion beyond others to yourself. Zheng argues self-compassion isn’t indulgence—it’s strategy. By transforming negative self-talk into empathetic dialogue, practitioners sustain endurance. “Without self-compassion,” they warn, “we direct frustration toward ourselves rather than the obstacles in this work.”

The lesson of this section is deceptively simple: sustainable DEI work is emotional discipline. You can’t drive change if you’re depleted or self-jealous. Learning to regulate your emotions, practice humility, and show compassion (especially inward) turns intention into resilience—the essential energy for systemic work.

In one of the book’s most relational chapters, Zheng challenges the hero narrative of DEI—the idea that a single practitioner can save an organization through sheer willpower. “DEI doesn’t work if done solo,” they write. Impact requires collectivism: anchors, allies, and accountability. The section ‘Rely on Others’ translates this insight into four practices: finding anchors, asking for help, setting boundaries, and accepting accountability.

Finding Anchors

Anchors are the people and communities that keep you steady when the work rocks you. Zheng guides you to identify your key needs—learning, belonging, creativity, stability—and the relationships that meet them. They debunk the myth of the singular soulmate anchor, recommending a constellation of connections across friends, colleagues, and advocates. Community, not individual heroism, fuels sustainable advocacy.

The Art of Asking and Setting Limits

Most practitioners struggle with asking for help because DEI culture rewards self-sacrifice. Zheng reframes asking as an act of trust. Their framework—the five W’s and one H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How)—builds structured requests that feel empowering instead of weak. Similarly, boundary-setting becomes a leadership skill. Zheng classifies six boundaries—time, material, physical, information, emotional, intellectual—and teaches proactive boundary-setting as a kindness, not refusal.

Building Shared Accountability

Finally, Zheng invites readers to replace solitary pressure with mutual accountability partnerships. Like workout buddies, accountability partners hold each other to self-defined goals and provide reflection space. In organizations, shared accountability transforms power dynamics from control to collaboration. A pair of mid-level managers can, for example, agree to intervene when bias appears in meetings, alternating responsibility week to week. This small commitment prevents performative allyship from collapsing into silence.

Zheng’s relational toolkit answers the burnout epidemic in DEI work. Isolation is replaced by interdependence; guilt transforms into shared responsibility. “When we rely on others,” Zheng reminds us, “our responsibility feels less like saving the world—and more like doing our part.”

After grounding practitioners in introspection and collaboration, Zheng moves toward organizational analysis. Part Two, ‘Hone Your Skills,’ opens with the art of diagnosis: how to identify inequity not as a feeling, but as a measurable pattern. Here, DEI evolves from empathy to evidence.

Operationalizing Outcomes

Zheng argues that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are umbrella ambitions that require operational clarity. Through a list of 33 potential DEI outcomes—from equitable hiring to psychological safety—you choose the eight that matter most for your organization. This exercise shifts debate from “should we care about inclusion?” to “which specific outcomes must we achieve, and how will we know we’ve succeeded?”

Analyzing Structure, Culture, and Strategy

Zheng introduces three lenses rooted in organizational sociology: structure (rules and roles), culture (shared norms), and strategy (choices made by people with power). Using this triad, practitioners can decode invisible blockers. For instance, a “fail fast” startup might have low failure avoidance (a cultural trait) but high centralization (a structural trait)—explaining why employees hesitate to take risks. Understanding these dynamics ensures interventions fit the system rather than fight it.

Data-Driven DEI

The section “Do Your Research” outlines five disciplined steps: articulate goals, collect data, test hypotheses, recognize limits, take action. You’re encouraged to mix quantitative and qualitative methods—survey engagement metrics alongside focus groups. The final stage, “Tell the Story of Why,” converts data into narrative. Instead of weaponizing numbers, practitioners weave compelling stories that connect insight with empathy (Zheng calls this “data storytelling”).

By the end of this section, DEI becomes a science, not guesswork. Diagnosis replaces intuition, and advocacy earns credibility through evidence. In a field long plagued by sentiment without substantiation, Zheng’s framework legitimizes DEI as both art and analytics.

For Zheng, inclusion is not a project; it’s a daily relational practice. The section “Champion Inclusion” equips you to model inclusivity in behavior, conversations, and decision-making. The goal: transform good intentions into interpersonal excellence.

Learning to Learn

Zheng begins with humility. Most “inclusion fails” happen when privileged groups treat marginalized colleagues as teachers. The rule: do your homework before asking “Google-able” questions. Learn from people’s output before seeking personal access. This principle dignifies marginalized experience and eliminates microaggressions disguised as curiosity.

Cultivating Microculture

To shift culture, start small. Zheng defines a “microculture” as a mini-ecosystem—a team, committee, or project group—where norms form quickly. You can influence these through timing (“get there first”), habits (“change the routine”), and recognition (“use social incentives”). For instance, introducing a mid-meeting “gratitude moment” can normalize acknowledgment and appreciation, even inside rigid corporate systems.

Empowering Others and Using Your Platform

The next exercises tackle power-sharing. In “Empower Others,” leaders use their formal or informal influence to remove obstacles and amplify others’ agency—not to hoard visibility. Then “Use Your Visibility” guides powerful actors to take intentional stands. Zheng describes three escalation stages: challenge the norm (speak up), take bold action (embody the new rule), and double down (institutionalize change). A senior executive publicly declining panel invitations unless gender-diverse panels are featured moves through all three.

This section grounds inclusion in behavior, not branding—listening, adjusting, and leveraging visibility for justice. Inclusion, Zheng concludes, isn’t what you believe; it’s how you behave when stakes are high.

Conflict and harm inevitably surface in any DEI process. Zheng reframes them not as failures but as opportunities for accountability, growth, and structural learning. This section demystifies four essential skills: listening, managing conflict, repairing harm, and unearthing root causes.

Listening to Understand

Zheng emphasizes “active listening” through four specific gestures: reflecting, asking thoughtful questions, verbal affirmation, and validating emotion. When a colleague says, “I felt ignored in that meeting,” the proper DEI response isn’t defensiveness but acknowledgement: “It makes sense you’d feel unheard—I’ll make sure to check in next time.” Such listening converts tension into trust.

Conflict Styles as Tools

Conflict isn’t inherently bad; unmanaged conflict is. Zheng outlines five management styles—avoidance, accommodation, competition, compromise, and collaboration—and helps you diagnose when to use each. A collaboration approach fits long-term equity design; a competition approach might protect marginalized people during urgent harm prevention. Fluency in these “conflict languages” replaces avoidance with adaptability.

Restorative and Transformative Approaches

Drawing from restorative justice frameworks, Zheng urges leaders to center relationships over rules. Instead of punishing offenders, restorative processes ask, “Who was harmed, what do they need, and what will make it right?” For example, if a manager demeans a team member, a restorative resolution might involve public accountability, behavioral coaching, and reintegration—not secrecy or termination. The final exercise, “Unearth Root Causes,” moves from incidents to patterns, revealing systemic sources—policies, hierarchies, or cultures—that breed recurring harm.

By combining empathy with analysis, these practices turn pain into feedback loops for institutional maturity. Zheng’s insight is profound: organizations that grow through conflict become more equitable because they learn from discomfort rather than dissolve in it.

In the final act, Zheng transitions from individual and interpersonal practice to systems change. The section “Achieve Outcomes” teaches you to organize movements, rebuild trust, design strategy, and measure results—culminating in sustainability and self-care. This closes the circle from self-work to systems transformation.

Organizing Movements, Not Moments

Zheng dismantles the myth of solitary changemakers. Real change comes from coalitions—groups filling complementary roles like advocates, educators, backers, and builders. They illustrate this through a case story: employees challenging a harmful harassment training program who succeed through collective effort, supportive leadership, and iterative redesign. The moral: movements, not heroes, transform organizations.

Trust as Organizational Currency

Trust determines the success of every DEI initiative. High-trust cultures enable ambitious programs; low-trust ones need repair before change. Zheng provides diagnostic markers and offers rebuilding strategies—from public accountability (“get skin in the game”) to transparent apologies. Without trust, even the best strategy will fail.

Theory of Change and Strategy

Using tools from development theory, Zheng shows how to build a “theory of change”: map the outcomes you want, the causes preventing them, and the interventions needed. A cause-and-effect diagram becomes your blueprint. Once defined, you craft a DEI strategy around priorities, resource allocation, and timelines—just like any serious business plan.

Measure, Document, and Sustain

Metrics are the accountability backbone. Zheng distinguishes between direct metrics (e.g., pay equity data) and proxy metrics (e.g., retention of marginalized employees). Equally crucial is documentation: without knowledge transfer, progress dies when people leave. Finally, Zheng urges practitioners to “future-proof” their movements through succession planning and self-sustenance practices—rest, joy, and purpose beyond work. “You can’t sustain others unless you sustain yourself.”

The result is a holistic DEI ecology—one where personal reflection, organizational design, and systemic strategy interlock. By the book’s end, you’ve rebuilt DEI from a moral ideal into a measurable discipline—one guided by compassion, rigor, and sustainability.