Noticing Our Impact: Microaggressions, Micro-Affirmations, and the Everyday Work of Inclusion

In earlier posts, I have explored some of the quieter challenges that shape organizational life: communication that breaks down, supervisors who withdraw, and the slow erosion of trust that follows. These are not dramatic events—they tend to unfold gradually, in the margins of daily work. Today I want to reflect on another set of behaviors that operate in that same quiet register: microaggressions.

I want to approach this topic with some care, because it tends to make people feel defensive before they have had a chance to genuinely engage. That defensiveness is understandable. Most of us enter the workplace wanting to do right by our colleagues. The idea that we might be causing harm, even unintentionally, is uncomfortable. But it is precisely because these behaviors are unintentional that they deserve our attention.

What Are Microaggressions?

The term "microaggression" was coined by psychiatrist Chester Pierce in the 1970s and has since been developed extensively by researcher Derald Wing Sue. Sue describes microaggressions as the everyday slights, snubs, and indignities that members of marginalized groups experience in their interactions with others—often from people who have no awareness that they are communicating anything hurtful at all.

The prefix "micro" can be misleading. It does not suggest that the impact is minor. It suggests that the behavior is small in scale—a comment, a gesture, a moment of inattention. But these moments accumulate. For people who experience them regularly, they can have a meaningful effect on how safe, valued, and welcome they feel in a workplace.

What makes microaggressions particularly difficult to address is their ambiguity. They rarely rise to the level of obvious misconduct. They live in the gray area between thoughtlessness and intent, which makes them easy to dismiss and hard to name.

Some Familiar Patterns

Rather than offering an exhaustive catalog, I want to highlight a few representative examples that I think many of us will recognize—either from our own experience or from what we have witnessed in our organizations.

The Compliment That Carries an Assumption

Imagine a colleague of color delivering a particularly strong presentation—well-organized, insightful, and well-received. Afterward, someone pulls them aside and says, "I have to say, I was really impressed. I didn't expect that." Or: "You are so articulate."

The speaker means this kindly. They are offering genuine praise. But embedded in the compliment is a baseline assumption that this person's competence was surprising—that the bar of expectation was lower to begin with. The praise lands awkwardly because it reveals what was not said: that the person's ability had been underestimated.

This kind of moment is genuinely hard to navigate for everyone involved. The speaker is often unaware of what they've communicated. The recipient may not want to make the moment more uncomfortable by pointing it out. And so it passes—but it is not forgotten.

Who Gets Acknowledged in the Room

This one requires slowing down and paying attention to our own habits. When we walk into a meeting or gather with colleagues, who do we greet first? Who gets the handshake, the eye contact, the warm welcome—and who gets a brief nod, or is overlooked until someone circles back?

Research and lived experience both suggest that in racially mixed groups, white colleagues are often acknowledged first and more fully. People of color may be greeted last, or not until the more prominent introductions have been made. It is rarely a deliberate choice—but it communicates something about whose presence registers most naturally as important.

Leaders, in particular, are worth reflecting on this. The order in which we acknowledge people in a room sends a signal about who belongs at the center of our attention.

Mistaking One Person of Color for Another

Among the most commonly reported microaggressions in workplace settings is being confused with another person of color—particularly when they are the only two Black, Latinx, or Asian employees in a department. The two individuals may look nothing alike. What they share is that they are visibly different from the majority of the team.

Being confused with a colleague in this way is not simply an embarrassing slip. It communicates, however unintentionally, that the person has not been seen as an individual. The individuality that majority colleagues take for granted—the sense that their face, name, and presence are distinctly registered—is something that people in the minority have to continually work to claim.

When it happens once, it can be attributed to a momentary lapse. When it happens repeatedly, it becomes something the person has to carry.

Other Patterns Worth Noticing

These are not the only forms microaggressions take. Others that appear frequently in organizational settings include:

• Asking a colleague of color where they are "really" from, in a way that implies their American identity is conditional

• Attributing someone's role or success primarily to diversity initiatives rather than to their qualifications

• Repeatedly mispronouncing a colleague's name without making a genuine effort to learn it

• Asking a woman of color to handle administrative tasks—taking notes, ordering food—in a setting where her peers are not expected to

• Responding to expressed concerns about inclusion with "I don't see color" or "we treat everyone the same here."

Intent and Impact: Why Both Matter

When conversations about microaggressions arise in organizations, one of the most common responses is: "But I didn't mean it that way." And that is almost always true. Most of the behaviors described above are not rooted in conscious bias or ill will. They emerge from habits, assumptions, and blind spots that many of us carry without being fully aware of them.

The trouble is that intent and impact are two different things—and centering on intent, while understandable, often shifts the focus away from the person affected and toward the comfort of the person who caused the discomfort. "I didn't mean to" may be accurate, but it doesn't undo the colleague's experience of feeling unseen or diminished.

Recognizing that impact matters, even when intent was good, is not about assigning blame. It is about taking responsibility for our effect on others—and that is something most of us, if we're honest, want to do.

This framing is more productive than the alternative. When we ask, "What was the impact of this, and what can I learn from it?" rather than "Was I a bad person for doing this?" we create space for genuine growth rather than defensive shutdown. It allows us to stay curious rather than closed.

Ibram X. Kendi's work reminds us that antiracist practice is not about achieving a fixed state of being "not racist"—it is an ongoing process of examining our ideas and actions and choosing, again and again, to act in ways that support equity (Kendi, 2019). That framing is helpful here. None of us arrives fully formed. We are all in the process of learning.