This page aims to provide additional information on the RACE Matrix™. A summarised description of the model may be found here.
It is primarily addressed to organisational leaders, HR/DEI professionals, and consultants seeking a deeper understanding on the origin, purpose, and application of the RACE Matrix™ as a formulation-based framework to racialised and intersectional harm.
Key questions are answered.
Who created the RACE Matrix™?
The RACE Matrix™ was created by myself, Dr Guilaine Kinouani, as an extension of my long standing intersectional work on whiteness, racialisation, and institutional functioning.
The model developed from earlier conceptual frameworks I created to understand how race, power, and inequality operate in interaction within organisations and social structures.
These initial models were later refined into a matrix based formulation approach, which I have since peer reviewed and published (Kinouani, 2020, 2021).
What are the foundations of the RACE Matrix™?
In developing the RACE Matrix™, I drew on:
Classic group analytic theory, particularly the concept of the matrix as a shared relational field shaping meaning, communication, and power within groups.
Intersectional/Black feminist thought, and its centering of structural inequality, lived experience, and the interlocking nature of oppression.
Organisational and psychodynamic’ perspectives on institutional defences in the reproduction of organisational culture.
Psychological and clinical practices of formulation or case conceptualisation which focus on understanding both the origins and maintenance of presenting difficulties.
The RACE Matrix™ brings these traditions together to examine how racial harm is produced, defended against, and maintained, and how it may be meaningfully transformed within organisations.
Why use the RACE Matrix™ to address race-related and intersectional harm?
Inequality and injustice related racial harm in organisations is complex.
It is rarely caused by a single policy, ‘bad apples’, or incidents, but by a variety of factors, some more obvious than others. The RACE Matrix™ is designed to understand how injustice and inequality-related harm is created and sustained across multiple interacting levels: individual behaviours and beliefs, team dynamics, leadership culture, organisational systems, and the wider societal factors.
It treats every workplace as a living organism or an organised system which protects its equilibrium or status-quo through conscious and unconscious processes that are often in opposition to what its leadership seeks to achieve.
Beyond the impact on the full employment cycle, these contradictions between policies or discourses, aspirations, and organisational reality have real stakes.
The RACE Matrix™ examines:
* How that harm shows up locally
* What impacts it has at various levels of the organisation
* How it is reinforced through everyday practices and power dynamics
* Why previous interventions may not have led to lasting change
This enables organisations to move from surface level responses to targeted, sustainable action grounded in depth, data, and lived experience.
What does “matrix” mean in practice?
In group analytic theory, the matrix refers to the shared relational field in which meaning, behaviour, roles, and communication are formed. It includes personal, institutional, societal, and historical factors. As such, histories, norms, anxieties, and unspoken or unconscious rules and defences all shape organisational functioning.
The RACE Matrix™ examines how racial harm emerges within this shared and complex field, rather than locating it solely at one level, such as individual employees, race-based incidents, or discriminatory procedures.
Practically, levels of the RACE Matrix™ include:
* Individual factors including, assumptions, fears, expectations, past experiences, prejudice …
*Relational or team dynamics, including everyday interactions, supervision/management arrangements, conflicts, and informal and formal power dynamics
* Institutional frames, including policies, procedures, governance, and accountability mechanisms
*Wider social and historical factors, including structural inequality, sector norms, societal pressures and political discourses
By analysing these levels together, the RACE Matrix™ reveals patterns, feedback loops, and institutional defences that allow racial harm to persist even in organisations committed to equity.
In plain English
Think of the matrix as any organisation’s relational network. It includes how people interact, how decisions really get made, whose voices are heard, what is safe to name, employees’ histories, organisational trauma/stressors, and how power and race operate day to day. The RACE Matrix™ shows how these patterns work together to maintain inequality.
How is the RACE Matrix™ different from a traditional DEI audit?
Most DEI auditors do not have the training to recognise and work with racial harm (and most clinicians are not versed in racialised organisational functioning and in fact, typically struggle to work with racial harm too).
Diversity work tends to focus on what is happening, such as representation, survey scores, policy compliance, or training uptake and while this has its place, The RACE Matrix™ centres harm.
It asks why it persists, where it occurs, what organisational dynamics sustain it, why and how it may be defended against or ignored.
Key distinctions of the RACE Matrix™ include:
*A multi level formulation approach
*Integration of lived experience, psychological insight, and organisational dynamics
*Explicit engagement with unconscious processes, power, and institutional defences
* A focus on resistance to change and associated risks
* A thorough understanding of what must shift for real change to occur
In what ways is the RACE Matrix™ formulation unique?
A formulation is not just a descriptive analysis.
The practice is adapted from the clinical emphasis on 1) making sense of presenting difficulties 2) tracing their genealogy 3) illuminating what keeps them going.
The RACE Matrix™ creates a formulation that identifies patterns, blocks, and maintaining factors. The model it produces sheds light on the organisation’s hidden functioning and where best to focus resources.
The model is specifically designed to work with conflict, discomfort, and power dynamics while addressing anxiety and resistance ethically, including those that may be hidden.
Finally, it links these insights to multi level action at micro, meso, and macro levels.
How does it centre lived experience without overburdening staff?
Lived experience is treated as critical evidence within the framework. However, restraint is exercised in deciding how and how much to rely on it, to support the case for change.
The following measures are put in place to that end;
*Targeted, time-bound engagement
*A trauma-informed approach grounded in harm reduction
* Facilitation focused on psychological safety
* Clear boundaries around confidentiality and data use established from the outset
* Where appropriate, engagement with relevant stakeholders around self-care and support mechanisms
How is the RACE Matrix™ evaluated?
There are a number of ways impact may be measured. As a starting point, we recommend:
* Baseline analyses of risks, patterns, and current responses
* Prioritisation of issues based on risk, severity, impact, and feasibility
* Agreement on clear indicators of change linked to the action plan
* Follow up reviews to assess implementation progress, emerging challenges, and learning
Why does the model assume harm?
We start from the premise that entrenched and long standing race and intersectional inequality and injustice cause racialised harm.
We accept this may be more discomforting than to speak of diversity, inequality and even of institutional racism, for many.
However, centring harm allows us all to be reminded of what is a stake. It boldly signals courage and commitment.
Beyond framing that harm in terms of reputation and legal compliance risks and associated costs or in terms of skill and experience deficits (which of course can and do cause serious harm to organisations themselves), the model focuses on the human costs. Particularly to the most vulnerable/disadvantaged employees.
Injustice and equality-related harm is now well documented and more easily quantifiable in terms of health, mental health, disability, family and community.
Many effects are long-lasting and intergenerational.
An incontestable and extensive body of empirical evidence supports our core premise (in addition to our own clinical work with employees and communities who experience exclusion at work).
That human harm, it must be noted, extends beyond ‘targets’ themselves and may include issues related to moral injuries or learned helplessness for example, in bystanders and witnesses in larger employee cohort.
Is the RACE Matrix™ evidence-based?
Although what constitutes evidence can be complex to determine, the RACE Matrix™ draws on;
* Group analytic theory
* Intersectional/Black feminist scholarship
* Organisational and social psychology
* Clinical formulation practice
* A peer reviewed conceptual development (Kinouani, 2020, 2021)
* Practice based evidence from real organisations
* Local data and evidence generated through assessment and evaluation exercises
From these considerations, the RACE Matrix™ is clearly evidence-based and firmly theoretically-grounded.
Who is the RACE Matrix™ best suited for?
A range of workplaces can benefit from the RACE Matrix™, including organisations that:
* Recognise that previous DEI efforts have had limited impact
* Want to better understand why progress has stalled
* Are prepared to engage with complexity, discomfort, and accountability
* Seek sustainable, systemic change rather than quick fixes
* Want a formulation model to better understand how their organisation functions procedurally and implicitly
What happens after completion?
The first cycle of input is completed when organisations receive:
* A clear formulation including risks and sustaining dynamics
* A prioritised and realistic action plan
* At least one facilitated close out session focused on understanding, ownership, and next steps
Additional cycles of input from us may be commissioned based on needs and recommendations.
Can the framework be used or purchased as a model to be applied internally?
Although we would love to license the RACE Matrix™ and make its application financially sustainable in that way, there are clear ethical issues which make a wholesale independent application problematic.
The RACE Matrix™ is a depth formulation model designed to work with inequality and injustice related racialised and intersectional harm in organisations.
Working with harm without the appropriate training and expertise, and attempting to reproduce the model without support can risk:
* Re-traumatisation
* Escalating conflict or defensiveness
* Misattribution of causes or blame or pathology
* Surfacing serious issues without the capacity to respond to or contain them
Organisational formulation is a specialist practice.
It is adapted in this model from clinical practice, where training, supervision, and professionally bound ethical standards are the rule. Application in the workplace requires similar safeguards.
Still, it is designed to be usable through supported application, clear boundaries, and foundation level training, rather than unsupported wholesale replication.
We have now developped the foundation training with associated prerequisites so organisations keen to be more independent in its application can do so, with appropriate support. To find out more about The RACE Matrix™ 8-week foundation programme click here.
INTRODUCTORY WEBINAR
Interested to learn more?
We will be hosting an online lunchtime webinar on the RACE Matrix on:
Tuesday February 17, from 13h00 to 14h00
The webinar will introduce the model, its rationale, and its methods.
To request a place, seek further information, or arrange an informal discussion about how the RACE Matrix™ may support your organisation in promoting intersectional equality and justice, please use the form below or contact Guilaine directly to book a free consultation (Guilaine@racereflections.co.uk).
