Interview with Mannaz’ subject matter expert, Client Director, Trish Meecham.
Yes, the context is hugely important when we want to talk about this topic – let alone want to engage with it! I see workplaces around the world today rapidly changing – growing increasingly multi-cultural, younger, and overall more diverse. People are located globally, are more remotely connected and networked with peers, thought leaders and other stakeholders around the world. From my perspective, to lead in this changing context today requires an ability to develop individualised, meaningful relationships; to encourage employees to feel valued for their uniqueness, to feel included, and connected to one another despite their differences. Moreover, in an organisational setting – to leverage this uniqueness for competitive advantage.
To quote a recent profile in Diversity Journal, diversity is ‘…all the ways we differ. Some differences we are born with and cannot change. Anything that makes us unique is part of this definition of diversity. Inclusion involves bringing together and harnessing these diverse forces and resources, in a way that is beneficial. Inclusion puts the concept and practice of diversity into action by creating an environment of involvement, respect, and connection—where the richness of ideas, backgrounds, and perspectives are harnessed to create business value. Organizations need both diversity and inclusion to be successful…’
Whilst D & I appear to be slowly shifting from compliance driven to more strategically aligned, we are still seeing initiatives that focus on ‘empowering’ minority ‘out-groups’, as well as training the majority ‘in-groups’ in topics like unconscious bias.
To give you a bit of background, In and Outgroups are principles in sociology and social psychology whereby people define themselves in terms of social groupings – and are quick to judge others who don’t fit into those groups. Those who we identify with, who share our particular qualities are our ‘in-group’ and those who do not are our ‘out-group’. Sometimes these groupings are intrinsic to us (for example, our gender, age, race, or ethnicity) but in other cases, they are more randomly determined. From my perspective, we need to do a lot more than focus on ‘in’- or ‘out’-groups. We need to deal with this much more broadly and yes – inclusively.
Yes, besides being the right thing to be – diverse and inclusive – the benefits of diversity are enormous for our businesses, as statistics highlight. For example:
Diverse companies outperform non-diverse companies by 35% (According to McKinsey – Why Diversity Matters)
In what we might call ‘enlightened’ organisations’, efforts to build diverse and inclusive workforces and workplaces have expanded to include other stakeholder groups such as customers, regulators, as well as employees. These stakeholder groups are much more diverse, not just in terms of race, sexual orientation or gender but also in terms of cognitive thinking styles, cultural identity and perspectives.
Whilst we are seeing progression, as I said, there can be a tendency to oversimplify D & I efforts by producing well-meaning policies and/or rolling out training programs that focus only on ‘empowering’ specific ‘out’ groups (generally the minority, for example women, LGBT, or certain racial groups) or by training ‘in’ groups (predominantly white male leaders) in unconscious bias.
Organisations that focus on the everyday reality of a globalised leadership context, the everyday conversations between real people who are different in one way or another, will produce leaders far more equipped to deal with the challenges that diversity brings. In turn, they will lead by understanding, embracing and successfully leveraging these differences for competitive advantage.
Absolutely, a few examples include:
Telstra: “All Roles Flex” – the purpose with “All Roles Flex” was to adopt a new and disruptive position around mainstreaming flexibility that would amplify productivity benefits, lift engagement, establish a clear market proposition and enable a new way of working, with technology linked very strongly to this. This has been hugely successful, and is a great talent attraction and retention tool.
Google: In 2013, Google began educating employees and leaders en masse – creating Unconscious Bias @ Work and other tools – to start a conversation about unbiasing. This helped ensure that employees had a common understanding and language to talk about unconscious bias, and the platform to do so. (re:Work with Google)
Credit Suisse: The Real Returns™ Program offers talented senior professionals who have taken an extended career break, a smooth transition back into the workforce. These types of returns programmes are generally targeting women returning to the workforce after a career break. There’s a huge market of untapped talent right there! See https://www.credit-suisse.com/hk/en/careers/career-opportunities/experienced-professionals/real-returns.html
Being a leader can be a daunting task. In most of our current leadership development work, we already seek to enable leaders to be conscious about their context and abilities, competent to navigate their business realities, and confident to lead across the dimensions of difference in which they operate. The same will hold true for organisations wanting to tackle D & I intelligently – they must become conscious, competent, and confident. Part of how I – and we – deal with this is by helping our clients to develop ‘global leadership mindsets’ – enabling their leaders to create organisations where people feel involved, respected, connected – where the richness of ideas, backgrounds and unique perspectives that people bring to the table are harnessed to create business value.
Our general approach with clients is to develop the culture, leadership capabilities and metrics that facilitate their success, and to ensure that diversity and inclusion fully integrates into the very fabric of their learning culture. We need to move beyond compliance-driven initiatives and make it a key part of organisational competitiveness. This is the Mannaz way.
You’re welcome.
