Fostering diversity: a lifetime commitment

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Today's newsletter will take about 7 minutes to read. 

Some of you will do it in under 5, but it's not a competition (I think..). Clock starts now!

Introduction

We’ve all heard the saying: “if you’re the smartest one in a room, you’re in the wrong room”. While this may spark our interest in terms of our intellectual level and our knowledge, I think that we could adopt a better saying for our contemporary world. Namely:

Intelligence today is not linearly defined as it was previously thought out. There are many ways for someone to use their skills and bring something new and powerful to the table. Rather than placing someone under a category because of their studies, it would be more insightful to nurture the true fire of great ideas, successful teams, and revenue inducing products: diversity.

I am on a continuous chase to surround myself with people coming from different backgrounds, different experiences, and different fields of work: it allows me to enhance my understanding of the world, horizontally. It gives me a chance to dip my toes into new environments and groups. What society might deem as normal or interesting can take a different form if you surround yourself with diverse upbringings.

• What if what you thought normal is in actuality not?

• What if your prejudices and ideas do not generally hold?

• What if you have guarded your egotistical ideas from being questioned so you can protect your identity by only spending time with people that understand the world exactly like you?

• Are you a victim of groupthink?

In order to grow continuously, we need to place ourselves in new situations which can help us articulate or eliminate our values and thoughts. It’s the core of personal development. And it all stems from fostering diversity.

Objectives

Subject

Diversity is generally accepted as an asset to modern teams. Research has shown that it can result in greater innovation and market growth. Gender diversity often drives better financial results. And there’s no doubt that employers have better odds of hiring the right people when they consider a diverse talent pool.

But, making workplace diversity work poses challenges. These are a few common issues faced by diverse teams:

• Minority groups feel undervalued and rarely speak up;

• Majority groups feel alienated by efforts to enhance diversity;

• Cultural conflicts arise and can distract teams from solving work problems';

• Team members create closed networks.

Team leaders are responsible for alleviating concerns and steering their team in the right direction. To help manage diverse teams, leaders can ask themselves three questions:

• How can I make all team members feel equally valued?

• How can I facilitate collaboration between team members?

• How can I always lead by example?

People often look at the meaning of diversity from a narrow perspective. Most think about gender, race or religion. But they might overlook other aspects like age, disability, language, personality and sexual orientation. These are types of inherent diversity, attributes we are born with.

There’s also acquired diversity, ways of thinking acquired by experience. This kind of diversity matters too. For example, people with cross-cultural competence (the ability to understand and work with people from many different cultures) can be great allies in building an inclusive workplace.

Framework

What makes people feel included in organisations?

Harvard Business Review found that what leaders say and do makes up to a 70% difference as to whether an individual reports feeling included. And this really matters because the more people feel included, the more they speak up, go the extra mile, and collaborate — all of which ultimately lifts organisational performance.

Irrelevant to your environment, your leadership style needs to have inclusivity as one of its core values: it’s the only way to ensure you get and retain the best ideas and talent.

Inclusive leadership has become a hot topic in contemporary companies. To further their findings, Harvard Business Review surveyed more than 4,100 employees about inclusion, interviewed those identified by followers as highly inclusive, and reviewed the academic literature on leadership.

From this research, they identified 17 discrete sets of behaviours, which they grouped into six categories, all of which are equally important and mutually reinforcing. They then built a 360-degree assessment tool for use by followers to rate the presence of these traits among leaders. The tool has now been used by over 3,500 raters to evaluate over 450 leaders. The results are illuminating.

These are the six traits or behaviours that they found distinguish inclusive leaders from others:

Their research is truly powerful. While these traits look like common leadership skills that one should have, the difference around inclusive leadership lies in the details: it’s not about making grand gestures or organising quarterly meetings about preaching how your team or company are staying open to diversity, but rather in the day to day actions.

Here are some of the actions an inclusive leader would do, grasped from the aforementioned research, captured through verbatim from the surveyed group:

• Shares personal weaknesses: “[This leader] will openly ask about information that she is not aware of. She demonstrates a humble unpretentious work manner. This puts others at ease, enabling them to speak out and voice their opinions, which she values.”

• Learns about cultural differences: “[This leader] has taken the time to learn the ropes (common words, idioms, customs, likes/dislikes) and the cultural pillars.”

• Acknowledges team members as individuals: “[This leader] leads a team of over 100 people and yet addresses every team member by name, knows the work stream that they support and the work that they do.”

In contrast, here are opposing verbatim from the research on how a leader acts if they do not promote inclusivity in their teams:

• Overpowers others: “He can be very direct and overpowering which limits the ability of those around him to contribute to meetings or participate in conversations.”

• Displays favouritism: “Work is assigned to the same top performers, creating unsustainable workloads. [There is a] need to give newer team members opportunities to prove themselves.”

• Discounts alternative views: “[This leader] can have very set ideas on specific topics. Sometimes it is difficult to get an alternative view across. There is a risk that his team may hold back from bringing forward challenging and alternative points of view.”

What leaders say and do has an outsized impact on others, but it’s even more pronounced when you are leading a diverse team. Subtle words and acts of exclusion by leaders, or overlooking the exclusive behaviours of others, easily reinforces the status quo.

It takes energy and deliberate effort to create an inclusive culture, and that starts with leaders paying much more attention to what they say and do on a daily basis and making adjustments as necessary. Here are four ways for leaders to get started:

Final thoughts

Improving our leadership style to diversity is a lifetime task: new situations and individuals will place you again in a learning point where you have to grow and overcome your personal limitations. Instead of being stiff in our thinking and refusing growth, one should always challenge their own thinking with humility and empathy.

Emotional intelligence has taught us the importance of self-awareness. In the context of inclusive leadership, we have to continuously keep a mirror in front of our words and actions, and decide whether they stem from biases. Remaining transparent with our own experience in front of our teams will instantly make others feel more included.

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Quality content

Creating an environment that promotes diversity ultimately allows your teams to feel psychologically safe. Your team members will feel comfortable to challenge the status quo, to bring their ideas forward, and to march for what they consider right. All of these without the fear of being seen as less for staying in touch with who they truly are.

Diversity comes in many shapes and sizes, as we have seen today. A one off “done because we had to” training on diversity is in no way enough: it’s sloppy and superficial.

Today’s quality content offers you a deeper dive on psychological safety and how you can nurture it. The article will run you through why the topic is important, what are its phases, and how to nurture it as a leader. Combined with this newsletter, my hope is that all of you will feel driven to audit how diversity is seen in your worlds, and stay committed to make daily small changes towards creating modern, inclusive, and highly functioning spaces for all.

That’s it for today! Thank you for being here! Have a great week ahead!

Razzmatazz without the matazz.