Business Schools and businesses have a profound opportunity to develop and nurture diverse and inclusive leadership teams for tomorrow, explains Aneeta Rattan. Interview by David Woods-Hale
As London Business School gears up to launch a groundbreaking executive education programme focused on supporting LGBTQ+ leaders, AMBITION caught up with its Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Aneeta Rattan, to find out more about her research into the future of truly inclusive leadership.
Is it inappropriate for organisations to consider diversity and inclusion (D&I)
as one ‘broad church’ when each diverse group experiences its own workplace challenges?
There should always be a multi-layered approach to D&I, but companies need to know exactly what they mean by the terms ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’. Diversity might mean different things for a company operating in Japan compared to one in the US; and similarly, for an organisation operating in the tech sector compared with one in banking. Understanding what D&I means is a first step for any company. This will tell them where to focus their attention
and efforts.
If it makes sense, given an organisation’s definition of diversity, to have a broad overarching approach which leads it to its goals, there’s no problem with this. But, if achieving its goals requires it to address certain [minority] groups, then reassessing its approach to diversity and addressing their efforts toward specific groups also makes sense.
There needs to be space for [companies] to look at themselves and their biggest problems honestly, so they can come up with solutions and engage with D&I issues in as goal-directed a manner as possible.
Do you think employers think about diversity in terms of goals?
A lot of companies have really broad goals when it comes to issues of diversity, but they have not clearly defined how they will take action to reach these goals, how they will monitor their progress, or how they will respond to challenges or setbacks. In other words, there are a lot of organisations that have diversity goals but that don’t necessarily do the things we know they should do when its time to work towards achieving those goals.
In a particular organisation, the diversity challenge could be about increasing social mobility, so the issues to look at could be whether [employees] went to university or not, and whether high-performing employees who did not go to university have just as much opportunity for progression as those who did. If a company doesn’t define a particular goal, they won’t know what questions to ask, and won’t have set up systems to evaluate whether they have made progress towards it.
Your research shows that there are untapped opportunities to build truly
inclusive organisations. Can you tell us a little bit about your work on the It Gets Better Project?
I was really inspired by the It Gets Better Project (an internet-based non-profit founded in the US by gay activist, Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller, with the goal of preventing suicide among LGBTQ+ youth by having gay adults convey the message that these teens’ lives will improve. The project began as a social media campaign with the related hashtag, #itgetsbetter, and its videos have received over 50 million views), because it involved lots of people who had not gone through the kind of bullying and harassment that LGBTQ+ youths experience. I was inspired by these people hosting messages online and directing them to a very specific issue; and trying to do something good for these individuals who face extreme bias and bullying due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
So, like many other people, I was watching a lot of the It Gets Better videos and I was moved by them, but as a researcher, I was also worried. The broader approach of my research is to understand how ideas about change – and people’s ability to change – affect our outlook on issues of diversity or related challenges. In watching the videos, I noticed a lot of discussion about social connection and the wonderful emotional support for these individuals. However, there wasn’t very much talk about people changing their attitudes or about society changing.
When you think about inter-group relations [a summary term to describe the dynamics between groups – everything from stereotyping to prejudice], in order to make these situations better, you have to demand a change from one or both groups.
My research started with this real-world observation and I wanted to do a systematic analysis. We took the 50 most-watched It Gets Better videos on YouTube and had individuals who didn’t know our hypotheses watch them. We asked whether the videos communicated social connection or social change; in addition, we asked if the videos communicated comfort.
We found that all the videos communicated comfort, but there was a larger concentration of social-connection messaging versus social-change messaging in the videos.
The next logical questions were: ‘What’s the meaning? Is this a good thing? Are people communicating the most comforting responses for people dealing with bias against their sexual orientation?’
In two experiments, we took a sample of lesbian, gay and bisexual students, and had them think about this broader social issue and how it impacted their lives.
We asked them to read one of two texts we created as researchers, each of which featured quotes from several of these videos, so all the messages were real but not necessarily from one person. Half the people read a comfort message with a social-connection message, while the others read a comfort message plus the social-change message. Then we asked the students how comforted they felt. We found that the social-change messaging proved to be more comforting than the
social-connection messages.
In thinking about why we find these patterns, we considered the possibility that it has to do with the realities of LGBTQ+ teens. Someone in their late teenage years can sometimes feel that the people around them define their social world.
For many, that social world is not likely to change – they will continue interacting with their family, community, and if they move into a job, vocational training, or a local university, they will often continue seeing people they already know. The social-connection messaging may be misplaced for these individuals who don’t, or can’t, move to another city or find new people to interact with.
Assuming that organisations and their leaders want to be more inclusive, how can they put this into practice?
I believe that the insight from the research is to consider connecting socially – engaging with the LGBTQ+ network, supporting and attending Pride events – and also to think about what changes you can make, or advocate for, in order to actually improve things for members of the group you want to support. That could mean changing the way you speak, to use more inclusive language, or it could be speaking out about policies that play into heteronormative assumptions and pushing for them to change.
How do the roles of allies and advocates in business differ and how can non-LGBTQ+ people better position themselves to support the inclusivity agenda?
In my understanding, an ally is someone who generally supports the inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals. An advocate is someone who wants to actively do something about the problems. An advocate’s role is to use their privilege and power to assert the need for change, and then push for and support the process for achieving that change.
The onus of creating change often falls on groups that experience and are disadvantaged by bias. This is because they truly understand what needs to change and they should be empowered to create this change. At the same time, they shouldn’t be alone in that, and the advocate’s role is to engage proactively in a way that is empowering to members of the disadvantaged group. This is a challenge; they sometimes need to be the last voice in the room rather than the first one. Advocates need to go that extra step to ensure people in the disadvantaged group value their inputs.
Are there extra challenges for LGBTQ+ MBA students once they finish their course and move into new management positions or international placements?
The core challenge is when MBAs leave the context in which they feel their identity has been valued. Broader social stereotypes mean that there is always the potential that MBAs will go from a place of being an equal, to a place of not being viewed as an equal, whenever they transition from their MBA context to a job, or between jobs. That’s a real concern. There’s data to confirm the potential negative impact of sexual orientation in the workplace. To put it bluntly, the extra challenge is other people’s biases.
I don’t see the challenge as being solely for LGBTQ+ MBAs; this is a challenge for everyone. The challenge of anti-LGBTQ+ bias should not fall on sexual-orientation minorities – it should fall on everyone. It often does fall on LGBTQ+ individuals because they’re more readily able to identify what bias is, but of course, allies and advocates can learn to notice and address these things too.
Another programme of my research focuses on why people confront overt expressions of bias that arise in the workplace. These can be comments that are not made with the intention of bias. Our biases can be so deeply held that we think of them as jokes or comments that are perceived as being neutral but that actually come from assumptions about others, such as heteronormative assumptions. In my research with women and racial minorities, I found that that when people believe others can change, they’re more likely to confront overt instances of bias and demonstrate better coping afterwards. By extension, this suggests that in the face of the challenge of overt
bias, it is important to remember that people can change.
Another challenge that I see is that the strength of gender norms, which constrain everyone and mean that issues of gender equity and sexual-orientation equity intersect. Some of the biases gay men face from disclosing their sexual orientation come from presumptions of masculinity that are tied to views of heterosexuality that are bad for everyone. There is an idea of the ‘alpha male’ and if an individual deviates from this then they’re seen to be unfit for certain professions; or leadership as a whole. We have to change our assumptions of what masculinity and femininity are, and what they connect with in the workplace. We also really need to interrogate our presumptions that link heterosexual masculinity with things like success. You can observe how this presumption hurts heterosexual men, sexual-orientation minority men and women of all orientations.
There are few ‘out’ LGBTQ+ leaders who can role model how you can do things. Heterosexual individuals need to start asking for insights from LGBTQ+ friends and peers, and for help when conversations are being held through the lens of heteronormative assumptions. They need to relearn how to see situations, so they can start speaking out. It can’t just be CEOs who embrace LGBTQ+ people, or have a ‘pride week’ in their companies. More people need to start saying: ‘That’s not something we say here,’ when someone makes a joke at the expense of someone’s ability to be non-traditional in their gender representation.
If you’ve grown up with something being the norm, it’s very hard to see how this is bad. It’s not just about doing the right thing all the time, it’s also about knowing how to recover when you do the wrong thing. It’s about realising you’re fallible. It could be simply a case of someone in a position of power using ‘partner’ instead of ‘girlfriend’ for example, and if they are acknowledging it, why its problematic, and stating how they will change in the future. This is a conscious gesture that costs nothing.
Is there a case for Business Schools to lead the way in terms of D&I, to develop and nurture the most diverse leadership teams of tomorrow?
The MBA is a unique time in people’s careers and lives, and there is a profound opportunity there if we can really engage students in critical thinking about these issues.
In my classes, I talk to students about the fact that, regardless of your gender, you will lead teams composed of men and women; you will have subordinates and peers with different sexual orientations to your own. Understanding what they can do about those individuals’ experiences will afford them the ability to be better managers and leaders. That’s part of the goal of doing an MBA.
The more Business Schools can do to have structured conversations about these issues, the more effective they can be in progressing the world of work at a much faster pace than it has progressed thus far.
It’s not just about LGBTQ+ individuals sharing their challenges; it’s about individuals in the room, regardless of their identity, asking how they can make things better when they get back to the world of work. Even if you’re not the CEO you can make someone’s work day better because you work with them.
There is also a huge role for Business Schools to play in executive education. There is a collaborative opportunity between Business Schools and organisations that might have LGBTQ+ leaders who are moving up the leadership ladder, but haven’t made that next step. I’m delighted that London Business School will be designing an executive education programme focused on supporting LGBTQ+ leaders who find themselves
in this position.
My colleague, Aharon Cohen-Mohliver, and I are currently designing this new executive education programme, which is planned to launch later this year. We are actively seeking partnerships (and participants) who want to join us in these efforts, and
we are hopeful that organisations are ready to provide this type of support to their LGBTQ+ members.
My personal view is that a lot of Schools are moving forward, thinking about executive training for women, and I think we need to do this for women, for members of racial minority groups, for sexual-orientation and gender-identification minorities, and we need to think about bringing them together and bridging gaps for all groups that face challenges. Then, the essential additional component would be to bring in allies (heterosexual or cisgender people who support equal civil rights, gender equality and LGBTQ+ social movements) as well as challenges, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. I also believe that organisations that want to move forward with greater inclusivity can train their heterosexual leaders how to think about these issues and understand them. With this, we could see real and rapid change in the world that makes it better for everyone.
Do you feel optimistic about the future?
I chose my career because it makes me feel optimistic. If you’re in a position where you are teaching individuals who have so much energy, thoughtfulness, and who are ready to think about these complexities, you cannot help but be excited, engaged, positive, and ready to see a great future.
That’s what teaching gives me and why I love it. My students are amazing people and what I want from my life is to interact with inspiring individuals.
