Yes, you can get diversity ‘wrong’ (usually by doing nothing), but can you get it ‘right’, and if so, how? Lucy Ryan finds out
When considering diversity, let’s start with an acceptance: diversity initiatives are commonly surrounded by big, hairy emotions. For example, fear of getting it wrong, threat of being ousted by someone else, anxiety about potential ‘messiness’, or the joy of working solely with like-minded individuals. Diversity can often feel like a zero-sum game (I win/you lose) and given this, it’s unsurprising that people tiptoe around this critical leadership area, remaining entrenched in their views and habits, or leaning toward tokenistic policies.
Yet having a workforce that is representative of a blend of gender, age, cognition, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and social background should be as natural as breathing. It’s what the world looks like, it’s what your customers look like, and it’s what your staff want you to stand for. Despite this, results remain underwhelming with, for example, women and people of colour remaining seriously underrepresented in many industries and in many companies’ senior ranks; one in three people in the UK, and one in four in the US without a sense of belonging at work and, pertinent to this article, less than half the workforce in the UK (and only slightly more in the US) believing their leaders take personal responsibility for diversity as highlighted in by Sue Unerman, Kathryn Jacob and Mark Edwards in their book Belonging.
Start this whole process by asking around your company, ‘who owns diversity?’. If the answer is HR, you’ve got work to do. While you want to shift the conversation about diversity to being everyone’s business and responsibility, your ability to role model the importance of this practice comes first. So, let me help you with ten pointers for leading an effective diversity programme, but they come with a caveat. Diversity is not a leadership problem that can be easily ‘solved’ with a neat 3-step process. Instead, enhancing diversity and inclusion across your organisation might just be the solution you’ve been looking for, particularly if you’re keen to embrace better problem solving and a breadth and depth of thinking. Matthew Syed argues in his 2020 book, Rebel Ideas, that diverse teams who learn to work together and question their leaders, make the best decisions.
And there’s no need to be po-faced about diversity – whilst there’s a moral dimension to leading effective inclusion for all, diversity and belonging is ultimately about joy, connection and bringing different minds together.
Educate yourself
There’s plenty of material out there in the form of books, magazine articles, blogs, forums and TED talks. Talk to colleagues in other companies – what did they do, what worked and what inspired their teams?
Look and listen
Take the role of a ‘diversity observer’ in your own company. Gather informal data on the ‘feel’ of your company. Look around your company – virtually or otherwise – what do you see? Similarity or variance? And sit in on meetings as a bystander, what do you hear? What you’re wanting to hear is diversity of thought, as I wrote in my book, Lunchtime Learning for Leaders (2021), this is the ‘beating heart of diversity’. Listen for open challenge and disagreement and notice what happens next. Is potential conflict in a meeting responded to with curiosity and further questions, or is it a case of ‘shut down and move on’? And does everyone have a role to play in these meetings, with full co-operation encouraged? If diversity networks exist and you’re not already part of one, go and sit in and listen to the conversations.
Make it your business
Look to your own leadership meetings and consider these three questions:
- What conversations about diversity are had around the senior leadership table?
- How long do they last and how seriously is the subject taken?
- How does your organisation celebrate difference?
Show you’re interested
Start conversations about diversity around the company. Essentially, you’re wanting to find out why diversity matters to other people and the difference a more diverse company would make to individuals and teams. Ask people if they feel they belong and if not, why not and how can you do better? And this is important – know that you do not need solutions, you do need to show that you’re interested, and you care.
Make it meaningful
It’s helpful to shift diversity from a ‘third party’ topic, to something that is personally purposeful. For sure, an effective diversity programme will need to be embedded at an organisational, team and individual level, but I know of no inclusivity programme that has succeeded without advocacy from the leadership team. Think through why you care about diversity, inclusion and belonging, why it matters to you and what you want to stand for.
Write out your personal diversity ‘mission statement’, so you’re clear about the direction you want to take and share this with your leadership team and your direct reports.
Speak about your own experiences. Think about times when you have felt like an outsider, or you didn’t belong and find an appropriate time to share your insights publicly.
Publish the data and mark the progress
Engage with your HR team and explore the quantifiable steps your company is taking towards diversity, as your company will want to set inspiring targets and measure progress. Writing about inequality in the workplace, Raval & Amphlett (2021) suggest you can energise your organisation to diversity commitment through refreshing the language of job advertisements and advertising in places that will attract a broader recruitment pool; conducting staff surveys, questionnaires, and appraisals; capturing diversity data, setting targets and publishing progress. One step further? Have diversity on every manager and leader’s KPI’s and make it part of the reward scheme.
Getting to know you
Lead an exercise in your next team meeting on appreciating differences (prepare them for this exercise, don’t spring it on anyone). Offer everyone a series of questions about themselves prior to the meeting and then talk through the answers together, in pairs or as a team. In his book on dysfunctional teams (2005), Patrick Lencioni suggests talking about sibling order, childhood experiences and the impact on you as a leader. You can do this, or for a lighter touch but no less profound, ask everyone to finish these five statements:
- At my best, I am…
- To get the best from me, you can…
- You’ll wind me up by…
- I prefer to communicate by…
- You’ll know I’m stressed because…
Engage with mentoring
Whenever mentoring is discussed, the assumption is the younger learns from the elder. Instead, implement ‘diverse’ or ‘reverse mentoring’. The elder learns from the younger or the majority from the minority. Go first! Again, talk through your learnings with your teams.
Build psychological safety into your meetings
It’s impossible to have diversity of thought without psychological safety in your meetings, that is, the knowledge your voice will be respected and listened to without recrimination. Work hard to ensure everyone has a voice in your meetings and encourage collaboration and respect. Enable your introverts and reflectors to find ways to have an input, whilst you balance the extrovert voices. Show that failure is OK too. Instead of ‘What happened and why?’ ask ‘How can we make sure this goes better next time?’.
Make it active
Find different ways to celebrate as a team. Instead of the ubiquitous golf days, or after-work get togethers that exclude many parents, ask the team what they’d like to do. For example, I admired the team who celebrated the ethnicity of a team member with a picnic and food from their country. Simple and effective.
In summary, it’s perfectly possible for you to take a ‘hands off’ approach to diversity. You put it on the agenda, check the progress, and move on. Or you can get actively involved and show you mean it – it’s a lot more fun! Think about diversity as driving a culture of belonging in your organisation and choose to stand up for difference. Yes, it will take effort, but this is your opportunity to open the gateway, liberate ideas and enable everyone to bring 100% of themselves to work.
Lucy Ryan is a global leadership coach and a voice that leaders take seriously. In her book, Lunchtime Learning for Leaders (Kogan Page, 2021), she draws on her 20 years of experience with developing leaders to provide clear guidance, illuminating models and self-reflection to help leaders navigate the modern world of lea
