Is Diversity really an asset in your organization's journey?

DISCLAIMER: This article is a personal opinion, not representing the view of my current or past employers.

As “Diversity” is a key word in society, politics, and corporate management, with this blog post I hope to give you a perspective on why you should have another look at “how” your organization is approaching it.

In this blog post I’m sharing both the realities I observed, share some real-life situations I’ve experienced on what “Diversity” can mean for organizations that truly understand it and take it seriously, as well as share some reflections on how – in my own personal view and experience – some organizations are approaching it wrong and what they could do improve their approach.

Knowing this is a very sensitive topic in many social, political and also corporate environments, through the blog I'll also explain my starting point and core values as I provide this perspective, so that my intent is properly contextualized and understood.

“Diversity” if well understood and well executed, can both be a powerful force for social transformation in the world, but also a force that may unleash unprecedented levels of creativity, effectiveness, and success of commercial organizations.

Yet, in many organizations it is still not much more than a “quotas and numbers” exercise with little meaning and true impact both in the lives of those “truly diverse” and in the success of their organizations. I have been privileged to work for a leader that took this seriously where he allowed me to build and lead a very diverse team. The experience was exponential in terms of achievements for the organization, outcomes for the shareholders, but also happiness of the people in the team and satisfaction of our clients with the service received.

My view is that many organizations operating in today's globally interconnected and interdependent world, if they seriously want to transform to be more client centric and accelerate their success, they need to raise the bar on their diversity ambitions to truly seize the potential a diverse team can bring.

It all starts with selecting the “right” leadership profiles to build these organizations for the 21st century. This implies thinking on new leader’s selection and promotion practices, reshaping organization’s cultures to support the strategy, and implement more fluid organizational models that enable the “agile assembly of mission led teams”.

By doing it better organizations will:

1. see their clients experiencing increased levels of satisfaction, loyalty, and repeated purchases, as their client facing people will feel empowered to do more and be more responsive, providing better service,
2. observe improved results for shareholders as they will see increased outcomes produced through motivated and happy team members (top line p/l improvements),
3. and experience an ever-growing level of effectiveness (seen as bottom-line p/l improvements) as through the best placement of talent, people will be happier, will be motivated to learn more, do more, and continuously improve their ways of working while staying in the company for longer.

For people, they will be happier, more committed, more productive and more creative, by having an environment where they can bring their full and true selves.

Over the next pages, I’ll dive further into what I mean by all these, based on my own experiences and observations, as well as the reflections with many leaders and friends I was privileged to learn from over the years.

Setting the Context

I came across the question of “whether their organization is really benefiting from their diversity initiatives” in a conversation with a friend. That led me to reflect how much leaders today really understand and leverage the true benefits of diversity as a catalyst for their transformation initiatives.

His comment was that although his organization was hitting all the “quotas” for diversity, the culture was toxic, and bad behaviors kept being “justified”, eroding trust and collaboration, and preventing the company from accelerating its success rate, while driving continued attrition in the workforce further impacting its bottom-line and ability to execute. Despite huge market demand, this vicious cycle flawed his organization's growth acceleration,

Even new leaders would quickly fall to the company’s “old ways” despite top leaders saying they want to transform the organization and achieve meaningful and sustainable improvements. And through the conversation we reflected on why it might be, which I’ll try to summarize in this blog post so others can learn and reflect on it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Before progressing more on this topic, and upon the advice of those who know me well, I have to share that it is my foundational belief and part of my core values and education, that all humans are equal, and discriminating someone because of how they look, speak, dress, come from, value, behave, etc... is not acceptable and doing so is a motive for embarrassment for the one that discriminates and prevents the discriminator from potentially amazing growth opportunities as a human being. So the angle I put into this blog, is starting from the base that I take it as a given the understanding of how important is to have representation of diversity, but organizations are still conditioning how those people look and behave in the professional environment, constraining them to "match" corporate patterns that denies diversity of thought and action.

Diversity today in the social, political, and corporate context is understood as giving opportunities to minority and underrepresented groups to progress and have a proper representation at all levels.

Yet, why do it? Beyond fighting all the obsolete yet still existing discrimination and biases in society where people are judged by their race, ethnicity, gender, origin, sexual orientation, age and others?

There is a much more meaningful and profound reason why everyone should thrive to create diverse environments, more in today’s hyperconnected and increasingly complex world:

• diversity of views on problems and potential solutions.

Looks simple and obvious, but let me dig a bit deeper.

The True Power of Diversity: completeness

There is something that changed the world definitively and profoundly in the last 20 years: the internet.

The world as never been so small, so real time, so interconnected, so interdependent and in result: the world has become increasingly complex.

The consequence is that we are entering an age where it is materially impossible for any “smart person” to be able to analyze the world, the trends, the risks and guide us normal humans into the safe way forward. We are in a world where “We are always smarter than me”. In a world where in order to be able to better understand the realities we are living, the risks, the possible outcomes and scenarios of action, we need a 360 degrees view that is able to capture that same 360 degree reality of the little worlds we are in: being in politics, society or in the corporate world. It is a world where more important that what you know is what you can learn.

We need people that fundamentally look at the world through as diverse viewpoints, as the realities that impact our specific contexts. We are in a society where we want to increase standards of living, eliminate poverty and social exclusion, or in corporate world where we want to find new business opportunities, better manage risks of doing business and provide better service than our competitors to clients, retributing better shareholders, and doing so in ways that better respect and benefits society.

In a nutshell, organizations need a new operating model, one that fosters team work and cross-geo collaboration, bringing together the views across increasingly diverse perspectives.

The magnitude of complexity in many of the challenges, projects and business opportunities we have at our hands today can no longer be handled by single individuals, no matter how smart they may be. We need functioning diverse teams!

For individuals: be & bring your full & true self

Being obvious for me, one of my team members mentioned to me that there is something that it is not obvious for everyone.

As a diverse individual, the key value of entering an environment that truly appreciates diversity, is that you feel respected. You know you are in an environment where people really put an emphasis in reading beyond your style, accent, look or attitude, to the content you bring and your unique perspectives.

This feeling of respect leads you to contribute more, to develop a sentiment of affiliation to the organization, and to really feel valued. This has a multiplier effect.

I heard one of my clients mentioning that a core goal in their strategic plan is no longer "just" retaining employees, but to provide them a feeling of belonging so that they feel the company is like home to them, and they stay for longer.

We talk about the new generations now entering the labor market, and the one topic I keep see being written about them, is that today a good job is not just about the pay and the challenge, but rather about being in an environment where they feel they belong and they can be their true selves.

In a time where we keep hearing about the "great resignation" and "war for talent", it is time to raise the bar on what the workplace has to offer, especially in the space I am in, of highly skilled knowledge workers, and truly make the working environment "being inclusive" more than an option, a fundamental part of how everything is done.

The key gap I see: a true appreciation for “different ways of thinking and acting”

I believe that everyone agrees with what I just said, but then let me pose the question:

• When you hire to your team, apart from looking at the CV and the obvious characteristics of people (race, ethnicity, gender, etc), when it comes to the moment to select the one to join among your diverse candidates, do you look for the one that looks at the world, its problems and solutions in the most different way from you, or the one that looks at the world more like you?
• Do you select the one that dresses, talks and acts more like you, or the one that has better ideas? Are you able to see beyond the looks and style into the content of the candidate?

These questions for me are the key to why in many cases diversity initiatives in organizations are falling short on its possibilities.

If you look at the simple definition of diversity and associated words, you find the following: variety, contrast, variance, discrepancy.

The key gap I see today in many diversity initiatives both in the corporate world, as well as the social and political ones, relate to the basics of us all being nothing more than just humans:

• It is more comfortable and easier to relate with people that behave, think and act like us.
• It isn’t always easy to see in contrasting perspectives and styles the complementarity instead of conflict.

And so, many with the responsibility to assemble teams, even when well-intended in terms of providing opportunities for minorities representation, make the mistake of selecting those in those groups that behave the most like the typical member of the group, and so ticking the box of the observable characteristics of diverse teams, but fully failing on the power and benefits of why doing it. They create a team of similarly behaving individuals, but that are x% from gender A, y% of ethnic group B, and x% of sexual orientation C.

In worse cases, leaders still simply hire by "CV" ignoring to evaluate critical soft-skills in terms of ability to lead change in this new complex reality, and realizing that past performance by itself is no guarantee to future success simply because the world has and is changing!

In organizations where these things happen, Diversity ends up just being a quotas and numbers exercise, not improving the diversity of thinking and acting.

In my conversation with my friend, we he was arguing that one of the senior leaders in his organization has set clear diversity goals (for context we are talking about a US based multinational company in the field of Technology). Yet, when looking at the various members selected to his leadership team, despite being from origins all over the world and different genders, there was a common pattern of behavior across all of them. Even the women selected to the team exhibited the typical “alfa male” kind of behavior, and it was mentioned by various of the members of that team, that they felt they needed to act and behave as the “corporate standard”. More than to have a chance to succeed and progress, just to be able to survive and keep bringing his paycheck home a support his family.

"This is the company way" and "You won't get anywhere unless you do like this", he mentioned being told to a new leader just arriving to the organization. The observations of the first year ended up confirming those statements.

The result, although from a numbers and quotas point of view it was a very diverse team, many of the leaders acted similar in certain things (superficial appreciation of challenges, hands-on micromanagers, acting as the smarter in the room, directive hierarchical management, aggressive and threatening attitudes), and all failed also in certain things (empowering and coaching their teams, promoting collaboration in the context of finding the complementarity in diverse views, considering further a more detailed risk analysis, providing opportunities for experimentation of new ways of working, and looking to humbleness as a key asset for highly collaborative teams).

The role of culture as the organization’s fabric

One might ask then, why this was the case. Why such apparently diverse teams behaved in such a homogeneous way.

I have a very simple explanation:

• they respond to the incentives and messages of the leader.

Many leaders today (maybe unconsciously) are not fully aware how their words and actions (confirmed by their observable decisions) define the culture, and how that culture plays for or against the goals they have set.

But what is culture? Someone gave me a very simple definition I really like:

• it is the unwritten rules of how “things get done here” which you learn in your first days on a new job.

Let me provide some exaggerated examples just for illustration of the case:

Observation: Early days you realize in meetings that disagreement with the leader is not seen as a good thing, that there are no team calls for open discussion, or that the discussions are always about “how we agree with the leader’s idea”. Or you see that the leader ends up talking 90% of the time and shuts down any divergent opinions.

• Result: even if you are a creative and proactive contributor, you start to comply and just speak up in meetings to agree with the leader, stopping to challenge ideas or provide alternative views. You end up further feeding the “yes men” culture, as otherwise you’ll be shot down;

Observation: the ones appraised in the organization are the ones that shout the loudest, regardless of whether they were the ones who indeed “carried the weight” of getting something done.

• Result: even if you are a team player a humble contributor, you just start getting concerned with being seen by the hierarchical leaders and take credit for other people’s work for your own career progression. You end up further feeding the “hero culture” that destroys trust and collaboration in teams, as otherwise you’ll have no future.

Observation: only the ones able to respond fast to unexpected questions and do so in a very eloquent way are invited to certain projects.

• Result: if you are not an English native, and so you may lack the vocabulary richness to eloquently provide the right responses, you start to become silent and not providing your value to the team either falling to an ever ending spiral of demotivation, or simply start looking for a new job.

Observation: a certain manager show great discomfort when one of his direct reports meets without him someone at his or above his level in the organization, and never invites him to meetings with senior leader neither finds opportunities to up-level his team members. That team member confirms similar behavior talking with his peers;

• Result: the team member will understand that this is a very hierarchical organization, and if he is to survive (not even grow or thrive) he need to accept having a glass ceiling above his head to avoid risking retaliations.

If we are to create a truly diverse team, not just from an observable metrics point of view, but where we capture and represent a diverse way of looking at the world, an appropriate culture must be set in place.

As the fabric that brings together all these divergent attitudes, ways of thinking and feeling, and behavior standards, the culture acts as that "invisible yet always present strong influence" which creates a norm of behaviors when no one else is looking, through which everyone aligns on the best interests of the organization, all can contribute and be represented while being their full and true selves.

Now the question is: does your organization’s true culture (as the unwritten rules everyone knows) enable a diverse way of feeling, thinking, behaving, and acting? Does your culture feed Diversity or kill Diversity?

The key role of people leadership in Diversity and Culture

If there is one thing, I have learned over my 25+ years of team leadership in global contexts, is that culture is set by the example of the leader. So, each person with a people management responsibility, whether intentionally or unconsciously is defining the culture in which their direct reports navigate.

The implication is that the skill of leading teams and defining cultures is gaining increased importance as the world gets more complex and diverse, and the need for more complete views on challenges, opportunities and solutions becomes paramount.

On my humble view, the cases where true people leadership is becoming a more important skill than knowing the craft and technicalities of the role is growing, as it is growing the complexity of the problems organizations need to deal with.

As complexity explodes, so explodes the need to rely increasingly on “teams” and less on “individuals”.

Just a few days ago I was reading an HBR article about the increasingly required skills of the future leaders: https://hbr.org/2022/11/3-skills-every-new-leader-needs

It is yet another article emphasizing some of the key leadership skills managers need in the 21st century.

New organizational paradigms for a new interdependent and complex world

Because we are indeed in an increasingly fast paced, and interdependent world, old hierarchical organizational models are starting to fall short on the needs of many of todays contexts, and for sure of tomorrow’s realities.

Therefore, we see an increasing number of organizations reducing the number of management layers, building more flat organizations, and establishing more matrixed organizational operating models.

In this new reality, the role of building the culture and the team is crucial, and it is such an important skillset, that enough focus needs to be placed on it. This is not a role for any leader, but a mission that requires the right profiles to be accomplished with success. This has a fundamental implication on how new leaders are recruited, as just having great roles and company names on the CV is simply not enough.

For example:

• We see organizations that from a hierarchy look way flatter, with people managers leading an increased number of direct reports, being their role more around driving the right behaviors, and providing the right training and tools, while promoting the right ways of working (collaborative, inclusive, diverse). They are always mindful of the "why".
• Then we see increasing number of “functional leaders” in a matrix organizational model. They are subject matter experts on a topic or leaders in a project, and they take on resources into their virtual teams to accomplish a mission. They focus on the “how”. These people may often have senior leadership titles depending on how large or complex their missions are, but hierarchically are individual contributors as their role is not to “develop, coach and guide the people”, but rather to accomplish the mission given to them, where the people in the team may change over time based on the specific evolving context and needs.
• We may also see market or "segment leaders" indirectly managing resources in a matrix model, where they define the "what" to focus on based on his segment business priorities.
• The people managers role here is critical in establishing clear directions for collaboration dynamics and accountability, since it is not about them controlling the people, but setting the fabric for collaboration (culture), establish the model for leaders/contributors across their team so everyone recognizes the leader’s role, while the leader is clearly accountable for his specific responsibilities. It is the role of the people leader to make sure the functional and segment leaders get the best people to accomplish their mission, and that they work in the best way towards the intended outcomes.

I have heard a few organizational leaders stating that in their organizations there is no space in the hierarchy for pure people leaders. I would say I agree it is key that leaders understand the business context in which one is managing, but expecting managers to fundamentally be experts and acting as "super individual contributors" just exposes how that organization has not yet learned how to deal with complexity, or that it is designed to deal with simpler problems where the value of teams and collaboration is not as critical.

In organizations involved with dealing with the world's most complex challenges, having proper people management is not a luxury, but a foundational need.

It all starts with who you give the enormous responsibility to define the culture and build the organizational fabric

So, for leaders who want to seriously address the topic of diversity and really unleash the power within globally diverse teams, start by putting additional emphasis on the selection process of your leadership team.

Many authors today - way more experts than me on this - state the following as key skills people leaders need to have in this increasingly complex world:

Empathy: the ability to put yourself in the shoes of others is key to fully understand the team you have.

o??We keep talking about enabling people to bring their full self to work, but that can only happen if leaders understand that it is their role not only to have a superficial view on the “professional self” many of their team members chose to show based on what they perceive to be the culture, but rather truly appreciate the person in its full dimensions, as only then can he identify which are the missions for which that person is best suited, and where its natural abilities increase his chances of success beyond anyone else. It is not about the CV; it is about the natural skills of each individual and how they contribute to the success of the mission.

Bridge builder: the ability to align needs and perceptions of different stakeholders, seeking the understanding of how they can complement, more than where they diverge. This is all about the ability to understand first and then play back in each diverse person’s context the implications (communication skills).

o??One of the key challenges of diversity, it that it also creates a potential for conflict. Different people looking at the same problem from very different perspectives may easily fall into the discussion of who is wrong and who is right. In many cases, they are complementary, and their perspectives together create a more complete view of the situation. Leaders in this context need to seek to understand first (understanding the lens through which each person sees the reality), before being understood (articulating back in a language the team member or stakeholder can relate to and make sense of), to be able to read and capture these situations where conflict can be turned in to complementary collaboration. This is a hard skillset to identify, and leaders who do not have the skills to identify them should have no hesitation to ask for the advice of Organizational Psychology consultants to help them on this mission, as it is key to success in recruiting these leadership roles. This is key both to manage the team as well as to manage the working relationship and its organization’s placement with other leaders (internally or in partner and client organizations).

Structuring mindset: ability to get all the diversity in the team to work in a complementary model, avoiding critical gaps or overlaps.

o??Having a very diverse team, means many ways of thinking, acting, working. Diversity cannot mean anarchy or chaos. So there needs to be a basic structure to which all team members adhere, as it will represent the fabric of the organization. This involves aspects like standards of behavior (on which the leader must be a role model and keeper, as it defines the “culture”), ways of working (how do we get the work done and what are the minimal formats or structures we must adhere to in order to provide one single integrated output), and metrics of success (must be clear to everyone how success is measured, it needs to be objective and understood, so through that understanding everyone feels free to bring their best to achieve the expected outcomes).

Conclusion

In my view, Diversity is a critical topic for today’s success of any organization. Living in a globally interconnected world has raised all risks, from entrance of new competitors to resources shortage, or unexpected operational disruptions.

Achieving “Diversely functioning” teams is no easy feat and requires a different style of leadership. One that emphasizes soft skills like empathy, communication and consistency, all critical in establishing what is today the most critical currency in business success: trust .

• The trust of employees that the organization will provide them the best opportunities to contribute and have a fulfilling experience,
• the trust of peer organizations that trust your organization to have in mind the sole benefit of the whole company,
• the trust of clients of your true commitment to their success through the usage of your products and services, and the trust of institutions and communities that you have at your core the principles of acting as a responsible global citizen.

Being a leader with the goal and ambition to achieve unprecedented levels of success, is a huge responsibility which requires characteristics like humility, altruism, sense of mission and great people and organization skills.

It is the responsibility of the leaders in place today to break the chain of keeping hiring and promoting the loudest, most aggressive and directive “alfas” being of whatever gender, ethnicity, or origin, and start creating that more inclusive leadership team which will drive their organization through the next wave of sustainable transformations and long-term business success.

You may also find interesting this Forbes article that approaches the new leadership skills required for the 21st century: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2022/07/26/10-most-important-leadership-skills-for-the-21st-century-workplace-and-how-to-develop-them

Now, these are only my reflections and just one point of view. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, reflections, learn from your specific experiences. Please share, comment and reach-out!