Embracing one’s uniqueness to transform organisations

“It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races’’ Mark Twain?

The future and traditions of work?

The future of work has been a concept that has threatened a widescale revolution for many years, yet risk aversion and corporate tradition have perhaps stopped that change from being truly transformative.? The last two years of the global pandemic have certainly been the most likely trigger point where organisations, its employees and most importantly its leaders are willing to finally make decisions that could truly transform the employee experience.?

One such tradition has been the homogenous workforce, it was safe, it was risk averse and above all, it protected the existing workforce and in particular, its senior leaders from having to change.?

Yet for so many years commentators and thought leaders have cited a plethora of consistent conclusions that a wide range of perspectives in the boardroom are critical for effective corporate governance and decision-making. Having multiple views on the possible outcomes of any decision means that the discussion is more likely to take into account the various risks, consequences and implications of possible actions. In order to achieve this, teams at all levels of an organisation require diversity.??

In addition to this, not having a true representation based on population of the communities that you serve makes little sense and begs the question why organisations were simply not tapping into the potential that existed.???

Balance in the boardroom?

Notwithstanding, it would be remiss to not talk about the success in recent years around the progress that has been made to balance the number of women in the boardroom, with many global/corporate organisations seeking to achieve quotas of 30% female representation at board level by 2025. With this however, we now see a shift and realisation that diversity is more complex than demographic or identity-based diversity, and what is really needed is to go beyond the gender, age or ethnic origin labels and achieve cognitive diversity. There is an overlap between these two things - cognitive and demographic. In some contexts, demographic diversity can impact cognitive diversity but not all the time.?

Cognitive & demographic diversity?

Both cognitive and demographic or identity-based diversity are important but for different reasons. Ethically it is the right thing to do to recruit for demographic diversity, not for ‘box ticking’, but for inclusion. For innovation, problem solving and business performance we need cognitive diversity.??

In order to facilitate our drive towards cognitive diversity talent management processes need to modernise and transform in a similar way to truly make meaningful change.? Cognitive diversity is the way people think, their perspectives, strengths, heuristics (mental shortcuts) and thinking styles. A great way to introduce cognitive diversity into an organisation is to use a Strength based approach, rather than a competency approach.?

Strengths, also known as energisers, are the things that we do well, find enjoyable and become good at. We use our strengths to achieve our objectives, sometimes without even realising that we are using them. Many organizations such as LSEG are moving towards using Strengths for talent assessment. This is because people who use their strengths at work are more engaged, productive and have a greater sense of positive wellbeing. At an immediate level, using a Strengths based approach in recruitment focuses on what people enjoy and are energised by, which leaves candidates feeling motivated and encouraged and more importantly feeling positive about the recruitment process and potential employer.??

Personality assessment has been well established as a useful and robust assessment method to support the recruitment and promotion of people at all levels into organisations. The risk however is how they are applied, rather than what tool is used. The main risk of using personality for recruitment is the process of profile matching or assessing against a single model of potential or what ‘great’ looks like for the organisation. This vast over -simplification of personality profiling creates homogeneity rather than diversity. To really differentiate between people, we should focus on their strengths and the ways in which individuals are different and unique. A great way to undermine your diversity is to profile match.??

At the London Stock Exchange Group, our focus has been to re-design the way we think about talent management and identifying potential.? Our philosophy is simple, by creating a strengths based approach in our talent assessment process, we clearly believe that everyone has potential.? However, the question that we are most keen to answer is the potential for what?? By reviewing this regularly we focus on where an employee is at a given moment in time and plan their development in line with this.? Whilst this may seem a logical and pragmatic approach to talent management it is sadly not adopted very often.? The primary premise of a traditional talent management process is to identify those individuals who are capable of doing bigger roles through a binary process that ignores diverse thinking.?

If more organisations start to take an employee-centric approach to talent management, there is a real opportunity to shift the dial on cognitive diversity too and alongside this, turn up the creativity and innovation within an organisation.?

Conclusion?

We need the right kind of diversity for divergent thinking and that is because we are more creative when we expose ourself to more diverse ideas. Working with people who do not look, talk, or think like ourselves can allow us to dodge the costly pitfalls of conformity which discourages innovative thinking. If we have 10 people coming up with ideas that are similar, they are not offering any creativity or adding any value to each other.? More often than not, it can be a long-term cost to market leading brands (e.g Kodak).??

However, diversity does not come naturally to us. The main issue is unconscious bias. Biases are short cuts that help us to simplify, organise and structure the information that we see, hear observe etc. Our brain wants to make sense of the world and the people around us. Categorizing and labelling people and situations is our brain's way of speeding up the decision-making process. These short cuts mean that we make assumptions about other people that aren’t always accurate and these assumptions have real-world impact.??

We do this because we have a deep unconscious tendency to connect with people who are like minded and look the same, hence the like-me like-you bias where we are attracted to people who look or dress similarly to ourselves.? Neuroscientists have begun to probe the neural basis of prejudice and stereotyping and the research has found that the amygdala, a structure in the medial temporal lobe which receives direct input from all sensory organs, responds rapidly to immediate threats and plays a central role in attentiveness and triggers the flight-or-fight response, reacting to social threats in exactly the same way it reacts to physical ones.?

Unconscious bias, then, is the immediate, reflexive, defensive reaction to someone being ‘different’ from yourself – the ‘threat’. However, when people agree with us, talk, act or interact similarly, we get a sense of confirmation, which drives us to seek out people who are similar. This is very much the opposite of what we need to create healthy, productive and innovative teams who think divergently to one another.?

Talent practitioners must mitigate against the risks of homogeneity and bias and maximise the opportunity for cognitive diversity. It is time for the people function to truly transform their organisation's talent management processes and the strategies to truly become the catalysts that the world is craving.? The other option, is the risk of continued homogeneity that has hindered the transformation to date will continue to negatively impact the future of work.?

With thanks to Jig Ramji Group Head of Talent at LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) who wrote this article along with Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol CEO Zircon?

Learn more

Energise your workforce by tuning into episode 25 of The Chief Psychology Officer podcast https://www.thecpo.co.uk with Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol and Angela Malik on ‘Creating a Strengths Culture’, available on the official podcast website as well as on Apple, Spotify, and Google.??