A lesson in 'business partnering', conflict and diversity.

I learnt an important lesson a number of years ago.?

After a great recruitment process, I said yes to a new Human Resources (HR) leadership role. I would be leading the function for Asia Pacific and integrating a number of acquired businesses. And while I had worked as part of a leadership team before, I also felt like this new role was my first opportunity to be a true HR business partner.?

One of the first things the CEO I was ‘business partnering’? said was that he wanted to be held accountable for building a diverse leadership team.?

?I was the only woman in the male leadership team. A spot that I had become quite?accustomed to, unfortunately.??

Game on, I thought.?

I have permission to push this (and my) agenda, I thought. *cue evil laugh ??

A number of months into my new role one of the leadership team was offered an overseas opportunity. We had a vacancy! Here was my chance to build some more diversity in the leadership team.?

?It would have been so nice to have another woman in the team with me. A bit less lonely.?And when I think back, that business was struggling. I was involved in many restructures and redundancies to try and ‘save’ to save the business. I reckon some diversity wouldn't have hurt.

Before I could even think about how we would find the replacement, I was asked by the CEO to have lunch with a new prospective replacement leadership team member, to see what I thought of them.?

What I thought was that the CEO wanted to replace the person who was leaving, with someone they knew, that had the same experiences, skills and background.?

This wasn't the brief.

And what I thought was that the CEO asked me to hold him accountable to building a diverse leadership team.?

So I did.

At this point I should mention I learnt very quickly how to deal with conflict while maintaining a ‘business partnering’ relationship ??

We employed that man and I remained as the only women in the team. The business continued to struggle.?

Now I’m not saying if there had been two women in the leadership team the business would have boomed (though who knows?), but we never got to bring in some ‘difference’ to see how it impacted decisions and problem solving.?

This situation also reinforced to me that even when leaders seem to be supportive of building a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture, it’s still easier to do what you have always done before, particularly when there is lots going on the business and you are under pressure.?

I think that this experience plus many more and made me realise that to truly build an inclusive culture that delivers on ALL the promises – better financial performance, better innovation, better decision making, attracting and retaining people, strong brand reputation and more, you need to have leaders 'on board'.?

By being 'on board', I don’t just mean they say they are supportive, and will stand up at an employee town hall and say ALL the right things.?

I mean really doing the work.?

Why??

Because people are good bullshit detectors, and because what leaders say and do makes up to a 70% difference as to whether an individual reports feeling included (Bourke and Titus, 2019).

I would also add that what a leader measures creates accountability for this work across the organisation.?

?And it can be hard for CEO’s and leadership teams to know whether they are being inclusive or not. It's hard to know if what you are saying, how you are behaving, and what you are measuring are all connected and having the impact you want to have.

It’s hard to receive feedback when you’re at the top and we all want to be good people and do a good job. Right??

Lisa xx

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P.S. I love 'business partnering' with leaders on this work, and I have a program specifically targeted at leadership teams to support them to do the work together, to lead inclusion. It also includes some opportunities for them to receive some feedback.

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