Magic happens trough diversity (in thinking)
Ilkka Lipasti
Group Vice President @ABB |Accelerating Change for Better Future and Results
Diversity that creates magical performance goes beyond skin color or gender. What we need is diversity in thinking - how we perceive the world, markets, and what really matters for best performance.
Based on my observations, the magical moments behind amazing results, have had one thing in common. The key leaders have been aware of the blind spots of their own preferred perspectives and they have had enormous respect and acceptance of people with alternative and supporting perspectives during meetings and strategy workshops.
To achieve this, you need to have two things in place.
The first requires ability for self-reflection and keeping your ego in-check. Your ego can hamper the maturing of our self-esteem in two ways. The voice of your inner critic may be too strong, making your self-esteem vulnerable to any additional challenging or critical view from the outside. Your self-esteem has already too much to handle with the inner critic. Or, your past success and constant positive feedback will kill the voice of the inner critic completely making you blind and deaf to alternative views and ideas. The remedy?
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These were my findings, what are Yours? Am I missing something important?
#topteams, #executivedevelopment, #leadership, #DEI
Strategic Account Executive
2 个月In business there is never one right decision or choice, there are a handful of alternatives that are good, but also many more that are wrong. Conveying the message of a different kind of solution that creates magical results is both a science and an art. Many times the different thinkers are shut down because they cannot convey their message in a way that would resonate with the traditional thinking leader. So they fail because of their communication and not because of their diversity.
Strategic Account Executive
2 个月Why leaders are blind on the value of diversity in thinking can also come down to money and power. Some leaders protect their stature and present power by not allowing other views. Thinking that they would be somehow vulnerable if someone else would have a brilliant or better idea. I can remember a training from the very early days of my career where we were told to keep our differing opinions to ourselves. It was even told to be career suicide to disagree with the prime leader.
Strategic Account Executive
2 个月Regarding diversity I think that you are spot on. Many corporations have diversity programs that cater only to the surface of diversity. And they follow KPI’s like how many people of x, y, z they have and miss the point that all come from the same university program or the like, meaning that they all think alike. Another pitfall is in recruiting. Most companies require 15+ years of experience from their own industry for the leaders they hire, when they would really need people with different experience to renew things. Why recruit more of the same when you have the company already packed with the same experience. Why this is done is probably because it is considered the safe choice.
COO at FriendsSquare | Organisational Psychologist | Transforming Work Cultures | People-First Approach | Improving Employee Experience l ??
3 个月Great initiative and very nicely articulated! We at FriendsSquare prioritize mental health at workplace and we specialize in providing employee assistance programs for building effective workplace blended with diversity, equity, inclusion and emotional wellbeing. Our solutions are designed to meet the unique needs, driving significant improvements in employee engagement, productivity, retention, and organizational citizenship behaviour.