Meeting the New Leadership Challenge: Leveraging Diversity Through Inclusion
Ever since I first heard predictions of a leadership deficit to occur by the year 2010 when the majority of the Baby Boomers leave the workforce, I have been intrigued with how corporate America has responded. Indeed, my career and my business have been devoted to working with corporations to maximize leadership talent and expand their pipelines in preparation for this leadership drain.
The Baby Boom generation leaves a large gap and Gen X and Gen Y, in numbers alone, will not be enough to bridge that gap. Where then do corporations find the additional talent? In most cases, it’s been there all along. When I work with clients, we first do a goals and needs assessment. When we get to our discussion about leadership pipeline and succession planning, I encourage them to look within to identify the leaders of tomorrow. Who are the bright stars that they have already invested in and who have a sense of loyalty to the company? Once we’ve done the easy work, it’s time to dig deeper and identify the hidden talent – hidden because no one has really gotten to “know” them or understand how to bring out their potential.
Who are these hidden talents? They are all around us – men, women, younger employees as well as older ones. They are ethnically diverse as well as culturally and thought diverse. But if they aren’t like us in some way (e.g. similar work habits or similar communication styles), or if they don’t fit the “old model” of leadership, these new talents are often overlooked or misunderstood.
The diversification of corporate America may have started more as a legal requirement than anything else but, today, as globalization takes hold, diversity is not only the norm, it is a competitive advantage. The next challenge is leveraging that diversity to build a broader, stronger leadership pipeline to meet the pending leadership gap.
In working with clients to achieve this goal, I encourage them to take a three-pronged approach: inclusion, engagement and collaboration.
Inclusion: The ability for companies to create a work environment necessary for everyone to feel valued, respected and truly included as an important part of the team.
Engagement: To build a truly inclusive work environment, we have to give people a new set of tools for encouraging the full engagement (inclusion) of all employees. This requires a new lens for “seeing” leadership potential which means, for many companies, having to change a management mindset and challenge existing paradigms about high-potential employees.
Collaboration: This means getting team members to cooperate with each other. It also is management working together with employees to understand their needs and goals and how they work best rather applying the old authoritative methods of management.
All of this, of course, requires change. Organizations, and in many cases individuals, are wired to resist change. But if senior management is committed to leveraging diversity through inclusion and building a new leadership pipeline that reflects the face of our changing workforce and is expansive enough to meet the coming leadership gap, they will have to actively challenge many practices common in organizations today, such as:
· Focusing only on the bottom-line and short-term results.
· Encouraging rank-based leadership models and assumptions.
· Using conversation to convince versus generating new ideas and soliciting different perspectives.
· Failure to relinquish control or power to less experienced employees.
· Failure to adapt communication styles and tools to a broad spectrum of people.
So where do you start? What can you do to engage your team today so all future leaders have an opportunity to “show up”? How can you contribute to your organization’s future success?
I believe that each of us has to take a closer look at all of our employees individually and ensure that we are providing each of them with a variety of challenging opportunities, interaction with others in the organization and a work environment that encourages their success. Here are 6 questions that you can ask yourself about each member of your team. If you can’t answer each of them about an individual, you need to take a closer look!
1. What does this person define as purposeful and meaningful work? In other words, what is it about their job that gets them out of bed in the morning and makes them to want to come to work? Is it the relationships they have at work? The exposure to learning or visibility? The opportunity to learn about new areas of the business beyond their current role?
2. How much direction does this person like? Does s/he prefer autonomy or closer supervision?
3. How does s/he like to solve problems? Does s/he like to be left alone to solve them or does s/he like me to be involved?
4. How does s/he like to work with others? Is s/he team oriented or more self-reliant?
5. How frequently does s/he like to receive feedback? Often or as needed?
6. How much detail does this person like when given feedback? A lot or a little? And, does s/he like the feedback to be blunt and business-like or warm, friendly and diplomatic?
It is important not to rely on your assumptions to answer these questions. If you haven’t discussed them with your team members, there is no time like the present to invite them for some time to get to know them. You may find hidden talents and budding potential in a group of individuals that when linked together through a new-found understanding creates a happy, productive, successful team that is far more than the sum of its parts. And the reflection is of a visionary and inclusive leader (you!) who has contributed greatly to the future success of their organization.
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