Diversity and Inclusion: fashion or essence of business leadership today?

2024-02-08 22:03:25

Diversity and Inclusion: fashion or essence of business leadership today?

With this question in mind, it is natural to wonder about the impact we would have if we all thought and acted in the same way:

How would the development of innovation be affected?

How rich would the organizational culture and updating of the vision of reality be?

How would the conversations of work teams or interdepartmental projects complement each other or how monotonous would they become?

How would the company’s vision and strategy be enhanced if we had the same mental map?

By Lorena Rienzi/ADEN International Business School Consultant
[email protected]

There are many questions that I could continue listing, to reach the conclusion that recognizing diversity, accepting it and managing it, is a relevant element at a business and social level.

Therefore, fun and inclusion is a letter of invitation to a constant leadership exercise by leaders to put ourselves in the other’s shoes, to try to understand different points of view. It’s not just about treating others how we want to be treated. But it means treating others how they want to be treated. And to see people, customers, businesses and markets from multiple points of view.

And the skills that are related to this leadership style involve: actively listening, not taking for granted, observing one’s own biases and limiting beliefs, asking, learning to manage discomfort in the face of experiences different from one’s own, contrasting different points of view without try to be right, and encourage those around us to constantly do so.

And like any path, it is easier to travel it with a genuine individual commitment to review our thought models, our preconceived structures, our presumptions, what we normalize and naturalize as absolute truths that when we open ourselves to new possibilities we discover that they can be relative or so just our point of view.

In this new chapter of Learning to Lead Together: we propose to enable ourselves to the possibility of observing the current cultural, social and mental construction that we express in our conversations, in the spaces in which we interact, in the formal and informal norms with which we govern ourselves outside of our professional activity.

And like any challenge, this means leaving our comfort zone, often feeling out of place and uncomfortable, and becoming learners: discovering, making mistakes, and moving forward as part of the process of understanding that the world changes constantly and permanently.

Diversity and inclusion help us pay attention to things that we would prefer not to see or do and invites us to put on the table two aspects that we often avoid: our fears and vulnerabilities. Since as the saying goes: eyes that do not see, heart that does not feel.

Leading taking into account diversity and inclusion will generate fatigue at times. Being aware of this, as leaders we must be able to sustain this exercise in any case, knowing that there are no possible escapes so that it does not cause discomfort or, as expected, resistance appears, although we must still see that it is worth it; and it is the only way to achieve it, and not go backwards.

Currently in companies and organizations, we still have a long way to go to advance in awareness-raising actions that guarantee that diversity and inclusion are key variables that cut across the entire business.

From my experience as a coach in transformation processes and organizational cultural change, I would like to highlight the following actions as examples to take into account:

• Accompany so that the Management of organizations see the benefits of embracing Diversity and Inclusion as a lever as important in their value as the commercial or financial areas. To do this, it is essential to link them with economic results: doing so can be extremely profitable and impact a reputational differential.
• Define challenging quantitative objectives for groups that today are practically voiceless in companies at all levels. To do this, important efforts must be concentrated on the part of leaders and excuses such as: “it has never been done”, “we can’t find it”, “there aren’t any”, “they don’t apply” or “it’s not fair to hire because these people “They belong to a specific non-representative group.”
• Achieving greater representation of the different disadvantaged groups in our social context, and I am not talking about only women, must be an issue that is on the agenda of those who make decisions and address it from different angles and perspectives: and carry it out with actions that articulate with each other to achieve effectiveness in this regard.
• Promote a profound cultural change led by the Management Committee and that is homogeneous in all areas, since it is not the responsibility of the Talent and Culture, DEI or Human Resources Areas. This is a transversal change for the entire company. That is why it is critical that the actions include: firstly, the training of leaders in all areas so that they have teams under their charge, and where their collaborators have the respectful space to be sincere and talk about politically uncomfortable or incorrect issues. Including the Management so that they can be heard directly.
• Understanding and accepting that being good people or just trying to do the right thing is not enough to truly create inclusive and diverse environments in organizations.
• Promote a specific plan with defined actions where training and awareness are permanent and extended to the entire company: both internally and externally, and measure this progress with specific indicators of how diversity and inclusion impacts the business (which can start from the employer branding to the possibility of creating new business opportunities). It is not enough to just account for what we have done and the degree of satisfaction we have with what we have done, but also what relationship what we did has had on our culture, on the employee experience, on the business and on our environment. Measurement, in this process of cultural change, cannot be observed in terms of success or failure, but measuring will allow us to direct the path, especially qualitatively, since it will point out opportunities for improvement rather than absolute achievements. It is a guide, rather than an audit.

The foundation of diversity and inclusion is to recognize ourselves as equally diverse human beings so, in response to the initial question, diversity and inclusion is the essence of business leadership today; because above the need to be inclusive, we must be human.

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