The Changing Face of Diversity Leadership – Why Introverts Need Apply!

The Changing Face of Diversity Leadership – Why Introverts Need Apply!

I’m always on the lookout for new ideas to share with my readers. Recently I participated in a webinar sponsored by Blessing White and Catalyst. Blessing White is a global, employee engagement and leadership development consulting firm while Catalyst is a leading non-profit organization dedicated to creating more inclusive workplaces.

These two organizations are known for their global research and their progressive leadership programs and recently they teamed up to provide a new series entitled Leading with Inclusion.

Inclusion, which they described as “belongingness and uniqueness” is valued by both men and women around the world. Their findings suggest that workers want to be valued for their contributions, their talents and their experiences. But too much focus on uniqueness can lead to alienation. This might happen if your organization created a leadership development program that focused exclusively on one group.

Too much focus on belongingness can lead to workers feeling part of the organization only if they conform to expected behaviors…such as introverts feeling they must act like extroverts in order to succeed.

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The focus of the webinar was on managing diversity in order to turn it into a competitive advantage. And although a part of me wants to see organizations pay attention to diversity because it is the RIGHT thing to do I realize that in most cases organizations won’t spend money on something that doesn’t have a positive impact on the “bottom line”.

The way we approach diversity in North America has shifted over the last 30 years from equal rights legislation to affirmative action to diversity management. But, according to the experts at Blessing White and Catalyst, diversity management is not just about “appreciating differences”.

If diversity management is to succeed it must deal with unconscious bias.

Most of us are not even aware of the biases that affect our daily decisions. During the webinar we were asked to think about the people that report to us and to write down the names of 2 or 3 people. We were then asked to keep those people in mind as we answered the following questions:

1. Who are you most likely to advocate for?
2. Who are you most likely to engage with socially?
3. Whose past experiences are you most familiar with?
4. Who do you have the most conversations with about career goals, aspirations and development needs?

And do these people have similar backgrounds, looks, education, personalities etc.? As human beings we tend to gravitate toward people who are most like us…people we feel most comfortable with.

We were also asked to reflect on the people who did not make our list and what happens to those people?

Being an inclusive leader is not easy and requires self-awareness and the ability to say yes to the following questions:

• Do you enable all direct reports to develop and excel?
• Do you admit mistakes, accept and learn from different points of view?
• Do you provide personalized feedback to help each member of your team develop his or her talents?
• Do you seek opportunities to mentor or advise employees from a different background than your own?

Of course you don’t need to be in a formal leadership position in order to ask yourself the above questions.

Diversity is not a new challenge for employers and a lot has changed in the 30 + years since diversity appeared on the human resources radar but there are still issues that organizations need to pay attention to.

The most recent challenge for organizations and the one that Blessing White and Catalyst are trying to find answers to is that talented employees continue to leave organizations in droves because they don’t see a “fit” and they don’t feel supported.