Elevate Yourself so You Can Elevate Your DEI Practice

Many years ago, in a past role as a small to medium-sized business CEO coach, I was asked by a CEO, “How do I turn my twenty-million-dollar business into a hundred-million-dollar business?” My answer, which surprised him, was, “Who do you need to be to be the CEO of a hundred-million-dollar business, and what must you do to build this new version of yourself.” I went on to explain why it was important that he develop himself before he could develop his company. Similarly, today, my advice to DEI leaders who want to grow their practice from an HR compliance blocking and tackling operation into a strategic business practice that supports the entire enterprise is, “First, you must develop yourself.”

It’s no secret that many DEI leaders have been pigeonholed into the role of HR diversity compliance officer/DEI cheerleader/DEI Press Agent. In this convoluted role, DEI leaders are often tasked with helping HR check boxes to ensure they meet their legal requirements, making all the underrepresented people in the company feel like they belong, and doing PR tours at conferences where they tout how wonderful their company is doing relative to DEI. In other words, HR has outsourced the most challenging parts of their job to a small, underfunded team contained within them that handles everything that has to do with people who are not straight-white-Christian-males.

From this limited position, DEI leaders cannot provide the type of business and cultural impact that is measurable and highly significant to the enterprise. Fortunately, the biggest obstacle to your ability to advance is something you control. What do I mean by that? I mean, it’s all about you building a next-generation version of you. How? Let’s take a closer look.

Before we do that, however, let’s talk about the power of habit. Habits are comfortable. They’re familiar. And let’s be honest, they’re easy. It’s easy to fall into the routine of simply checking off boxes and going through the motions of DEI compliance. This is especially true if you have been in HR your entire career and are wholly enmeshed in the human resources way of thinking. If you want to grow the scope and impact of your DEI practices and have a more meaningful impact on your organization, you need to break free from these comfortable habits and embrace some discomfort.

So, how do we break out of the restraints of these comforting but limiting habits? How do you transform yourself from the type of person who runs an HR diversity compliance officer/DEI cheerleader/DEI Press Agent operation into a trusted CEO advisor who runs an essential DEI business strategy effort? Here are a few steps to put you on your journey:

1. Start spending time with front-line revenue-generating business and operational leaders. Expose yourself to their challenges and opportunities. Examine ways a DEI lens-inspired approach can help them seize an opportunity or address a threat. You will be amazed at how many solutions you can cook up from your understanding of DEI when you listen to the challenges facing your business leaders.
2. If your company releases an annual business report, read it, check out the CEO letter, and dive into the numbers and outlook for your company. If you need some help, find a friendly member of finance who can give you a crash course in reading the numbers.
3. Set up Google alerts that send you news on anything involving your company. You can schedule to receive these every Monday morning to scan what the press is saying about your company and what your leaders are releasing to the public.
4. Also, set up Google alerts for your company’s main competitors so you can keep tabs on what they are doing. Notice how they are positioning themselves versus your company in the market.
5. Go on tours of your company’s operations if those are available. See how they produce the value they deliver to their clients.
6. Finally, check out your social networks. If everyone connected to you is in HR or DEI, you must expand your circle of friends. Make it your goal to diversify your network across all the business silos relevant to your company.

In summary, become an expert on your company’s operations. How do they make money? What is their unique selling proposition? Who are their biggest competitors? Learn to spot opportunities to apply your DEI knowledge toward solving broad, high-impact organizational challenges.

There is an old story about two men working on a building project in medieval times. Both were doing the same job. When a stranger approached the first man, he asked, “What are you doing?” The man replied, “I lay down stones on other stones and apply mortar to hold them together.” When the stranger posed the same question to the second man, he replied, “I’m building the wall to a beautiful cathedral.” That story elegantly captures the difference between the leader of a small HR-contained DEI program who says, “I work to make this organization more diverse, equitable, and inclusive,” versus a strategic DEI business leader who responds, “I’m helping build one the most powerful multinationals in our industry by enabling them to attract and fully leverage diverse talent from across the globe to serve the specific needs of our increasingly diverse marketplace.”

To start moving toward running our DEI practice at that level of big-picture-focused strategy, we only need to take that one crucial step: leave the warm and comforting embrace of HR behind and step out into the big, wide world of opportunity to make a big difference in your organization. I invite you to make today the day you step out of the HR comfort zone and dive into the realm of DEI strategic impact.