It’s time for leaders to step up
Insights and highlights from the latest Fluxx Exchange
Our Fluxx Exchange events bring together cross-industry leaders to share experiences and opinions about the subjects that matter most. At a time when driving and creating true equity in our workplaces is more urgent and important than ever, this month we discussed how leaders can take action to create lasting change in their organisations one step at a time.
Here are some highlights from the conversation:
“The benefits of having different thinkers around a table is to de-risk ideas and decision making.” Leadership Coach
If you have a group of people who look and think the same, have a similar skill set, aptitude, upbringing and educational background — they will get along brilliantly, but they won’t challenge each other. Problem-solving benefits from cognitive diversity, which means you’ve got as many different neural pathways and neural brain arrangements around your tables and in your teams as possible. We tend to use things like gender and race as a shortcut to cognitive diversity because they tend to go hand-in-hand — if you have one, the other usually follows.
“We need to fish in different ponds if we’re to find the diverse candidates we need.” COO
We have a long way to go to reach the levels of diversity our businesses require. We know we have work to do, but as busy team leaders, managers, and execs, the desire to take a short cut is phenomenal. If you can quickly address something, the attractiveness of getting it done can be far greater than the alternative. To hire a diverse team you need to take a slightly more difficult path and look outside the usual recruitment factors; educational background, former employers, industry sector and whether they are in your network. Think carefully about the job, the job title or function, and the specific activity and tasks you want them to do — forget the shortcuts and go the other way. This is how you get a remarkable talent pool outside of your normal network.
“What does an all white board say about who will succeed in this company?” Charity Director
Who we have as role models in our organisations sends a message loud and clear to potential future employees. It can be difficult to find the diversity we need at senior levels when we look for exact match experience. We need to throw out the rule book on how we select new hires. To get brilliant role models we must look at the attributes of the individual that make them brilliant and the potential of what they have to contribute. And until we look at the two things together, we won’t achieve inclusivity.
“Creating a culture of belonging where everyone feels like they have a voice will attract, empower and retain the best people.” Charity sector
It’s one thing to bring in a rich fabric of perspectives. It’s another thing for them to feel they can share their voice without fear or consequence. We talked about a powerful study referencing African American students in a US college who found that if they genuinely reported feeling like they belong and have the potential to succeed, they almost doubled their performance. Without that sense of belonging, they saw a negative impact on performance.
“Technology is objective, humans are not. But the danger is that technology does what people tell it to do.” Digital wellbeing expert, author and Ted Talk speaker
A word of warning to companies who use technology and more specifically Ai as part of their D&I initiatives; statistical bias is real. A media company in the US recently attempted to promote people more objectively to create diversity and have different candidates in senior positions. They used Ai and fed in promotion data from the last five years — this led to a recommended promotions list of young white males, as it was based on historic data rather than a future list of the best candidates for promotion. We must be mindful of the data we feed the robots and apply some human judgement.
“Becoming a more diverse and inclusive company won’t happen overnight.”
The business case for diversity is proven, but no organisation has all the answers. And that’s ok! We need to not fall into the rush to achieve recognition for being inclusive, and launch initiatives without putting in the required research to make sure they will be embraced and effective. Now is a brilliant time to stop, pause and admit that what we’ve been doing isn’t working. Be open to change and spend the required thought and investment needed in all aspects of our operation and communication.
Bernie Benchella is a HR Director at Fluxx, the UK’s leading independent innovation company. To find out more about the work we do and what kind of company we are check out any of these links.
