An Article by Rhea Duttagupta, a Speaker at the 2008 Women’s Summit
” Diversity is about valuing differences it is not about policy; a strong mix of ages, genders and cultures can be made a powerhouse for unlocking and driving innovation to deliver sustainable economic growth; it can also lead to a more balanced approach to managing the business. It is building a deep understanding of the benefits and truly embracing diversity throughout organisations.”
I am a British-Asian, 34 year old, female entrepreneur, and a former Director of a large consulting firm. I now lead my own consulting business in London with a diverse multi-cultural client base, mostly all-male top management teams with a handful of women ……… yes, I have strong point of view on diversity!
To me, Diversity is not merely a subject, discipline or a policy. To me it is a mindset, and it can be learned. Unless it becomes part of a collective mindset or ‘way of thinking’, diversity can never be “managed” nor will it become a living part of any organisation’s DNA. It will always stick out as a set of PowerPoint slides or a policy bound on a desk waiting to be owned, adopted and implemented.
What diversity stands for?
The real definition of diversity, for me, is simply Valuing Differences. Nevertheless, it has often proven complicated to understand and implement. Modern, especially western management has largely been rooted in Aristotelian binary logic i.e. good and bad, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, black and white. This has left us to segment and label people into these ‘okay’ and ‘not okay’ categories. This is the birth of a painful psychology; stereotyping i.e. commonly held beliefs about mutually exclusive groups and defining narrow, restrictive boundaries of acceptance around them. E.g. [gender]: men are better at mathematical science while women excel at softer arts, [age]; grey haired, 50+ men make better boardroom consultants than their younger counterparts. But that’s not all. While age, gender, race and religion are conscious categories of differences (they are talked about), there are sub-conscious categories like background, culture, nationality, education, social class and even personality traits!
Why is diversity important?
Things are changing. We are fortunate today because the D word is finally being discussed more openly. Triggered by governmental awareness campaigns and necessitated by new business models which promote inclusiveness, flatter structures, collaboration, sharing, and relationships we have started acknowledging the power of differences. But egalitarian and legal reasons aside, the single biggest driver of sustainable economic growth in today’s world is innovation and diversity unleashes innovation.
Most of us believe innovation requires smarter people and clever ideas. But that simple premise often overlooks the real key to innovation rests in the heads and minds of people – and the more diverse, the better. Unless you have people who think differently and bring different perspectives to bear, you are most likely to get stuck at the same bottlenecks.
In my personal consulting experience in different countries and sectors, I have been surprised by the inclusion criteria for meetings.
• Companies now make a conscious attempt to ensure there is balanced gender representation while making key decisions or brainstorming a solution. So, rather than meetings being restricted to structural criteria of team compositions and functional groupings, I now see corporations paying attention to : “do we have at least some female input in today’s meeting and even where the team is an all male team, lets invite some women to balance our views” . This is not mere tokenism. Scientific research shows the female brain structure allows a woman to be better able to switch from left (logical, linear) to right (creative) hemispheres. While the male brain is more wired to think in sequential, logical patterns. By including women the key discussions tend to get less ‘stuck’, explore more pathways and diverse options, and overcome bottlenecks easily.
• Age is another wonderful diversity enabler adding to the robustness of decisions and agreements. A financial services company I know ensures that for their strategy retreats, all group discussions have a balanced mix of people; some with less than two years with the company and some with more than seven years. Why? The younger lot are keen to get things done, challenge norms and drive towards execution while the older lot assess risk and perform pragmatic reality checks on cultural fitness of proposed solutions. We need both to avoid going down typical blind alleys!
• A good cultural mix also has a positive impact. A richness of views is added to the pot when multicultural team members sit around the table and contribute a fair share of geographic and cultural standpoints.
What is being done about diversity?
Evidence suggests companies are following three to four waves of initiatives in relation to diversity at work (a) measuring and counting (b) creating some policies e.g. flexi working for women, diversity recruitment targets for ethnic minorities (c) diversity networks and forums (d) some public campaigns. While this is quite a logical and data driven approach, it leaves a key question unanswered: how do we make it real ?
My recommendation to clients is always this: Start with shifting perceptions, removing blockages and training mindsets. For example research shows women in the workplace are often in a catch-22 situation. If they fulfil leadership ideals that are traditionally masculine they are not seen as feminine or authentic enough. But if they are too feminine, they are not seen as hardnosed commercial leaders. Surely before we put statistics and percentages on this we need to remove the perception that authentic female leadership is always up against a yardstick of masculine attributes. How does one train this mindset?
• Don’t be a slave to organisational structures when discussing key issues or brainstorming critical options. Don’t be stuck with the standard linear organisational chart.
• Do use less bipolar language which reinforce biases – “male way of” of “women are more prone to”
• Do make gender stereotypes visible by talking about them and bringing them from the “shouldn’t be talked about” to the visible, conscious awareness levels.
• Consider the coaching mix: When I coach men it tends to be mostly about developing their hard, leadership skills, solving gritty problems and getting things done. However they are often weak at relationship and impact skills, asking for help etc. Women are generally good at relationship management, and are opens to change. However, they are held back by low self belief and fear of confrontation. So I generally recommend male and female coach-coachee combinations. Where women need to improve conflict- management they may benefit from being coached or mentored by a male and when men need to improve their impact, influence and relational skills receiving female coaching input can deliver profound results. This ‘complementarity’ is perfect and it lands a second win by reducing the gulf of male/female stereotypes by creating a more human model free of bias and polarisation.
And finally please try this very personal and practical exercise I use with clients: It is called the VALUE (an acronym I coined for Versatile Attitudes Leverage Untapped Excellence); where in any important meeting, I sit and observe the dynamics and jot down all the missed opportunities through stereotyping or exclusions (subconscious omission of diverse input). This takes time and practice to master. I then feedback to the group or the head of the meeting (depending on sensitivities and confidentiality) how better inclusion or more diverse participation could have resulted in a different course of action or added more depth to an existing decision. Nine out of ten times my clients are taken aback by the many major and minor exclusions that constantly occur in meetings, discussions and retreats! All organisations can tap the benefits of managing diversity and valuing differences today by training their people’s mindsets.
* Sources:
Women Matter, McKinsey
CIPD
Strategy and Business Review 2008