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Trailblazers: How Top Business Leaders are Accelerating Results through Inclusion and Diversity by Redia Anderson and Lenora Billings-Harris (2010)
It All Starts Here…
The authors’ research corroborates that of others, bearing out the fact that the organizational culture must first be prepared for new faces, new perspectives, and new ways of achieving results before the onboarding of people from groups who have been underrepresented in the past. I know our organization established hiring goals in the 1970’s and 1980’s but gave little attention to preparing the organization for the diversity that would enter the organization.
Once the organization is prepared, companies need to focus their recruitment efforts…and move beyond tokenism. Organizations do themselves and the candidates a disservice when only one minority or woman candidate is included in an interview pool. For every job level where more diversity is needed, Anderson and Billings-Harris suggest having at least three diverse candidates among the entire pool of candidates. This helps interviewing managers evaluate all candidates based on the skills and abilities they offer without having one individual represent a whole group. When there is only one person of difference available, their difference tends to stand out more than their talents.
The Trailblazers’ study found that leaders’ appreciation of the importance of minority recruitment strategies predicted minority-group representation, irrespective of an organization’s diversity goals or priorities. Thus, it appears that it is not the assignment of a high strategic priority to diversity that matters; it is the action-oriented tactics that have an impact on diverse representation.
Once diverse candidates join an organization, they need a good onboarding experience. There is a strong correlation between the early experiences of diverse employees and their willingness to stay with the company. This is generally true for all employees, but it is particularly important for talent that is different than the majority. A study conducted by Columbia Business School and the executive search firm Korn/Ferry found that 80% of high-level minority executives lack formal mentors and nearly 33% don’t even have informal mentors. This is not a recipe for success…
Middle Managers Make Things Work
Middle managers are the people who, on a day to day basis, can make or break an organization’s culture. Deborah Dagit, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at Merck observed, “I think we’ve done them a disservice by not dividing this work up into smaller bite-size pieces that they can come and get when they need them. . . . That’s been part of our problem.”
In a May 28, 2008, Knowledge @ Wharton article entitled, “Caught in the Middle: Why Developing and Retaining Middle Managers Can Be So Challenging,” author Joe Ryan (adjunct professor at Wharton Executive Education) stresses that communication is a key element for finding ways to engage mid-level managers in understanding a company’s new strategic initiative. He is quoted as saying that, in order to obtain more traction from middle managers, organizations must focus on “helping people at the middle understand in more tangible terms what they need to do. This may include more concrete objectives, examples, and messages so that people who interface with customers or run processes understand where the company is and what it needs to do differently.” Providing middle managers with a road map and milestones significantly increases the opportunities for systemically embedding and sustaining inclusion and diversity in the organization. Without specifics, middle managers will almost naturally default to inactivity.
So, do you need to be a minority leader to improve diversity in your organization? If so, I’m out of luck… Interestingly, the Trailblazers’ study found that, while a leader’s gender and ethnicity did not influence his or her attitude toward diversity, the leader’s racial awareness did. Leaders with greater racial awareness—regardless of race or gender—had more positive attitudes toward diversity. This suggests that, for those seeking to improve organizations through diversity initiatives, it might be best to assess racial awareness in the selection of business and department leaders rather than to base a strategy or decision on surface-level characteristics such as race or gender.
In universities, leaders who indicated greater racial awareness had higher representation of minority and women faculty in their departments. To encourage that, it was noted that leaders who have “development of an affirming diversity climate” as a significant portion of their performance appraisal are more likely to develop actionable steps, as compared to rhetoric alone, than leaders who do not.
If real organizational change is the goal, subordinate physical appearance to racial awareness in choosing the leadership team. A corollary is that, if you have a team in place that lacks racial awareness, start by developing their racial awareness before rolling out programs to lower levels of the organization.
Diversity Councils Are Needed for Organization Change
Successful inclusion and diversity efforts have an internal diversity council, or an internal plus an external diversity council. No successful initiative has existed without one or both. External Diversity Councils—in partnership with the companies that hired them—function primarily as advisors to accomplish two major objectives:
- Be a catalyst and make recommendations for voluntary change.
- Push for accountability and results.
Ultimately, Diversity Councils promote the sharing of ideas and experiences with the goal of improving the organization’s talent pipeline, brand eminence, and workplace culture climate.
Best Practices from Top Companies
Coca-Cola’s Formula for Success
Steve Bucherati, Chief Diversity Officer for The Coca-Cola Company, shares the following formula: (D + I) F = Success (i.e., diversity plus inclusion multiplied by fairness equals success)
The Coca-Cola Company then offers four different types of classes, plus a diversity speakers’ series. Each course has a specific focus that is stated in its title:
- The Business Case for Diversity
- Managing in a Diverse Environment
- Micro-Inequities
- Challenge Day is a highly experiential program that helps participants understand how bias and discrimination impact all groups of people. (For details, see www.challengeday.org.)
Sodexo’s Training & Education
Sodexo uses mandatory training and education for all of their 18,000 managers. They have five learning labs:
- Generations
- Micro-inequities
- Gender
- Cross-cultural communications
- Sexual orientation
While these labs are not mandatory, the demand is so great that they utilize internal trainers. Sodexo makes a distinction between training and education that pertains to affirmative action and EEO vs. diversity training & education, which encompasses cultural competency, outreach, recruitment, and mentoring on multiple platforms.
Andrews Kurth (an international law firm) Brings Accountability
Trailblazer Elizabeth Campbell, Partner and Chief Diversity Officer at Andrews Kurth LLP, proactively supplies corporate clients with the firm’s diversity actions and results even if they have not asked for the information. The tracking of hours related to D & I (a process she created for the firm) helps clients appreciate the importance the firm places on diversity.
For many years, they used both quantitative and qualitative measures—a set of metrics categorized into five different areas:
- Workplace representation
- Staffing
- Development
- Community involvement
- Supplier diversity
Each line of business would report what they were going to do in those five areas and then define what good, better, and best performance would look like. Then, the leadership would hold them accountable for their commitments and align results with their incentive compensation.
Today, they’ve gone further. As Elizabeth Campbell, Partner and Chief Diversity Officer at Andrews Kurth, LLP, discusses supplier diversity and procurement, “What we’ve done is look at what I’ll call ‘attorney engagement’ around diversity and inclusion. Are we making sure people are getting involved in our diversity and inclusion activities?” To track engagement, Campbell launched a process similar to “billable hours” (which attorneys were already accustomed to recording) to log their time spent on diversity and inclusion efforts.
American Airlines’ Employee Resource Groups
Managing Director of Diversity Strategies at American Airlines, Michael Collins points out, “We have one guiding principle for all ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) and that is they have to be collaborative in nature and have to provide value to the business and be focused on the business. So it’s okay to be different as long as it’s not at the expense of someone else. That has worked very well.”
Interestingly, 100% of the “Trailblazers” companies provide a budget for their ERGs; and 71% have a senior leader (who reports directly to the CEO) serving as chair for their ERGs. This creates a direct link between the discussions that go on in the meetings and the top-level management. Collins goes on to say that “the executive sponsors are leaders at the top of the organizations who are not a member of that group so they can learn about a group that is different from their own but also engage in unfettered advocacy as a sponsor.”
One thing is certain as more corporations have gone global. There are inequalities in every region of the globe. There are places around the world where individuals and even entire groups of people are excluded as human beings. No country is exempt. And, while every region faces these challenges, their specific nature—such as social class, religion, and skin color—varies greatly from one nation to another. As Bill Proudman of White Men as Full Diversity Partners likes to say, “While it’s not our fault, we are responsible” for making changes within our sphere of influence.
So, I encourage you today to look around your team and organization and see which of these best practices can help you shoot for the stars!