[ Leadership & Diversity ]
Leadership keeps being referred to as THE key to progress in DE&I. Yet, everybody appears to be focusing on something different – which does not help to create impact. At a large key-note event hosted by the Lëtzebuerg Diversity charter, Michael Stuber, the D&I Engineer, unpacked the topic.
What’s the DE&I ‘issue’ – for activists or leaders?
If you think about historic leaders – often military or revolutionary – or current ones from the corporate or political world, visible differences can easily be a rampant criterion to discuss Diversity & Leadership. And it is.
Implicit Intoxication
Criticising the lack of women in the C-suite and executive levels has become a discussion starter which is just as common and undisputed as it creates defensiveness, backlash and fatigue. Adding gap analyses for POC/BAME/racial or ethnic minorities or for openly LGBTQ+ leaders can help broaden the discussion while it does take away the unfortunate sole focus on representation[1] which does lead to ethical and fairness-focused inclusion or promotion but not to robust, intrinsic and hence sustained engagement for holistic change.
Programmatic Tokenism
The extent of the unwanted (and increasingly divisive) side-effects of simplistic quantitative narratives becomes obvious when working with leaders on Diversity. For what we keep seeing are two types of activities in almost all major business organisations:
- Leaders reiterating affirmative statements about being proud of 100+ nationalities and committed to hire and promote more women; meanwhile they insist on existing ‘diversity’ among their male leaders (sic)
- Leaders participating in Diversity days, weeks and months where they show openness and at the same time confirm the organisation’s commitment to meritocracy (wait, seriously?)
The driving forces behind this ‘engagement’ include stakeholder expectations, both internal and external, and a shallow reference to ‘research that confirms improved business performance’. Not that anything was blatantly wrong with this approach – it does not, however, address the (systemic) core of the DE&I issue nor does it provide intrinsic sense-making (i.e. core task of leadership) while it reproduces hindering perceptions.
The Identity Trap of Leadership
When the Leadership & Diversity agenda focuses on underrepresented identities, it reproduces past (and current) stereotypical ideas of leaders at the same time: Research keeps finding new versions of Virginia Schein’s ‘think manager think male’ patterns as well as related othering. Once again the explicit focus on difference and the (arguable) assumption that it presents a value in and by itself creates negative impact. It also prevents much-needed reflections of the tasks of leadership in successfully managing our complex future and how identity interrelates with these.
The Evolution of Today’s Leadership
Today’s leaders perceive their own (career) development as a well-deserved accomplishment and a meritocratic reward of their choices and efforts. They were provided little information about diversity or privilege along their way and have developed – like all of us – their personal filters, biases and blind spots with which they see the world (and themselves). In recent years, however, they have noted that the world around perceives them ALSO based on their identity factors which they themselves have not considered important.
These changing perceptions are part of a long-term development from
- Leadership as we know if from past eras of industrialisation (until the 1970s) to new forms of
- Leadership as we know it related to different phases of digital revolution combined with the globalisation of business.
Several models have tried to describe the leadership of the future (mixed team leadership, transformational leadership, total leadership, servant leadership) while none has transformed the reality of leaders in a sustained way. DE&I was – at best – an implicit element of these models while it directly supports each of the concrete challenges that leaders are increasingly facing: Pace of change, complexity, ambiguity and new ethical expectations.
The Future of [ Leadership & Diversity ]
Based on our analyses and experience from more than fifteen years, new leadership competences have emerged and will dominate the definition of successful leaders going forward. Managing your own and other identities, i.e. DE&I, is a key element in this and becomes distinctly – and differently – important for C-Level, senior & mid-level management and team supervisors respectively. We have operationalised ‘Inclusive Leadership’ for each of these audiences in specific ways that directly support them to manage business priorities, the polarisation around DE&I as well as personal identities as they relate to positions or roles.[2] One of the main insights all this work has provided is that DE&I should not be discussed as one component (or phenomenon) that must be squeezed into our understanding of Leadership. Instead, our business-based consideration of Leadership shows that is interconnected with DE&I on various levels and to that end firmly connected. We hence mention leadership first and use the brackets to visualise the inseparable nature: [ Leadership & Diversity ]
Active Allyship is Inclusive Leadership for everyone everyday
In organisations where fewer employees are people leaders and where collaboration is key, we should understand how insights about Inclusive Leadership can be helpful at a larger scale. Considering DE&I as a value-creation process illustrates how every individual creates their actions and words as the observable (and tangible) outcome of an inner (cognitive) process: We process our perceptions using our values and beliefs to create (more or less inclusive) behaviours that lead to (more or less) effective impacts and results (i.e. performance). In this basic human process, our awareness for ourselves and others, our alertness and ability to shift paradigms, and our authenticity to be our individual selves determines to what extent we are utilising our talent and that of others. It is no coincidence that the very same five elements are describing Active Allyship (using slightly different language).
Imagine: What if … all this happened?
The good news – and most powerful message – at the end of the event was that [ Leadership & Diversity ] have become a coproduct that is not restricted to small groups of managers nor to certain types of organisations. We are all living and working in a world where meeting and accepting others where and how they are is critical to our individual and collective success. This includes the understanding that equity is everybody’s friend and belonging is our shared competitive edge. Combining these elements with the existing paradigms of D&I and Leadership creates a stunningly consistent framework for organisations and people that contributes to their success – and this continues to be a positive driver beyond personal values.
[1] For me, a bizarre high was achieved when I read a study that criticised the underrepresentation of GenZ in Corporate Boards…
[2] I cover this differentiated model in other articles and presentations about Inclusive Leadership
Further Reading
The C-Suite and Diversity: A different story
The use – or misuse – of Power in DE&I
How D&I must be part of the rEvolution of International Companies
Is DEI Activism helping or hindering Corporate Diversity progress?
