Diversity is the need of the hour in corporate cabins. The globalised workplaces of today call for having diverse workforces. And we’re not talking merely employees here. But diverse managers and leaders.
“Our research reveals that companies that have reached an above average level of gender diversity overall (at least 30%) and at the senior-level (more than 20%), outperform diversity laggards in key leadership and business outcomes,” says Amogh Deshmukh, managing director, DDI India.
Deshmukh says that having a collaborative and integrated approach to growing leadership diversity translates to several beneficial people and business outcomes. “Diversity leading organisations were rated by their leaders as having higher-quality leadership, being faster-growing and agiler than their more homogeneous counterparts, and as being more likely to experiment and embrace failure in pursuit of different and innovative approaches,” says Deshmukh.
Says Mangala Subramaniam, professor of sociology and Butler Chair and director of Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence, Purdue University, “Leader diversity is important because it can bring in different perspectives and approaches to understanding and solving issues. Diverse leaders may also foster excellence.”
However, diversity in the digital age often transcends attributes such as race, gender, ethnicity, caste and sexual orientation.
We often grapple with more subtle forms of diversity which include diversity in perspectives, ideas or thoughts, says Amit Prakash, Executive Vice President and Head – HR, Marico. “Breakthrough innovation happens when people with diverse perspectives, backgrounds and personalities work towards a common goal,” Prakash adds that diversity today is about generating tolerance and openness in the culture for people to be able to welcome varied thoughts and perspectives.
The advantages of having a diverse leadership are multiple and often proven. Firstly, say experts, diverse leadership brings in uniquely different areas of experiences which can help in finding unique solutions to organisational problems and generating new thoughts. Secondly, having a leader who represents a minority (gender/ethnicity/education wise) can make employees feel highly valued, positively impacting employee productivity, motivation and retention.
Says Mahalakshmi R, director – human resources, Mondelez India, “Diversity of thought, styles, experiences help to get a representation of the consumers we serve in our decision structure and this is integral in enabling us to be ‘’consumer out’’ in our strategy.” According to Mahalakshmi, the ability to work well with diverse teams is also a measure of people agility, which is used by the organisation to evaluate the potential for larger roles. “At Mondelez India, diversity is more of a business imperative that enables our strategy than an HR agenda focused on dashboard metrics alone.”
There are multiple ways in which organisations can attain leadership diversity. The first step should be to hire and promote diversity, says Deshmukh, ‘’by using a bias-free interviewing system to guide hiring and promotion decisions. Organisations should bring data and objectivity to their people management decisions.’’
Subramaniam says organisations should address issues of implicit bias (that may exist in organisations) by holding workshops and encourage discussions about these issues. “Organisations should take steps to correct the biases that may exist and leaders should pave the way by speaking out.”
Prakash says Marico encourages people to see beyond gender, caste, creed, culture, socio-economic backgrounds, age or any such categories. “Each leader is encouraged to engender inclusion, so that we don’t just create diversity but leverage it by embracing those diverse perspectives in our decisions,” says Mahalakshmi, adding that right from Mondelez’ iTaste programme which creates a signature experience for campus recruits to their talent mobility initiative for the leadership team, “diversity has been a source of strength in all aspects of our business.”
It is also important to encourage leaders to seek different perspectives for new projects and reward teams that harness inclusion of multiple perspectives to generate new ideas and solutions, says Deshmukh.
Building a diverse leadership team is not enough. It is equally important to convince and counsel employees to embrace such a team, says Subramaniam. And this can be done by conveying how diversity promotes excellence, says Subramaniam. “Companies should also create and mandate workshops, reward diversity-related work using transparent mechanisms, expose employees (and leaders) to professional programmes related to diversity.’’ Organisations should also create an open platform to share senior leaders’ perspectives on the importance of diversity “and share what are the benefits to the team and for the organisation,” says Deshmukh.
FOR ALL SEASONS
- Experts say diverse leadership experiences are helpful for unique solutions
- Having a leader who represents a minority can make employees feel highly valued
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