Having and growing diversity of leadership in your business produces success across many factors necessary for growth and development. Diversity is defined as the state of being diverse, having variety. It is also the fact of unlikeness with the inclusion of individuals representing more than one national origin, gender, color, religion, socioeconomic stratum, sexual orientation and many more. If we take this a step further to define what a diverse workplace would look like then we would explain it as a mixed workforce that provides a wide range of abilities, experience, knowledge, and strengths due to its heterogeneity in age, background, ethnicity, physical abilities, generational, political and religious beliefs, sex, and other attributes.
We know that organizations with gender, ethnic, and racial diversity produce 15% greater financial returns. It has also been studied and proven that socially diverse groups with different strengths, experiences, knowledge and perspectives are more innovate, better problem solvers, and more representative of the market place. Companies will also serve their customers better by leveraging diversity to create better services and products. Diverse groups outperform homogeneous groups.
The Diversity Dilemma
There are many factors holding back the progress of diversity in the workplace even though there is now great awareness, evidence, and initiatives to strongly support it. Some of the stunting of growth companies know they can achieve with diversity comes from neurology, conditioning, culture, leadership, and fear. Did you know we as human beings are hard wired to be right and that there is actually chemical reactions that give us a hit of the feel good hormone transmitters when we are right? Can you imagine the wall of resistance to diversity when you add together the biology of neurology, conditioned beliefs from birth, a preset and long term company culture, lack of leadership support, and fear or a scarcity mindset?
Differences & Change Always Feared
Let’s take a memory stroll back to growing up as kids for a minute. Can you remember as a kid when you saw someone different than you or saw that they behaved differently from you? At first it maybe was curiosity, perhaps fear, but what we were certain of was this person was different from us and being different in essence met an instant polarization until we knew more. Some of us probably went to our trusted source to validate or define to us what we were seeing or experiencing and then if we were not old enough trusted our source without question or independent thought due to lack of education. However, if the teacher or our classroom accepted this difference, it was instantly a culturally directed new norm adapted by all.
Change is often feared at first. Change is almost always resisted due to the comfort of the known until change is accepted as growth, as positive, and as advancement in the direction of the individual or collective goal.
Resistance to Diversity Still Ever Present
With all these facts and knowledge at every business owners and leaders’ fingers tips, the resistance to diversity seems to still be hardwired unconsciously into the DNA of many losing to the driving force of sameness.
Why is it over the past first 5 weeks of 2017 that I have witnessed these two scenarios one in a small business and the other in a large, global company?
The global company was hiring training and development for all their managers to address specific problems that were consistent across their teams. They were selecting trainers and their deciding factor in who they would choose was a consultant with the same background, experiences, knowledge, and culture of their people. Now to put this into perspective their management group was extremely similar among many personality traits almost everyone hand picked from the Type A, workaholic, money focused gender pool. If you were managing this project knowing that innovation, problem solving, creativity, and decision making is enhanced in a heterogeneous group, would you pick the same personality and cultural background to work with these managers? If results, progress, and change are the goal, then is their choice for sameness an effective solution?
Then just a few weeks ago my friend shares with me what she has been experiencing at work and explains it is because they cannot afford her and another new hire. Instead of having to pay severance in the hopes they could create such a horrible work environment she would quit, they isolated, ostracized, and in employment standards legally bullied her at work. What does this have to do with diversity? She was the people person, the one with the most sales above all other staff, the one with the happy, community spirit and was adored by the customers and greater community. She was completely opposite in personality and strengths to the owner. The new hire was exactly like him. How the story ends is she did hold out long enough that they did offer her severance, but sadly the sales will definitely decline, the community is at a loss, and my friend is rallying to a fresh, new positive start letting go of something she enjoyed doing.
Embracing Diversity for Excellence
In my humble opinion when we choose sameness we are being controlled by our reptilian or smaller, unconscious, conditioned brain that drives us to choose familiarity and stay safe where we do not have to be challenged by differences. Yes, diversity can pose challenges and potentially conflict, but when it is embraced and when people can accept differences are strengths and opportunities for growth, is exactly where the magic of progress and success can be achieved. Often the person who is most different from you, is the person you can learn the most from.
What can and will you do in your workplace to practice diversity?
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