Are We Ready To Really Start Building Diverse Leadership Teams?
February is Black History Month. The racial turmoil of 2020 led to widespread commitments to racial equity and a broader conversation about the value of diversity in the workplace. Let’s be clear - we didn’t discover in 2020 that diversity is good for business - we’ve known for some time that companies led by a diverse team are more successful. What’s different going into Black History Month 2021 is a certain amount of momentum that could lead to real change. The road ahead is not without its obstacles; merely inviting others to the table is not enough. For any team to thrive (even homogeneous groups), there must be structures in place to make cohesion more likely. Those structures are not complicated, but they’re not easy. The problem of cohesion becomes even harder to solve as you scale your organization and grow the team responsible for leading it. Still, the dividends make it well worth the effort.
According to entrepreneur, investor, and professor Rodney Sampson, "Entrepreneurs, leaders, and high growth founders develop an obsession to solve the hardest problems at scale. When applied to the very hard challenge of building teams with intersectional racial, ethnic, and gender representation at all levels, a company’s productivity and economic output can skyrocket. This is diversity, equity and inclusion solutions in hiring and team-building in action."
To take advantage of the edge that having a cohesive, diverse team offers, we have to first get past the simplistic idea that the presence of people who look different will make the difference. Hopefully, this will sound obvious—it isn’t someone’s skin pigmentation, gender, or age that offers the diversity of thought—it’s the life experience of being Black, brown, female, etc., that have formed those invaluable perspectives. Here’s the thing: sometimes those perspectives have grown out of experiences that are painful to talk about and difficult to hear. You only talk about these kinds of things with people you really trust enough to be vulnerable with.
Throughout the month, here on our LinkedIn page and in our newsletter, we’ll share resources designed to help you implement the framework necessary to foster trust in a leadership team that represents a diverse set of ideas and experiences. We hope you’ll learn something, and we hope you’ll help us learn by sharing your experiences, your thoughts, and your questions. And most importantly, we hope you’ll chime in with strategies that have worked for you.
Check back on Monday for our first set of recommendations. In the meantime, feel free to share some stories in the comments section about the value you’ve found in being a part of diverse teams at work.