Managing Diversity is a Leadership Competence

Diversity matters and how we handle it make an amazing difference to you, your employees and your enterprise. For some diversity in the workplace is a major annoyance rather than an asset. Instead of diversity being a challenge, we ought to turn it into an asset by treating it as key tool for success; we should develop our diversity-intelligence. Diversity needs to be an integral part of our business-planning, essential to successful projects, programmes, product-development, increasing brand value, driving sales, controlling costs and improving profits and cash flow. Explicitly deciding to manage diversity in our organisations provides us with fresh insights aiding our understanding of our employees. We will also find new ways to engage with our people; the key to harnessing and releasing their creative talent. We need to accept and identify our own blind-spots which are roadblocks to our personal success as effective leaders. We have to understand how our own perceptions (and assumptions which stem from these perceptions) are unconscious biases influencing our opinions and decisions. With greater openness we will become more sensitive to what is going on around us and so our levels of approachability will go through the roof. By aligning diversity with our communication-practices we will inspire others by listening to them, including them, respecting them and acting on what we hear. Accepting people from different backgrounds, cultures, countries, gender and ages have different approaches to communication, motivation and idea creation, we as leaders in our organisations must adapt our communication-practices to these varied audiences. Remember our number one customers are our people; they will not just ‘do as they are told’. Varied and targeted communication approaches create opportunities for employees to feel engaged, enriched and empowered, ensuring they then thrive as individuals and work much more effectively in their teams. Innovation and creativity only happen when our employees are thriving; our diversity-intelligence is critical in achieving a collaborative, inclusive and engaging work community where our people are seeking ways to improve not only their own well-being but also finding ways for the enterprise to be even more successful. If we only respond to our own perceptions and assumptions, we will gravitate to, recruit, surround ourselves with and promote those who are like us. Look around you and think about whose company you tend to seek out – those who are different to you or those with whom you share much in common? Finding empathy for all individuals is a key leadership competence for effective diversity-management, manifested through our behaviour when dealing with people we perceive to be difficult and how we handle intercultural complexities and unstable situations. Those of us who leverage diversity to develop, motivate and empower people to achieve extraordinary results are not acting randomly. We are stimulating two of the toughest but most useful leadership tools; Parity of Esteem and Unity in Diversity, both of which aid in creating a respectful and appreciated diverse enterprise-community As has been often quoted, ‘diversity is actually about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions within each individual’. We will not only accept each other but we will enjoy and benefit from our differences, exploring these differences in a nurturing environment. Employees will feel as if they belong, feel cared for and feel respected. Then they will deliver their best work and do much more than ‘what they are told to do’. By starting to explicitly manage the benefits of a diverse workplace, you are ensuring more chances of a sustainable and successful future for you, your employees and your enterprise, ensuring strategic thinking takes priority over short-term gamesmanship.