Diversity in Leadership

Last week, we gave a brief history of DEI and adjacent initiatives in the business world, and the best practices in recruiting diverse members to your team. This week, we’re diving into diversity in leadership.

When we talk about diversity initiatives, we need to consider what our leadership looks like. There are already a lot of obstacles between open and trustworthy conversation between leadership and workers. Not all of it can be solved through this lens, but having someone on the executive team with the ability to connect with both workers and target audiences alike can be the difference between failure and success in any type of DEI initiative. Let's put performance and bottom line aside for a second to analyze why diversity in leadership matters

One of the biggest roles of a leader is being the face of your outfit. Whoever is in a leadership role is more likely to speak for your company, whether it's in the media, at speaking engagements, or even during internal communications. From board members to students on a campus, your leadership is your brand. Employees working under them will be looking up to these executives for guidance, and for understanding. In the interest of diversity and inclusion, the best way to achieve this is to ensure you put people in that leadership role who better reflect both internal employees and target markets.

Most importantly, avoid lip-service about diversity initiatives. Don’t just make the target itself public, make sure to provide regular updates (both internally and externally) about each initiative's progress. Many companies have fallen for the allure of cheap PR by making promises about DEI that they never end up fulfilling.

There are still so many companies that lack any kind of diversity amongst their leadership. Back in 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the Washington Post published an article that cited the staggering low number of Black workers in leadership positions.

“African Americans comprise a fraction of the senior leadership at the largest tech firms — 3.1 percent at Facebook, 3.6 percent at Google, 4.4 percent at Slack, 5.3 percent at Twitter and 2.7 percent of executives at Microsoft, according to company data.”

Two years after this report, Fortune published an article on Black members in executive roles and board seats, claiming that “Black workers [account] for only four percent of executive leaders and 4.4% of board seats.”

The stagnation is, unfortunately, unsurprising. The roots of this lack of diversity go far back, and a blog like this wouldn’t be the proper format to lay out the exact reasons as to why the state of diversity is where it is today (though we can all probably speculate). Referring back to last week’s blog, we can get an idea of how unconventional hiring practices can be utilized in order to seek out strong candidates that may be lacking more traditional credentials. Those without a deep network or a degree from a prestigious university oftentimes have more practical experiences and unique ways of dealing with situations.

Despite putting those recruiting policies in place, growing diversity within your company (whether its gender, racial or cultural) can still be an uphill battle. That's part of the reason Heylia Partners offers training tied to diversity! Beyond these training, other outside recruiting agencies can be utilized in order to prioritize diverse hiring. These recruiters often have access to high-quality candidates and a variety of resources that your company might not discover on your own.

With all that, we need to understand that even with all the right steps taken, leadership change takes time. So while that process is taking place, what are some things we could start doing to promote diversity, even if you don’t embody it yourself? It starts with investing time into understanding the value of diversity and inclusion, and how it fits in with your organization. Affirm your team about their ideas and values, and continue to strive to empower more diverse ideas. While certain power dynamics will always be at play; whether we are talking in the workplace or more sinister societal forces, a leader can always find ways to prop up DEI even when they don’t directly relate to the group they are leading.

The key is this; if you are not a part of a community, don’t try to figure it out or pin it down. Communities are formed not just by traits, but by shared experiences, something you will just not be able to relate to in the same way. So instead, talk with employees within your orbit that can better educate you on how to approach issues from the perspective of these communities.

However, this isn’t a fool-proof plan. Imagine trying to educate your boss on something very important or personal to your life that you know they’ll never fully understand. That’s exhausting. Don’t ever hold the notion that employees owe their story to you.

Not very straight forward, is it? It never is. This is where your leadership skills come into play. Lead your team with grace, and in turn, you’ll receive the same. Admit mistakes when they arise, and don’t shy away from being vulnerable to your team. At the end of the day, one of the best things you can do as a leader is focus on helping them achieve in this industry, so that their leadership helps influence a new generation of diverse thinking.

Now that we know the benefits of diversity in leadership and in the general workforce, we need to focus on an important part of showing that diversity initiatives go further than just bringing on employees from minority communities. Advocacy is one of the best ways corporations can back up their claims of caring about diversity.

Check out next week’s Heylia Partners’ blog post as we dive deeper into Advocacy in the business world.