Inclusive Leadership: What Gives Employees a Feeling of Belonging?
BY jennifermattson September 27, 2019While corporate culture can set a tone for a workplace, research has found that the experience of individual workers is more influenced by their team leaders. So what makes an inclusive leader, the kind of manager who can give diverse workers a feeling of belonging? “Authenticity,” said Dionne Wright Poulton, head of diversity at Riverside Community Care. “Authenticity is a precursor to congruity—to make sure your words and deeds are in alignment. If you find you’re making many gaffes [regarding diversity and inclusion], you want to do a self-examination and find out why.” Poulton was among the speakers on a panel on inclusive leadership at the From Day One conference on Sept. 18 in Boston, where the panelists agreed that one of the most important traits for a leader is humility and being able to say, “I don’t have all the answers.” Tip-toeing around the issues doesn’t help, asserted KeyAnna Schmiedl, global head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Wayfair, the online home-furnishings retailer. Managers need to move away from strictly being “careful” to really engaging and digging into messy conversations. “I want to sit down and have people engage,” she said. Shirley Leung, at left, a business columnist for the Boston Globe, moderated the panel conversation Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung, who moderated the panel, asked the speakers to name the No. 1 diversity issue. Tom Bourdon, head of inclusion and diversity at Staples, said “the challenge is to give the adequate time and resources needed to move the needle.” He said that at most companies, “the commitment is there in theory,” but the resources are not necessarily allocated or even available. Poulton said one of her biggest challenges is, “How to balance the notion that the customer is always right—with protecting the staff?” This has been increasingly important as Riverside employees find themselves on the receiving end of a growing number of racial slurs and derogatory comments, she said. “When we realized it was happening across the organization, not a one-off, we wanted to make sure people were being treated fairly,” she said. She credited her organization’s CEO for his willingness to respond quickly to the problem. Leaders especially need to be open and inclusive when their company is going through change. Tyler Muse, founder and CEO at Lingo Live, found being “radically transparent with people” has helped him best address these issues in his own company, which provides communications coaching. After the company went through a round of layoffs, he said, “the biggest concern for people is psychological safety.” Lingo Live started as a company teaching language lessons online, but then pivoted more to coaching. As the company made the transition, Muse set up one-on-one meetings with staffers, in which he realized that the employees needed him to fully acknowledge that it was a time of transition for them and the company. Leung asked the panel what advice they would give to people who have bosses who “don’t get it.” “If you have someone who isn’t being inclusive, it’s hard to give them the benefit of the doubt—and assume they are clueless—but you really have to,” said Muse. He suggested to try talking to a friend first, if you don’t know how to bring up the topic with your boss. “If it’s your direct manager, people want to suss out if it’s happening with anyone else,” said Wayfair’s Schmiedl. “Finding out ‘it’s not just me’—is helpful.” Also helpful, she said, was building in inclusive language when describing a company’s core competencies. “We baked them in—so we are telling you how we expect you to act.” For example, Schmiedl said instead of requiring employees to be “vocal contributors” at meetings—which could create bias against women and minorities who statistically tend to speak up less—Wayfair changed the term to “proactive contributor” which allowed employees who might be more introverted to contribute via email or other means, not just in the meeting itself. The panelists agreed that younger workers are more outspoken on social media about their opinions, and more comfortable voicing them at work. As a result, companies need to have a different type of managed conversation about inclusive political and cultural discussions in the workplace. “I think we millennials crave authenticity more than anything,” said Muse. “Bringing up politics or deeply personal beliefs tells who you are as a leader. There is a risk of doing that, but also of not doing it. I think most people want to know what you stand for—as long as you can explain your personal views are separate from what the organization stands for.” Schmiedl said millennials, as well as Generation Z, are a group of people who have been shaped by the events they grew up with, like 9/11, so it makes sense they would want to talk about the influence of current events on their lives, but that can bring up divisive topics. The question for businesses is how to create inclusive workplaces that meet their needs, while also addressing the needs of older employees too. “We can’t be expected to check who we are at the door,” said Poulton. “Organizations should provide a safe space where people can engage in constructive dialogue and are able to talk in a way where, if they disagree, they are not made to feel less than.” Brittany Hill, CEO of Accelerist, led a workshop on becoming a purpose-driven brand Bourdon agreed that often more harm is done when we don’t say what we think. Finally, in one of the takeaways from the panel, he suggested, “I think we could move mountains if leaders said three things: ‘How are you doing?,’ ‘How can I support you?,’ and ‘Thank you.’” In an earlier workshop at the conference, Brittany Hill, CEO of Accelerist, a social-impact partnership technology, led a workshop on “becoming a purpose-driven brand in a sea of purpose-built companies.” She was joined by Gary Lavante, SVP of corporate responsibility at Berkshire Bank. Jennifer Mattson is a journalist and writer. She is a former producer for CNN and National Public Radio. You can find her work online at The Atlantic, Salon, Psychology Today and USA Today
How Gender Equality Can Be Built Into Your Business
BY jennifermattson September 25, 2019What does the glass ceiling look like in 2019? “We see more women at the entry level, but not as much diversity at the top,” said Iris Bohnet, behavioral economist and academic dean of the Harvard Kennedy School. “There is still unconscious bias.” Bohnet spoke on gender equality with Nancy Gibbs, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, at the From Day One conference on Sept. 18 in Boston. By unconscious bias, Bohnet described those social stereotypes we’re not even aware of, in which we associate certain groups with certain positions. It’s an insidious factor in holding women back from achieving full gender equality in businesses and other organizations. “Seeing is believing,” Bohnet said, meaning that to overcome unconscious bias, humans need to see stereotype-breaking examples modeled in the world. For example, if we don’t see male nurses, we might assume nursing is a solely female profession. “The bad news is that we are biased,” Bohnet said. The good news is that in addressing bias, and making smart changes, we can have a major impact on gender equality and inclusion, said Bohnet, author of What Works: Gender Equality by Design. Said Bohnet: “I would get rid of the unstructured interview, it is the worst tool to predict future success,” she said However, she said, diversity training is not the answer. "I have not found one single study suggesting that diversity training works," Bohnet told Gibbs. Why not? “Think about healthy-eating awareness. It doesn’t mean you won’t eat ice cream,” Bonhet explained. “Good intentions don’t always mean people follow through. For some people, when they go through diversity training, people feel they checked the box, and there is some evidence that people are more sexist afterward.” “We recognize that we all have these biases,” said Gibbs, the bestselling author of The Presidents Club. “And the good news is that research shows some things work fantastically well. What are they?” In answering that question, Bohnet said her biggest message is: Don’t try to “debias mindsets, debias systems.” For example, in the 1970s, the Boston Symphony Orchestra started auditioning people behind a curtain so the judges would be unable to determine if the musician was male or female. “Debiasing systems means doing the morally right thing—leveling the playing ground—but this is also the economically smart thing to do,” she said. Why? Because you get the best talent. She said blind evaluations work particularly well when an organization is looking for new talent. “Are there problems blind evaluations don’t solve?” asked Gibbs. Yes. Bohnet said they don’t address the problems of promotion, even those that factor in high performance. “A year and a half ago, when I was in Stockholm, 97% of Nobel prizes went to men,” said Bohnet. “Every year I get asked to fill out the Nobel form [and suggest a recipient]. Sometimes, solving the problem means remaking a form, sometimes it requires a curtain.” And so, she suggested remaking the Nobel form as a way to “debias the system.” Instead of asking for one nominee, Bohnet suggested that the Nobel Committee ask for three. If you ask for only one, everyone might suggest their favorite. But if you ask for three, the answer will allow people to think more about variety and diversity. Bohnet said unstructured interviews, the standard sit-downs in which prospective employees chat with a potential employer, are not useful despite their long tradition in the working world. “I would get rid of the unstructured interview, it is the worst tool to predict future success,” she said. The interviewer might ask you to talk about things that have nothing to do with how well you can do the job. “There is a lot of noise [in an unstructured interview] and a prospective employee might talk about what we are interested in,” she said. The conference drew business leaders to the Artists for Human EpiCenter in Boston For Bohnet, that is Switzerland and hiking. If both interviewer and interviewee have similar interests and hobbies, they may have a lot to talk about during the interview. This may animate the conversation, but have little to do with evaluating job aptitude. As an alternative, Bohnet suggests moving to a structured interview, one that asks the same exact questions of all interviewees for a particular job. What’s the best way to run a structured interview? Bohnet suggested that an interviewer prepare by thinking through the job’s requirements in terms of skills. Then build a list of questions from there. She offered one final takeaway from the conversation: “People believe that just because we are women, the idea is that we might be less biased.” Not necessarily so, she said. Jennifer Mattson is a journalist and writer. She is a former producer for CNN and National Public Radio. You can find her work online at The Atlantic, Salon, Psychology Today and USA Today