Diversity is a hot topic and understanding and addressing it is ever more at the forefront of organisations’ agendas. Some will pay it lip service, ticking the boxes if you like. Others will embrace it and make it a core element in their approach to appointing purpose-led business leaders to deliver their strategic and commercial goals. My money is on the latter being the more sustainable.
When people ask me about diversity, I think of two things. First, the diversity of thought, which comes from an individual’s own experiences, career building, community, and life. Second, is what most people immediately think of, the under-recognised and under-represented groups.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion can help to define your purpose. But what is your purpose? Purpose is particularly important to me and throughout my corporate career it has been something I have advocated, through the inclusion of Leading with Purpose programmes and workshops in organisations I work with. It is one of the questions I am guaranteed to ask you. Yet Harvard Business School discovered that fewer than 20% of leaders have a strong sense of their own individual purpose.
Purpose is about how individuals build their career, how they respond to proud moments and devastating periods. It is about their motivation. It can be hard to articulate, don’t get me wrong, but it is really worth putting the work in. You have to live your purpose. Mine is written on my bathroom wall and in my diaries and it relates to how I live my life overall. It doesn’t have to be, but for those who find their true purpose it is invaluable.
Why do you want this job? This is another important question. We all want more money, more prestige but why? What is your purpose? If this is your only purpose, at some point you will be disappointed.
So, going back to diversity of thought and experience. Do we really want everyone to be the same? Do we not want to bring diversity to boards and senior management teams to create a rounded purpose-led leadership team? It makes sense, right?
The same logic can be applied to under-recognised and under-represented groups. For them, however, it is about getting the opportunity to be interviewed and showcasing that they are prepared to seize the opportunity. I know that I haven’t got to where I am today on my own. Find a mentor. They don’t have to look or be like you, but they do have to listen and work with you. Ultimately, putting your name on the table when opportunities arise. That’s what happened to me early on in my career and I am hugely grateful, hence I have a saying, as a woman of colour, ‘no matter where you get to in life, it is your obligation to send the lift back down’.
Now here’s the challenge for organisations, are you truly ready for diversity? Are your formal and informal ways of working geared up to accept these new experiences and contributions? It’s all well and good encouraging diversity, of all forms, but if you don’t have the right environment, you are not setting the individual up to succeed. You are risking organ transplant failure.
