Building And Benefitting From A Diverse Business Leadership Team

Issues surrounding workplace diversity are high on the agenda for many business management and leadership teams, not least relating to how they can ensure appropriate diversity within their own number.

Studies have proven that the more diverse a business’ leadership team is, the easier it is to recruit and retain talent and attract a more diverse range of clients and customers. Yet despite these facts, and the considerable efforts that have doubtless gone in to tackling diversity issues, progress has not been as fast as had been hoped.

For example, as part of setting up the HamiltonAlexander review to examine the gender gap in the top tier of UK business, former prime minister Theresa May set a target of one third of board members at the 350 largest-listed firms to be women by the end of 2020 – but the most recent figures showed that women only made up 27.5 per cent of board members in the FTSE 250 by November last year.

Similarly, research carried out last year found that only 52 of the FTSE 100 firms had board or executive committee members with a black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) background. This isn’t, of course, just an issue for the very biggest firms, but one for every business to carefully consider and act upon, not least for their own benefit.

So how can you look to achieve a diverse leadership team?

First of all, it’s essential to acknowledge the difference between diversity and inclusion. Diversity focuses on the makeup of your workforce, while Inclusion is the creation of a culture that enables diversity to thrive.

Even if your recruitment strategy leads to the creation of a diverse workforce, your culture has to enable these recruits’ retention and progression. Adopting policies which aid the promotion of diversity is crucial, most especially a detailed equal opportunities policy and recruitment policy, and don’t then fall into the trap of introducing policies as a tick box exercise – implement and communicate them.

Ensure relevant training is provided to management teams, not only on equal opportunities, but also on leadership and coaching skills which enable their staff to flourish, and communicate effectively with them on what changes they think could encourage diversity.

Look at the steps you can take to actively promote diversity, perhaps by promoting relevant charities in line with your corporate social responsibility policy or highlighting specific topics through the many national awareness days that now exist, and model your own behaviours around what you expect from colleagues in terms of encouraging and facilitating diversity.

For example, when recruiting for senior roles, are you unconsciously appointing yourself – or someone very like you – or is there an opportunity for you to go down another road?

Encouraging diversity in a leadership team is a long-term evolutionary process, but the potential organisational benefits are clear to see of doing something different to what you’ve always done.