The Value Proposition for Inclusive Leadership - Slideshare

I have created a presentation summarising some thinking on:

• the value proposition for inclusive leadership and
• what a leader can do to manage diversity for higher team performance

The presentation can be found here

Please contact me if you would like to discuss these ideas further.  

Consistent Care? Unconscious Bias, Doctors and Patients

When we need the help of a doctor, solicitor, care worker or sales assistant we hope or expect that we will get the best advice or service possible from them - whoever we are. But are our hopes realised? Or is it the case that (often unconscious) biases and assumptions about people different from ourselves create some big barriers to that hope? If, for example, we unconsciously associate a certain accent with poor education - are we less likely to take the time to provide needed information to someone with that accent?

One doctor from Harvard, Augustus White, has captured his thoughts about demographic differences between doctors and patients and variations in the care and treatment patients experience. He was subsequently interviewed by the Boston Globe and their headline take on his work can be viewed here. You may need to log on to the Boston Globe site for access. Dr. White's book is called Seeing Patients; Unconscious Bias in Health Care.

For me - here is where inclusion comes in. An inclusive approach to providing a service sees an organisation paying close attention to whether diversity is impacting customer experience - taking action where needed. For example, a bank might analyse whether all their customers feel able to access their account information in a way that works well for them. Do some customers with visual impairments report a much lower level of satisfaction? If so, what can be done about that? 

Reducing the variability in satisfaction ratings among customers in different demographic groups would be a key indicator of success for an organisation setting out to be inclusive. This focus on outcomes will drive the right investment decisions in terms of understanding and responding to customer diversity.

Why So Few Women at the Top? Facebook COO's Take

I found this TED video provided a dose of common sense thinking about the limiting attitudes (sometimes self-limiting) which can make it difficult for women to reach the top of all kinds of organisations.

You will see Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg looking at why a smaller percentage of women than men reach the top of their professions -- and offering 3 powerful pieces of advice to women aiming for those roles.

Click on the blog's title to go to the video.

Testing Hidden Bias at Harvard (Alan Alda video)

In preparation for workshops it's great to have different ways of encouraging people to challenge their thinking...about themselves. For some time I have been steering people toward the Harvard University research on hidden bias. Their Implicit Association Tests give people an opportunity to reflect on the unconscious biases they may have - along with all the rest of us!

I found a video clip from a Scientific American TV series in which Alan Alda does a test for himself and discusses the results with the researchers involved. Despite their familiarity with the tests, the research leaders also still demonstrate significant unconscious bias based on gender and race. Amazing how persistent these biases are over time. On the positive side there is a discussion of actions which can reduce the impact of bias.

Here is the Alan Alda video

Insight is the virtual newsletter for Schneider-Ross, the global diversity consultancy where I am Director for Applied Diversity and Inclusive Leadership.

The newletter can be accessed here.

Hopefully you will find something interesting and informative. There's a bit of a theme around inclusion in this edition which we know is a huge issue for many organisations at the moment. Inclusion and Inclusive Leadership is the mainstay of much of our work and we are delighted to be able to share with you an interview with Debbie Laybourn, Group Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Vodafone.

This edition also showcases our new Inclusive Leadership Feedback Tool^TM, our growing role in India and shares our thoughts on elite organisations who are increasingly using inclusion as a means of leveraging better business outcomes.

I look forward to hearing from you with your comments and feedback. You can contact me here.

Applying a Diversity Lens to Improve Business Performance

The Business Excellence Model is a tool many organisations use to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their business. It looks at both the results being achieved and how the organisation is delivering those results (enablers) see below.

I’ve found that applying a diversity and inclusion lens through this model can be helpful in identifying priorities for action. The version of the model shown below was developed with leaders of a financial services business in India. It helped to condense their business arguments and structure debate about diversity-related changes that would benefit the business. Clearly, this example is high level and for the whole business. Individual units then drill down into an assessment which is more specific to their unique role.

I find it really helpful to start with the results needed from the customer’s standpoint and work backwards (to the left). That way, diversity-related investment in people and processes is aligned with business priorities.

Whatever business model your organisation has – this way of thinking should be helpful.

Interested in more discussion about this?

Contact me here

Inclusion with a Purpose = Consistently Good Outcomes

“Inclusion sounds good but what is it, what does it look like, what does it get me”? This question, in one form or another, is one I hear often from business leaders. Being inclusive, like being fair, is instinctively the right thing to do. But what actually do you need to do and why? What is the business context?

Only last week a client meeting provided another practical example of looking at what I call Inclusion with a Purpose. The diversity strategy team inside a utility company is reworking their roadmap around diversity and inclusion. Where do they want to go and why? At the same time the organisation is reorganising and rebranding. At the heart of everything sits the ambition to deliver a customer experience which is second-to-none. This is a strong anchor-point for their thinking about operating inclusively. So now the question becomes “what do we need to do to deliver second-to-none experience for every customer in a region with very diverse communities?”

Why is this question so important to the business? Because regulators are increasingly linking future tariff increases to customer satisfaction. Profitability is hard-wired to the experience of every customer. The question creates the landscape for which a specific road map is needed. Now the organisation needs to apply a diversity lens to all the practices which link to customer experience. More questions will need to be asked and resolved.

· Do we have all the data we need on customer diversity in our operating area?

· What kinds of diversity are likely to impact customer experience and how?

· Are our systems allowing us to compare customer experience for different demographic groups?

· What can we learn from different customers about what they need and expect from us to give us second-to-none ratings?

· Does the makeup of our own staff and leaders reflect customer diversity with the empathy that brings?

· How can we access the different perspectives and ideas that could help us develop innovative ways to improve customer experience?

· Which of our core practices deliver consistent outcomes across differences like age or cultural norms and which do not? What needs changing?

· Have we helped our customer-facing staff develop the awareness and the attitudes required to provide consistently good service to every customer?

· How will we measure, report and respond to feedback on service from different groups?

Anchoring the effort in a core business outcome helps define what Inclusion with a Purpose means for any particular organisation. This helps leaders clarify what they need to do and makes it easier to communicate why specific diversity-related actions are being taken. In this case it will also drive greater engagement with diverse communities which links to recruitment and reputation as well as customer satisfaction.

What does Inclusion with a Purpose mean in your organisation?