Category Archives: Talent

Out Leadership; turbo-charging inclusivity

Over the last few years I have encountered some fantastically ethical, well-intentioned leaders who buy into the importance of setting the tone around inclusivity. They understand the symbolic value of someone at the top sending a clear message about moving beyond diversity to inclusiveness – a difference I heard pithily captured on Twitter by @vernamyers when she said “Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.”

These leaders can have a significant impact. They genuinely want to create workplaces where their staff thrive, not least those who identify as coming from one or more of the commonly identified minority groups. This kind of leadership is one heck of a start – but I think it can go up a gear. I mean the kind of step change that a leader makes when they can say to themselves, “This inclusivity stuff isn’t just about “them” it’s about me and my difference too.”

There is nothing quite like first-hand experience as a route to meaningful insight and motivation. Leaders who are able to tap into their own experience of being different can draw on powerful and personal intelligence to inform the way they shape their organisations. There isn’t a soul alive who hasn’t had the experience of feeling like the different one, set apart from the majority by virtue of anything from age, class, education, voice, humour, literacy, sporting affiliation and musical taste through to ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, gender and disability.

There are times when we have all feared that an aspect of our identity may not be welcomed in a particular grouping – whether amongst family, classmates, friends, acquaintances, work colleagues or clients. This may lead us to “closet” that aspect of difference out of concern about how it will be received. We qualify what we say and to whom. This withholding can’t but have an impact on the relationships we have. Authentic leadership theory – of the sort expressed by people like Bruce Avolio and William Gardener – also suggests this has a negative impact on performance. In effect, feeling that who we are is in some way “not OK” will compromise the degree to which we can realise our talent. Which brings us back to leadership – because leaders really, really have to be interested in what is going on around talent.

I want to introduce the idea of “Out Leadership” as a form of turbo-charged inclusive leadership. This is when leaders get that difference is to do with them and visibly, consistently and explicitly demonstrate that they are OK with their own difference – whatever it may be. For followers this sets up an expectation that their difference is likely to be OK too, which in turn makes it likely that they bring more of their talent to the table.

Out Leaders tend to have a habit of disciplined reflection – they take time to question what they are learning from experience and critically question what they have said and done. Often they seek structured help in doing this – perhaps from a coach or trusted colleague.

If you felt like a spot of reflection on this topic – perhaps you could individually, or in conversation with someone you trust, mull on the questions below:

Think of a time when you felt you had a “closeted difference”:

Why did you choose to hide the difference?
What was the effect of being “closeted”?
What did you learn from the experience?
What did / could have made your difference OK?
Any insights that could be applied to your leadership?

Out Leadership, whilst unashamedly drawing on LGBT experience and metaphor, is meant to be widely applicable. An Out Leader – irrespective of their sexual orientation – makes smart risk assessments and understands the consequences of withholding or sharing their difference. They grasp that sometimes non-disclosure is smart and necessary. Just as I can decide not to hold my wife’s hand in certain public situations without losing my authenticity, so too an Out Leader need not put their difference front-and-centre in every client pitch. However – all other things being equal – an Out Leader will strive to be most themselves in as many situations as possible.

In summary, if you are an Out Leader you:

Acknowledge that inclusivity applies to you as well as “them”
Model that you are OK with your own difference
Encourage others that their difference is valued – it’s part of your job as leader
Reflect regularly on your experience to mine it for learning
Have the courage to question self and others
Demonstrate resilience in tolerating resistance and push back
Are able to handle uncertainty to seek out “teachable moments”, ask questions and generate feedback
Are deeply curious about difference and enquire into others’ world view
Have an everyday practice which means inclusion is integral to your leadership, not a bolt-on

This thinking is still very much at a formative stage – so please extend or challenge the ideas in this blog. I’d love it if you came back to me with stories of when you have seen Out Leadership in action – or when it has been notably absent and the effect this had. Perhaps you are an Out Leader and are willing to share some suggestions or insights.

As a parting thought, I believe that Out Leaders show that inclusivity – at its best – is supremely personal. They are also visible role models – which will be the topic of my next blog and is also the focus of the latest Stonewall research.

The importance of a good huff

Leave a reply

I confess I have been in a bit of a huff recently. Specifically a feminist huff – but don’t let that put you off – a healthy bit of huffing is underrated. Any organisation that can tune into where the huffing is coming from is going to have some valuable intelligence about what matters to at least some of their people. And then they can choose what to do about it.

So to the huff….I was incensed by the all-male shortlist for Sports Personality of the Year and then deeply frustrated by stubbornly stagnant figures on women in leadership positions. My mood was not improved when reading a recent article about the woeful absence of female voices in the media http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/04/why-british-public-life-dominated-men. Women only made up 28.5% of the contributors to Question Time and 16.5% to the Today Programme during a monitored period. These are meant to be flagship programmes informing and sometimes even shaping national debate around some of the most critical issues of our time – and they are demonstrably lacking female voices.

The defensive merry-go-round that gets trotted out in response to those taking issue with this skewed lack of representation seems to go something like this. Women don’t want to be tokens – followed by an invariably tokenistic quotation from a senior woman saying just that. Then there’ll be some reference to the importance of promoting people purely on merit. And if it’s a really good day there might be some comment about how the system seems to have worked pretty well so far and any lack of female representation is a blip – yes, I am talking to those apologists for the SPOTY travesty.

The main point I want to make is that if bias is built into a system – often unconsciously – it will lead to biased outcomes. If only 3-5% of coverage relates to women’s sports and the vast majority of sports journalists and editors are men then it is little wonder that the UK’s four female world champions lack the profile to make it onto SPOTY. Similarly in organisations, if promotional boards are male dominated, business is conducted through networking that favours male participation and working hours are structured to favour one gender over the other – then it is deeply unshocking how few women make it to the top. We can also see our political classes tripping over themselves with certain ill thought through policies, signed off in predominantly or exclusively male gatherings. And don’t get me started on “Calm down dear.”

If we want to change the outcomes then we need to look at significantly changing the underlying processes which lead to those outcomes. If you want more female winners of SPOTY, get more funding and coverage of women’s sport. If you want more women at the top echelons of organisations you need to ensure recruitment and promotion processes have women interwoven at every stage. Then build in disciplined and consistent monitoring that tells you what’s actually going on for example in tracking career fall off points, organisational hot spots and what works in accelerating female talent.

And another thing….the idea that “merit” is an abstract, incorruptible and perfect ideal is nonsense. Merit is defined in context – for example deciding that what matters most is hours worked is not a “true” mark of merit, it is a relative mark of merit established by that specific organisation. With a charming twist, even those relative marks of merit can then be applied differently depending on gender. A contact recently discussed sitting on a recruitment panel with three men, three women and a male chair. A female graduate applicant came in and by her description “blew my socks off – she was a definite yes.” Her two female colleagues concurred. The three men on the panel rejected the candidate outright, describing her as too aggressive. The chair had the gumption to ask them if they would have felt the same if she had been a male candidate – somewhat to their credit they confessed that they wouldn’t and she was hired on spot. Without women on the panel this would have been another rejection that went under the radar. This in turn creates a bias in the preferred female personality types being hired…. and then compelled to go on excruciating assertiveness courses.

To repeat the mantra, if you want to change the outcomes, then change the system. In workplaces you could really dial it up a notch and go all Scandinavian with parenting policies that mean men and women both have to take parental leave. The affect of children on career trajectory may start to be considered to be more relevant if it impacts more obviously on both men and women.

…. And if you’re being extra brave – change the game, stop faffing around and introduce quotas on Boards, or in a media context simply refuse to have a panel that is all male – ever. You never know – the world might keep turning.

Working with uncertainty

2 Replies

So, this is my very first blog. Perhaps I don’t make it as an early-adopter but here I am…eventually. I feel wary, curious, a bit unsettled, concerned about exposure whilst at the same time keen to engage.

Given my wobbly-legged foray into the blogosphere, I thought I would kick off with the value of uncertainty and not-knowing as leadership attributes. I don’t want to be an advocate for clueless dithering – but I do wonder if leaders, in their need to be seen as decisive and sure-footed, sometimes miss a trick.

No human being is ever totally sure, certain of themselves and others, at all times. Those that claim otherwise are somewhere between delusional, dishonest and anxious – perhaps a heady mix of the above. My hunch is that the very best leaders know when and how to engage with uncertainty so that it works to their advantage and to the advantage of others.

Part of a leader’s role is to enable their talented people to flourish and play their part in delivering whatever the organisation is there to do. If a leader always knows best how can those around them feel that they are contributing? Recent research from Accenture (http://talentmgt.com/articles/view/even-highly-engaged-workers-are-a-flight-risk/3) reinforced what we already know about talent – that money isn’t enough to keep them interested. If your best people don’t feel as if they are making a difference and influencing the environment they are working in then they’ll walk. A leader who seems unfailingly certain can suck the oxygen from those around them, stifling creativity and innovation along the way. In contrast a leader who has the gumption to ask a question rather than provide an answer, or even more boldly say “I’m not sure on this – what do you think?” may well be giving their talented people space to perform. This need not be abdication of responsibility. A leader still needs to know when it’s their call to make but if they sit with uncertainty a smidgen longer then the decision may well end up being better informed.

As a leader you simply cannot know everything – and trying to do so is a sure way to drive your team up the wall and yourself to an early grave. You are paying others to be experts, so it does seem that there is a real knack in knowing when to get the heck out of their way. By accepting your uncertainty and not-knowingness you can avoid getting sucked into operational or technical detail – giving yourself the headspace to focus on what you are actually being paid to do.

I also believe that there is an umbilical link between tolerating uncertainty and being able to demonstrate resilience. A leader who is able to role model the strength not to jump into a quick but ill-informed decision, is showing their followers that they too might be able to handle the anxiety stirred up by uncertainty. They are demonstrating that uncertainty is survivable even if it’s uncomfortable and it may even pay dividends in the form of a more clued up choice or a side-stepped car crash. The rider to all of this is knowing when being uncertain is a bad idea. If there’s a fire – put it out and get on with it sharpish.

As a final thought – the defining characteristic of this market and economy is unpredictability. The leader who can’t handle uncertainty is eventually going to get themselves and their organisation into trouble.