Square One Law: Diversity in Leadership
Date published:
ED and I – everyone’s at it. But what does it actually mean? Having a policy? Recruiting some people
from marginalised communities? Organising a Pride celebration?
To some, yes, all of the above. To me, it is so much more. It isn’t tokensism. It isn’t about box ticking.
It is about recognising that difference is a good thing and making active steps to ensure your
organisation is inclusive of and welcoming to all, because of, not in spite of, the differences they
bring. It’s about equity, not equality – treat everyone equally and you will perpetuate the gaps in
opportunity. Think about it. If a tall person and a short person are side by side at a concert and the
short person can’t see, but you have a ‘treat everyone equally’ mantra – you give each the same box
to stand on. The short person still can’t see and the tall person has an even better a view. What they
need are different sized boxes that give each the same view – that is equity.
Inclusivity initiatives are often treated as novelties or marketing opportunities (think of all the virtue
signalling that surrounds International Women’s Day!) and billed as benefits for teams. They aren’t.
They are essential adjustments that businesses need to make if they truly want diversity. And often
leadership are guilty of not walking the talk.
Diversity and inclusion, with the aim of creating equity at a leadership level is not only the right thing
to do. It makes business sense. Imagine a world where the board room is full of dynamic chat, with
different perspectives providing different ideas and view points. Imagine how well road tested your
strategies would be. Imagine how confident you would be that the decisions you made were robust.
That’s what diversity in leadership can bring.
But often it is the leadership team itself that lacks diversity. History and institutionalised prejudice
means that typically boards are predominantly male, white, cis gender, neurotypical, straight people
without disabilities. I was horrified to read recently that in the North East there are more men called
Peter on boards than there are women of any name. So the majority of companies are being run by
people who all broadly have the same characteristics and by default are likely to think in a similar
way. What you have is an echo chamber, where challenge is rare and new ideas are scant. What you
have is group think and a lack of innovation.
To address the problem you need to be prepared to be fearless in your pursuit of diversity. You
cannot have diversity of thought and diversity in leadership without an effective inclusion strategy
and that’s where you need to start. Everyone in leadership needs to acknowledge their privilege and
the unconscious bias that that brings and boards as a whole need to examine carefully the make up
of their boards to identify where representation is lacking.
Square One Law is a business with around 65 people. We will never have representation of all of the
protected characteristics plus the variances that intersectionality brings. But that does not mean
that we simply say ‘oh well we don’t need to deal with that issue as we don’t have any people with
that characteristic’. What we must do is engage with those who do have those characteristics and
perspectives to design a workplace that is welcoming and inclusive. We need to pay particular
attention where we have a lack of representation at a senior level in order to ensure we take
account of the needs and perspectives of others when we make decisions. We can do this by
engaging with the rest of the team, but also by building alliances and relationships with other
communities outside the firm.
We also look at how we run decision making forums – who has say over what happens in the
business? I firmly believe that you will get better buy in if the team feel that they have had the
opportunity to contribute to a discussion and have their voices heard when you make decisions as a
leader. But you need to create a psychologically safe environment where leaders’ voices don’t
dominate, healthy conflict and challenge is welcome and leaders show vulnerability and acceptance
that they don’t have all the answers. That’s all much easier said than done, but with a bit of effort
and creativity you can do it. There are loads of books out there on creating a psychologically safe
workplace and how to embrace vulnerability as a leader and that’s a good place for anyone
interested in going on this journey to start. It all begins with trust and that is never a given – it’s
earned and leaders need to earn their teams trust for any ED and I programme to be successful