AM I MANAGING? NATALIE BARKER
Upholding the paradox Our regular columnist Natalie Barker, Head of Transformation at Southern Cross Health Insurance, shares her thoughts on the paradoxes of leadership.
I
love a good paradox, which is just as well because most principles of great leadership hold contradiction at the core. I think slow, act fast. Be disciplined about being agile. Do less to deliver more. One paradox I’ve been living recently is recruiting for mindset in a diverse and inclusive organisation.
but lead the way when it comes to making our organisation a safe and nurturing place to work. In the past couple of weeks alone, I’ve taken part in lunchtime te reo Māori waiata sessions, online meditation and mindfulness seminars to support mental wellbeing, and read posts from colleagues who’ve shared their raw and painful stories about coming out and struggling with anxiety and depression. We’re not perfect, but we’re actively shaping a culture that embraces who we are and values the different perspectives we bring to our teams.
We’re not perfect, but we’re actively shaping a culture that embraces who we are and values the different perspectives we bring to our teams.
It means we look for people who value difference. My employer walks the talk when it comes to diversity and inclusion. We’re Rainbow Tick accredited, and we were finalists in the 2020 Diversity Awards NZTM. We have a strong female workforce (more than half our leaders, from executives through to people leaders, are women), we provide education around gender identity and sexual diversity, mental health and unconscious bias. We have guidelines and toolkits in place to support inclusive behaviour in our day-to-day activities. We have an amazing employeeled diversity and inclusion team who not only celebrate difference 44
HUMAN RESOURCES
Our culture of care is also a culture of performance. Over the past couple of years, as we’ve developed more pace, empowerment, excellence and agility in our organisation, we’ve been working with leaders to embed high performance in our teams. Enabling organisational agility is critical for us to deliver value to our customers, and we’re very purposeful about bringing the right people through the door. Our recruitment frameworks are designed to ensure we’re selecting the mindsets and behaviour people need to be successful in an agile organisation.
SUMMER 2020
But there’s the paradox. It’s critical we continue to welcome diversity and difference into our organisation, but it’s also critical we seek out people whose mindsets align with our values and culture. For us, that means recruiting people who are engaged and motivated, who challenge each other to be better. It means recruiting people who love working in a team and aren’t scared of debating conflicting views, and who then align around a course of action. It means recruiting people who are comfortable with being uncomfortable, but who don’t compromise when it comes to putting people first. That doesn’t mean we look for people who are the same. It means we look for people who value difference. As leaders, what we value influences the culture of our teams, so we need to be very deliberate in our recruitment. To do the right thing for our organisations and for our people, we need to uphold the paradox; recruit for diversity and for alignment.
Natalie Barker is Head of Transformation at Southern Cross Health Insurance. She has been leading people for 15 years and believes that leveraging people’s strengths and passions is the best way to drive engagement and get stuff done.
