The power of difference

HRNZ sat down over Zoom with Simon Fanshawe OBE, co-founder of Stonewall, a UK charity that transformed the face of gay rights, and author of the book The Power of Difference. In his book, Simon discusses how we can be brave and he addresses the fundamental idea that humans are all different.

Simon’s career has spanned broadcasting, journalism, and training and advocacy for equality and diversity. A regular on various BBC radio and TV programmes, Simon now focuses his time on working with organisations to create diversity solutions through his consultancy, Diversity By Design.

HRNZ: What led you to write a book and consult with companies about diversity?

Simon: I think I’ve always been an advocate. When I first went to university, I thought it’d be great to be a lawyer. I realised that I’m interested in hearing about different cases and finding some kind of common cause. I went on to be a comedian, and I thought maybe I could be an advocate for social change there. But that was ridiculous; I mean, the old joke is that if the cabaret had been a bit better in Berlin in the 1930s, the Second World War wouldn’t have started! Comics don’t have the power, but we have been able to set the narrative, and so I’ve always had a career to do with social change.

I think [the workplace is] … about how you can bring your story to work and collaborate with other people who are bringing their stories.

HRNZ: Do you think diversity is in crisis right now?

Simon: I believe that diversity is about difference. The current crisis is that diversity, certainly in the UK, has become a set of rules and prohibitions, which actually makes diversity a tool of conformity. In other words, it’s precisely not about difference. So if we’re really going to pursue diversity, what we have to recognise is that there is diversity both with people belonging to different groups (eg, Māori and non-Māori, men and women etc) but also there is difference between individuals within each one of these groups. Just because they’re defined by groups in relation to a particular part of their life, that doesn’t represent the whole of their life. One of the current dangers is that companies have ingested this idea of diversity being described just in terms of groups and not recognising individuals. And also the need to focus separately on solving the deficits and realising the dividends, which is how you combine people’s differences to create better results.

Diversity is about difference, not rules.

HRNZ: What do organisations need to firstly look at with diversity?

Simon: I think one of the difficult things organisations need to decide about is whether they will be activists in this context of diversity. And that’s an open decision. I think one of the problems for diversity at the moment is that it’s bleeding over into the area where there’s a kind of insistence that companies need to be activists. But if companies decide to be an activist, then they need to have made that decision as a company. In other words, can you take your staff and your leadership with you? My question would be how much was the conversation inside the company, and how full was that conversation? And how much is this decision about a political or societal gesture, or how much is it just about a marketing endeavour?

For example, Nike has a marketing advantage in taking a strong position on diversity. [They used an image of American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling in its 30thanniversary marketing campaign for its iconic “Just Do It” slogan.] High-profile sportspeople in their market are ‘taking the knee’ (a symbolic gesture against racism and police brutality against black Americans), so it makes sense that they made that decision. But I suspect that they felt it was the correct positioning for their brand and that there was less thorough conversation within the organisation before making the decision.

HRNZ: What if New Zealand organisations don’t want to be activists in the diversity space?

Simon: I guess my point is that I think either decision is perfectly reasonable. There is certainly a pressure for companies to take an activist position. But I think if, as a company, you’re going to keep your staff collaborating through their differences in pursuit of its goals, you’re going to keep your company unified in pursuit of the aim of the company. Whichever decision you take, you need to take these positions in a way that engages the company, I mean all of the company. The danger is you could divide your company if you don’t.

HRNZ: Do you have an example?

Simon: Well, for instance, an example would be around gender. The whole question of pronouns in your emails. You need to negotiate that really carefully. If you impose that people write their pronouns, you will divide your company, because there are many, probably a majority of people, who don’t believe they have a gender identity separate from their sex. And dividing your staff along those lines is not helpful for the organisational culture.

HRNZ: What about the specifics of the employee experience relating to diversity?

Simon: I think we must be careful with the phrase “Bring your whole self to work”. The thing about work is that work is not the pub or the playground! I think it’s more about how you can bring your story to work and collaborate with other people who are bringing their stories. Because initially, the only thing people have in common is the company’s objective – that’s your shared goal. The question is, what do you bring through your experience and your story? A person will bring their story about their family and cultural history but also about whether their parents are divorced or have moved around or whatever. Organisational cultures that work well are cultures where people can bring these stories to work. So you can ask, what can I bring through what I’ve learned through who I am? The current emphasis is too much on the ‘self’ rather than on the ‘work’. It shouldn’t mean behaving however you want at work!

It’s about enjoying differences of opinion. HR leaders need to create spaces that are safe for disagreement. And that is complex.

HRNZ: And what about recruitment?

Simon: People often think they just have to get the “best person for the job”. And what I always say to people is that actually what you need to do is to find the best team for the job. So our recruitment process starts with a diagnostic that says, “What’s the team trying to do?” And what’s the best combination of differences that’s going to help you do that? We use what I call a virtuous circle of selection. If you think about your team and consider who you wish you had on your team, what insights would they bring from their background, identity, experience and so on. What complementary skills do we need? You also need to test actually what people can do. Professor Iris Bohnet from the Harvard Kennedy School has shown over her 20 years of research that the best predictor of future performance is to test people in real-work scenarios. She also devised a method called joint selection, where you bunch the responses of the applicants instead of candidate by candidate, you organise them with all the responses to the first scenario, and all to the second. And so on. This enables us to make better decisions because we’ve redesigned the process to take out as much of the bias as possible by focusing on the evidence, not our preconceptions about the people.

HRNZ: Any final thoughts for HR leaders to be considering?

Simon: I often ask chief executives three questions: Are you confident that if I asked you why you’re busy with diversity, you would be able to give me a clear answer specific to your company? Secondly, are you anxious, given the state of diversity, about talking about this kind of stuff in public? And lastly, do you have a mature and good relationship and conversations with your staff networks?

Are you confident that if I asked you why you’re busy with diversity, you would be able to give me a clear answer specific to your company? Secondly, are you anxious, given the state of diversity, about talking about this kind of stuff in public? And lastly, do you have a mature and good relationship and conversations with your staff networks?

Typically, these senior people are saying they are not feeling confident about diversity, they are anxious talking about it in public, and they often don’t have a particularly good relationship with staff groups. It’s so important for HR professionals to be having these conversations with their senior leaders. It’s about enjoying differences of opinion. HR leaders need to create spaces that are safe for disagreement, not from it. And that is complex. People will start to walk on eggshells if they don’t feel their differences are recognised. People will simply stop talking about innovation, new products, new services etc. The number one value in a company needs to be ‘we value good disagreement’. We’ve got to release the anxiety somehow because we have got to enable dialogue. The only way we get on is by working together through our differences to find out what we can do in common.

HRNZ: Thank you so much for talking with us, Simon. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Simon Fanshawe’s recent book, The Power of Difference, explores how to confront bias, question assumptions and avoid generalisations. Simon illustrates why diversity should be part of the overall business strategy not separate from it. It shows how, for innovation and diversity to flourish, we must create spaces that are safe for disagreement not from disagreement. It has recently been named the UK Chartered Management Institute’s Business Book of the Year.