Diversity –Thinking Differently

With International Women’s Day in March I am excited about how far we have come in the last decade. Back then, I had the privilege of being chair of Women in Business and today that organisation is still a vital support for any woman in the workforce. We are not finished yet in completely erasing inequalities in the workplace, however, women today have many more choices, better support and increased confidence to optimise their talent and capabilities in the business world. Healthy organisations embrace diversity in all its fullness, age, gender, ethnicity, culture and importantly cognitive diversity to optimise opportunities and deliver success and profitable growth.

Thinking differently is a recurring theme in many publications. Author Mathew Syed wrote Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas where the tenet of both books is cognitive diversity, recognising that we need rebel and new ideas along with thinking differently to generate solutions to problems. He champions the need to build self-awareness and a diversity strategy into organisational structures and processes to give us the chance to benefit from the myriad of people who need to come together to generate rebel and new ideas. Some of my takeaways...

We don’t know what we don’t know. When organisations are homogeneous, there is a collective inability to know what they don’t know. Syed describes the cognitive similarities of individuals in the CIA as contributory to its failure to spot the signs of 9/11. As individuals, we rely on other individuals to tell us what we don’t know, but if all of the other individuals around us have the same blind spot as we do, we’re headed for disaster.

Create psychological safety. Humans feel safer when there are people at the top who have the knowledge to know what to do and the confidence to do it. However, hierarchy often blinds us to the need to speak up if we don’t feel safe to challenge and question the leader. Those who think differently to the leader need to feel safe to be able to speak up and advise the leader from their different vantage point to ensure important information and ideas are shared and considered.

Beware of loud voices: value all voices in the debate. Some people are louder than others. Syed describes the stifling impact of loud voices on the sharing of viewpoints by the many. In my work as a coach I encourage leaders to create a culture of healthy debate and to proactively seek out different thinking. Patrick Lencioni in Five Dysfunctions of a Team cites fear of conflict or “lack of challenge” as the second largest dysfunction within an organisation after lack of trust. It’s important to draw out those quiet voices and create space to hear their thinking to open our minds to fresh viewpoints.

The beauty in asking great questions is that it encourages autonomous decision-making by empowering people to consider other perspectives. It’s not about having the person listen to you, it’s about having them listen to themselves, evaluate their own position, interrogate their own beliefs, and explore their motivations.

Healthy, effective businesses are made up of a diverse mix of people with diverse skill sets and personalities. If you don’t have that, you’re operating in an echo chamber where challenge is limited and innovation is sadly lacking. So what enables cognitive diversity in organisations?

The future survival of organisations will depend on the ability to break deeply engrained habits, rewarding those who can overcome tradition and convention to release the potential of what might be. Remember…

1. It starts with you. Lead with a spirit of humility. Leaders who demonstrate this trait are more likely to be open to different ideas and thinking. Great leaders are learners and seek out new ideas from books, podcasts, seminars and from peers. Make time for thinking as part of your routine and get away from the office. It’s hard to think outside the box if you are sitting in a box!

2. Hire for innovation. Many organisations say they value innovation and creativity yet they don’t actively prioritise it. Avoid “more of the same” and have a strong focus on creating a diverse workforce. Challenge your assumptions and processes for hiring into your organisation.

3. Practise active listening. This means listening to understand. Asking open questions and setting aside your own bias and need to provide answers. Ask more and better questions!

4. Create space for everyone at the table. Be aware of the loud voices, encourage debate and challenge any assumptions giving permission for your own to be challenged above all.

5. Embrace failure as normal in a healthy organisation. Failure is a learning opportunity. I’ve heard so many times “we learn more from our failures than our successes” yet we fall into the trap of blaming or making failure unacceptable. Learning from failure means giving people permission to try new things, to step out beyond the comfort zone to out of the box diverse thinking.