The key to retaining diverse talent
It has nothing to do with perks, benefits, or pay
There’s a war for talent. A statement heard in so many board rooms and recruiting meetings around the world.
However, there’s also a very clear war on talent, internally. Each year, Fortune 500 companies spend over $16B on recruiting (Source: Quartz). But, when it comes to attracting and retaining diverse hires, this likely becomes a leaky faucet — where talent who do not identify with the dominant group likely leave for greener pastures after a short tenure. This is not a revelation or hidden problem for any HR leader. It’s just one that has not been prioritized until recently (thanks, BLM).
Companies spend over $8B on diversity training each year, only to have a 7% effectiveness rate. The rationale for this dismal success rate has been attributed to many things. The main reason centers around the training feeling punitive and a forced mandate on managers and teams who feel it’s meant for someone else (not them). In having training in my past, the content felt outdated, stiff, and rooted in anger, or indignation. Until recently, I thought that was just my stance, but I’m learning anecdotally that others feel that way, too.
This led me to ask, what would make diversity training more effective? For the sake of retaining diverse hires and making the most of a $16B spend, this has to be a problem worth solving…quickly.
The case for self-aware leadership
Since graduating from a top tier business school, I recently realized that decision-making and resource management are the measure for strong leadership. Read any case study, and it will showcase the decisions that leaders had to make against the given market conditions and with the internal resources they had at the time. It also paints this simplistic, rosy picture that any business can succeed as long as leaders can excel at making the right calls through an analytical assessment of actions within and outside of the organization, almost like a recipe on the back of some off-the-shelf box.
What seemed to be missing for me in those case studies was the behaviors exhibited by those leaders. Were they arrogant? Did they demean and demoralize their subordinates? Did they create fear-based cultures that stunted innovation and inclusive problem-solving? Did they dismiss departing talent as replaceable and too sensitive for the work? Over the course of my 15-year career, these questions have been answered many times over. Leaders are not self-aware as they lead. Their behaviors undermine their talent and results.
Take, for instance, Blockbuster. A quintessential example of a business that had dominated the video rental market for two decades. In case studies, the demise of Blockbuster centers on its debt-laden structure, outdated technology, and reliance on late fees for 70% of its revenue. What rarely surfaces is the decisions it had taken in 2000 to get into video streaming (7 years before Netflix created an online streaming platform), the $50M offer from Netflix that it’s senior leaders declined, and a new business model that distanced itself from late fees.
As you read in old news articles, the arrogance and fighting among leaders and the board of directors seemed to undermine its own success. Senior Blockbuster leaders laughed at the Netflix co-founders who offered their business for $50M to Blockbuster. Blockbuster’s leaders brawled behind closed doors. They double-downed on their flawed retail strategy. They went bankrupt.
But of all the decisions and situations captured in the retelling of their story, the behaviors (mindsets, attitudes, and communication) of their leaders rarely connect into the stories. And this isn’t the only example of a dominating business that imploded because of its leaders and their misbehaviors. Chances are someone reading this could be living through a Blockbuster-in-the-making.
Bad behaviors won’t change without introspection
Misbehaviors, or regressive behaviors as some call them, conjure up the toxicity in corporate cultures that create unhealthy environments for POC and other minority groups. Those behaviors are endorsed, initiated, or excused by leaders. Bad behaviors can include verbal attacks, emotional abuse, mind games, financial retaliation, apathy, and disassociation. The EEOC has years of cases around this type of harassment. In the act, it may be viewed as acceptable behavior because the company tolerates it. It has been institutionalized by previous managers and the upheld systems they built.
Misbehaviors are the manifestation of unconscious bias, inherited values, and discriminatory beliefs. Leaders may not realize that their misbehaviors are the missiles that diverse talent experience and flee. Call it microaggressions, exclusion, discrimination, or injustice. Diverse talent, whether racial, cognitive, physical, or emotional, cannot thrive in an environment where leaders and peers misbehave. Inclusion is directly correlated with the behaviors that are tolerated within an organization. Few leadership development programs get deep enough to bring this to light, which explains why diversity training is poorly received by unaware leaders.
Training that starts at the belief level may not get the change desired from leaders who lack self-awareness. However, getting these leaders to start reflecting on their behaviors may lead to them questioning whether their beliefs and triggers are problematic. This is called introspection. The more introspective a leader can be, the more progress that they can make in handling differences and difficult situations on their team. The challenge that many teams, training programs, and D&I practitioners face is getting leaders to the state of introspection.
Solutions to build introspective, self-aware leaders
(1) Feedback
Some leaders can handle direct feedback from their peers and subordinates, especially concerning their behavior. This feedback is enough to prompt them into introspection and self-discovery. If your leader can handle direct feedback, they may be good candidates for coaching and other measures to help them build self-awareness in the moment. If your leaders cannot handle direct feedback from anyone other than an authority figure or objective data, there are other ways to get their attention to the issue at hand.
(2) Hū (A digital DEI education & awareness tool)
Hū (pronounced like hue) is a micro-learning platform for leaders and employees that houses editorial-like content around the various dimensions, intersections, and elements of diversity. It’s anecdotally called the Sesame Street for D&I because of its simplistic and relatable approach to building awareness around difference. Lived experiences from different communities within the workplace are shared through compelling videos, articles, and podcasts to appeal to different learning styles. This self-paced learning tool can give some leaders the comfort of educating themselves before and after conversations they may find uncomfortable. Some leaders prefer to self-educate in private in order to feel more comfortable, confident, and prepared in real life interactions. This tool provides that option for leaders looking to learn. It even prompts them to make small steps towards inclusive behavior offline, which makes culture change a true top-down process.
(3) IDI ®
IDI ® stands for the Intercultural Development Inventory, a scientific psychoanalytic assessment tool that helps leaders, groups, and individuals understand their intercultural competence. IDI is more than just a way to see how accepting you are of different races. It provides leaders with data that quantifies their self-awareness around differences based on decades worth of research across more than 100,000 individuals across the globe. You are placed on a spectrum that helps you grow as a human, learning how to introspect around yourself and become more adaptive to different cultures, environments, and opinions. This tool is great for leaders who trust data foremost and need objectivity to start their self-awareness journey.
(4) Seneca Leaders
For learning and development teams who are looking for events or tools to provide for their leaders, Seneca Leaders is a 1-day virtual or 2-day physical experience designed to start leaders on their introspective journey. It helps leaders start with themselves and learn better ways of working with teams, without discussing processes and systems, just humans. It helps leaders introspect, but provides practical tools and insight they can recall when they return to their teams. This training has led to inclusive, resilient leaders within Fortune 500 organizations.
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Getting back to ineffective D&I training, it’s clear that any training will likely fall flat as long as attendees are unaware or lack the ability to introspect. When there is a clear correlation between your behavior and someone else’s pain or misfortune, you naturally will seek out answers, causes, solutions, and opportunities to learn.
Curiosity will open you up to learn about differences, lived experiences that don’t look like your own, and ways you can create a sense of belonging for all whom you lead. You will want to be more human in any space you enter. And this is the kind of leader everyone wants to have.
