With the continuing appearance in my life of leadership topics, a neuron fired this morning in a conversation with a manager. I have tried to communicate this during coaching sessions with managers, many times so now I am documenting it here.
When you are thinking about diversity it is easier to have more than one voice / instance / resource / person. If you are the only woman on a staff, when the men want to hear from women, all eyes turn to you. In fact you are expected to speak for ALL women, when in fact that is quite unfair. I observed this at Polaroid when we were doing work around race diversity. We expected that african americans could speak on many issue for their entire race, which is not the case.
I have found, that in the above example, it is better to have two women or two african americans present on staff. It is easier and safer as that diverse voice to speak up about a woman's issue or a race issue when there is company aka two or more of you. The spotlight is not always on you to speak for ALL your gender or race. You can raise women and race issues easier with support.
In the conversation this morning we were talking about having one member of the group be located at another site, or having two members located there. For on boarding, working, work processes and communication, it will be easier to have two there. The probability of success for those remote workers is as least double by having two located there.
So, when you are thinking about diversity of many kinds, think about having two diverse resources instead of one, and think about the dynamics. The best way to experience this is to imagine when you have been the lone voice somewhere in your life, and then imagine when another joined you.
Diversity comes in many many ways. it is not just race or gender. In the case of the manager this morning, it was being a remote worker.
No comments:
Post a Comment