A Bigger Diversity Companies have been focused on increasing diversity for some time now, but they may have been thinking of it somewhat narrowly — in terms of gender and ethnicity, for example. But it’s more than that. “The future leaders of our company will be more diverse,” said Ellen Dubois du Bellay, senior vice president at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. “Diverse in terms of race, gender and so on, but also in terms of their experiences. We will always make better decisions from this vantage point.” This underscores a critical point: for diversity to work in companies’ favor at the leadership level, it has to encompass more than the visible differences between people and embrace a wide variety of experiences in terms of teams led, functions overseen and businesses managed. HR leaders surveyed said they believe that top leadership groups in the future will be characterized by people with great diversity of experience and thought styles — for example, are they more analytical or more “by the gut”? These forms of diversity will be even more important than diversity of age, nationality and gender, they said. The second area where they see the role of top leadership changing is in the need for collective action. More than 90 percent of survey respondents believe that next-generation leaders will need to lead collectively as a team more effectively than leaders do today. HR executives who believe they’re at the forefront of cultivating global mindsets among leaders were more likely than their peers to view ensemble leadership as a necessity for the future. However, it’s often difficult to promote diversity and collective action at the same time. Research suggests that diverse groups experience more disagreements about their tasks and group processes than homogeneous groups. This may explain why only about one-third of the HR executives surveyed say their companies are taking action today specifically to address and reconcile these dual imperatives. What are the leading companies doing? Critically, they’re putting in place formal initiatives aimed at collective leadership development. And they’re providing high potentials with opportunities to practice ensemble leadership before reaching the top.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 16:01:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015