The Importance Of Diversity In Leadership

Developing Leadership Diversity People have different traits and characteristics that differentiate them from others. According to Richard Daft, the differences among people in terms of age, ethnicity, age, gender, or other dimensions is known as diversity (Daft, 2015). Daft explains the concept of leadership diversity in the Chapter 11 of his book “The Leadership Experience”. Daft estates that today leaders have to understand how complex and important are the diversity issues and how to work to resolve them. The chapter’s topic is Developing Leadership Diversity. It is not only important for an organization to have workforce diversity, but it is also important to have diverse leaders. The chapters includes information that explains how important diversity and multiculturalism are in today’s society. In the past, diversity was something that did not exist in most organizations. However, organizations and companies now understand how important it is for all individual to have the same opportunities regardless of their age, race or gender.

Changing Attitudes toward Diversity According to Daft, attitudes toward diversity are expanding because leaders have to respond to the significant changes in our society including demographic changes,
shifting social values, and globalization (Daft, 2015). Women now have equal rights as men and are given the opportunity to have the same professions and positions as men. In addition, minorities are also given the same opportunities. That is something that would have been impossible a few decades in the past. As stated before, globalization is one of the main reason why diversity is becoming more important. Globalization is facilitating the communication and negotiations between countries and cultures. Furthermore, the book “Leadership in Recreation and Leisure Services” explains that related to globalization is the tremendous speed with which technology is evolving and becoming integrated in our lives (O'Connell, Cuthbertson & Goins, 2015). Leaders now have to adapt to leading people different to them from other culture and they have to do to it using technology. Emails, phone calls, and video calls are the main resources for a lot of leaders. Today’s business world is not limited by face to face traditional work environment. Technology plays an important role is today’s leaders’ relationships with their followers. Technology serves as primary recruitment resources. Job applications are mostly done online and professionals networking websites like LinkedIn have changed and improve the recruitment and hiring process. A study conducted by Brouer, Stefanone, Badawy, and Egnoto shows how the company’s information shown on LinkedIn impacted the organizational attraction. According to them, the results showed that participants who were exposed to information consistent with the organizational website promoting diversity rated that organization higher in agreeableness, and perceived agreeableness fully mediated the relationship between the experimental condition and organizational attractiveness (Brouer, Stefanone, Badawy & Egnoto, 2015). In other words, in order for an organization to increase their workforce diversity, they should start by showing how important diversity is for the organization. The information displayed the company’s website and on websites like LinkedIn, could be a deal breaker for prospective candidates that are looking for companies that embrace diversity. Organizations seeking diversity should always include how they value diversity wherever they display the company’s mission, vision, and general information.

Challenges Minorities Face Chapter11 covers some of the difficulties and challenges minorities have to face when they are in leadership positions. Daft explains that creating an inclusive environment where all individuals feel respected, valued, and able to develop unique talents is difficult. Daft adds that most people have a natural tendency toward ethnocentrism and belief that people from their culture are superior (Daft, 2015). Ethnocentrism makes people select and prefer people that look, think, or act like them. As a result, the practice of ethnocentrism limits the opportunity for diversity. This is something that has been changing throughout the years, but there is still a lot of work to be done in this area. Alison Cook and Christy Glass analyzed and compared the difference between white and minority leaders. Their work is titled “Do minority leaders affect corporate practice? Analyzing the effect of leadership composition on governance and product development” and they include work from previous research in the topic to pack up their theory. They explained that minority leaders bring different perspectives and priorities as a result of their status as outsiders. In addition, minority executives, compared to their White peers, are more likely to have experienced barriers, discrimination, and bias prior to their promotion to top leadership positions (Cook & Glass, 2015). It is known that the majority of top leadership positions are held by white males. White males do not experience the difficulties minorities have to go through in order to achieve a high level leadership position. However, the experiences lived by minority leaders give them a different perspective which will be a positive addition to the organization. Since minority leaders will not think like their white peers, there would be a wider variety of ideas and solutions and that is beneficial to any organization. Even though minority leaders add a different approach to organizations, there are still not a lot of minorities CEOs in the business world. In the article “Soon, Not Even 1 Percent of Fortune 500 Companies Will Have Black CEOs”, Jillian Berman discuss how from the Fortune 500 companies there are only four black CEOs since McDonald's CEO Don Thompson retired back in the beginning of 2015. The lack of diversity at the top of corporate America extends beyond black CEOs. Fortune reported in February 2014 that just over 4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs at that time were minorities, a classification including African-Americans, Asians, and Latin-Americans. And there were 24 women CEOs in the Fortune 500 representing 4.8 percent of companies as of June (Berman, 2015). These are alarming results. The research conducted to back up the results explains the minorities are not given the opportunity to work in the majority of the Forbes 500 companies CEOs positions. It is sad that the talent and ideas that minorities have to offer for these positions is not being appreciated and given an opportunity. Even companies like McDonald’s that had a black CEO did not elect a new minority CEO. Nevertheless, there are companies who are working realize the importance of diversity and are working on new diversity initiatives. Intel president Renée James is building a pipeline of female and other groups of underrepresented engineers and computer scientists (Lev-Ram, 2015). The diversity initiative will have a cost of 300 million dollars. Renee James wants to stop the harassment threats that there are in the gaming world for woman and minorities and include their perspective and ideas into the company’s new projects. The technology, science, and engineering fields are predominately lead by males. As a result, females do not have a lot of opportunities to lead or have high important role within these organizations. Tech companies have realized that they’re lacking the female and minority perspective in a lot of their projects and have started different programs to grow diversity in their fields. Companies like Apple and Google have also started their own initiatives to add diversity into their companies.

The Value of Organizational Diversity Ruchika Tulshyan states in her article “Racially Diverse Companies Outperform Industry Norms by 35%”, that if companies want to prosper and retain their business advantage, they would benefit from having a diverse workforce, new McKinsey research finds. Of 366 public companies analyzed, those in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above national industry medians (Tulshyan, 2015). She add that the research also suggests that other types of diversity such as age, sexual orientation and global mindsets, are also likely to bring some level of competitive advantage for companies that are able to attract and retain diverse talent. Having different smart talented minds working together will bring more success to the company. The more diverse companies are able hire more talent since they do not go by the bias imposed in our society and give all the candidates with the necessary qualification an equal opportunity regardless of their background, race, etc. Likewise, these companies have better customer orientation because they have a wide arrange of perspectives and people that can relate to the customers. In addition, employee satisfaction is higher since people are working in an environment where they are included, treated equally and given the same opportunity as their peers. Diverse companies do not allow discrimination or prejudices to take place and that makes the work environment more peaceful and secure. The ten global companies trying to lead diversity are Novartis, Kaiser Permanente, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Sodexo, MasterCard, AT&T, Prudential, Johnson & Johnson, and Procter & Gamble (Rosenbaum, 2015). These are companies that have taken inclusion in the corporate world as a priority. One of the things that these companies have in common is that they have minority CEOs and board members. They have given the opportunity to minority to lead and they have been able to succeed. For example, Novartis as a prime example. While the company's CEO is Hispanic, only two of the 11 members of its board of directors are women. Rosenbaum explains how there is still work that needs to be done at these companies, that just because a company had a minority leader it does not mean the company is diverse. However, he explains that these companies are on the right track and serve as an example to other companies. Leaders need to know how to adapt to changes and different people.
Individuals in leadership positions need to be prepared to lead and work with people who are not like them. Diversity is still an issue in leadership, but the researches and studies show that companies are working on it. Organizations from different fields and concentrations have adopted new policies and initiatives to increase the workforce and leadership diversity. It has been proven that diverse organizations are successful and recent researches have shown that they can even be more successful than traditional organizations. Diversity and equality is something that has not been achieved in our society, but a lot of people are working together towards
it.