Managing Diversity:
Not solely a question of ethnicity, race or gender
By: Leonard J. Brzozowski
Executive Director, Xavier Leadership Center
In my “Management of Organizations” class a short time ago, we were engaged in a discussion about human performance management and things that sometimes prevent organizations from achieving their desired goals. Finally one student tentatively raised his hand and commented that many of his co-workers get upset at the number of “affirmative action” candidates who are promoted when other “more suitable” candidates exist. Since my class was pretty diverse based on gender, ethnicity, and race, this proved to be a decidedly awkward moment. Now, it is not common for me to be caught by surprise, but I simply did not anticipate the question and clumsily fumbled the answer. I imagine that although only one of my students had the courage to raise the issue, others may have thought about it. Anyway, I felt I owed them a more considered response. So, here it goes . . .
Pick the Right People. Period.
Any organization that makes promotion decisions based on any criteria other than ones’ qualifications to do the job is asking for trouble. This is for four primary reasons.
First, your principal job as manager is to maximize the performance of the organization for the benefit of all its constituencies including shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees, and their families (who deserve some amount of job security). When you willfully make sub-optimal decisions, you betray that trust placed in you.
Second, among all the things a manager does, putting the right people in the right spots is BY FAR the most crucial one. It is JOB #1. If you do this carefully, everything gets easier for you as manager and better for the organization. Good people, who share your values, are willing to work diligently, are open to new ideas, and committed to team goals, can make any group perform better. Helping make that a reality is your main assignment as manager.
Third, I would ask this. “If you were directed by ‘management’ to appoint someone whom you did not feel was qualified, do you think you could hide that emotion from the individual and from co-workers?” A promotion should be a big deal. Usually we accompany it with accolades, a ceremony, glowing announcement to employees, news releases, and a pep talk to the candidate. This is done since we recognize that people will gain more initial momentum when they take on new assignments in a healthy and positive frame of mind. Aren’t most bosses’ opinions and biases known by their subordinates? Do they affect the behaviors of the rest of the team? So, either wittingly or not, you may have created an environment that undermines the self confidence of the candidate and preconditions the business environment for failure.
Much has been written about the importance of a positive attitude and belief in self–worth in order to be successful. When you undermine someone’s position or appointment, you sow the seeds of failure. That is immoral. I can’t imagine a crueler thing to do to someone – to rob them of their own self confidence and potentially damage their career.
And fourth, by selecting someone the organization perceives as unqualified, you send the wrong message to the team. Successful organizations build a culture that rewards values that it believes help produce greater success. You want to reinforce a culture so that people see that things like competence, effectiveness, quality, hard work, and results are important. The more consistent you are in conveying this message, the more it becomes internalized by all members, reinforces your values, and builds morale.
To make a decision seen by others as inconsistent with stated values (like selecting an un-qualified candidate) undermines long-term effectiveness.
Let’s look deeper
Seeing an unqualified person selected based solely on ethnic or racial factors is – and well should be – offensive to us all. However, I would also ask people who complain about it, how they feel when someone is selected for a new position because they (whether male or female) had an affair with someone in management? What about when someone is promoted who is related to someone on the Board of Directors, or one of the senior executives? Do those things also offend you? And, do they offend equally, or only 2/3rds as much as having an “affirmative action” candidate be promoted?
How about when someone gets the job instead of you, not because they were smarter, or more experienced, but because they were better ‘politician’ than you? Does that offend you equally, or only ½ as much? When I acquired my first company, I inherited a Vice President of Sales and Marketing who was a great person. As a salesman, he was phenomenal. He could read people, advocate both for the company and for the customer at the appropriate times, and figure out how to construct a win-win solution, even in the ugliest negotiation. But as a marketing person, that was another story. He had virtually no strategic thinking ability and lacked analytical skills to collect, process, and draw meaningful conclusions from data.
So, what about that situation? Here is a person woefully inadequate to performing a significant portion of his job. Didn’t he undermine the organizations’ effectiveness? Didn’t he make the rest of us have to row a little harder in the boat as a consequence of his inadequacies? But, he was a nice person and ethnically similar to the majority of our employees. Does that offend you? And if so does it offend equally, or only 1/3 as much? If you ask these questions of co-workers and the answer is that they are less offended in any of the last four scenarios, then you seriously need to stand back and reflect on why that is.
Diversity Can Strengthen
We may all feel most comfortable in surroundings where everyone is just like us. That notwithstanding, surrounding yourself with people who are clones of yourself is perhaps the most misguided decision you can make. Diversity, when managed successfully can bring incredible strength. The ability to see situations and problems from a wide variety of perspectives helps enrich the very problem solving process and can lead to better quality decisions. Having a team which is stratified by age, gender, ethnicity, race, personality, and age is one key way to insure richness of thought.
“Catch them in the act”
When we choose to fixate on the inadequacies of another person, I submit that this is pointless. It breeds discontent and does not help. Who among us is without some weaknesses? We all have things we are not so good at, or that we can’t do at all. Often times, these weaknesses are things that we are not likely to correct – like getting my former VP of Sales and Marketing to become a strategic thinker. His brain was just not ‘wired’ that way.
My principal complaint about performance management systems (especially performance appraisal) is that they too often dwell on the negative aspects of a person – many of which you are unlikely to change. It is far more constructive to focus on gifts and strengths and asking how I design the job to be better aligned with the strengths and not how do I fix the weaknesses in this person.
You may recall the stunning event in 1999 when the US women won the World Cup of Soccer. I recall reading an interview with Tony DiCicco coach of that remarkable team. He was asked what was different about coaching women, as compared to men (which he had done previously in his career). At first he treated them the same. We all know the typical coaching model...when you see someone making a mistake, you holler at them, make them run laps, or do push-ups. You do so in the hope of building character. “When I treated them that way”, said DiCicco, “things didn’t work very well. They all hated me, didn’t play well together, weren’t enjoying the game, and we played poorly.”
In near desperation, he knew he needed to try something different. He knew his women had individual talent, but that just wasn’t enough. “So”, said DiCicco, “I started to lay off a bit, and gradually I began to see my job rather than emphasizing their screwups, as catching them in the act of doing something right . . . and then making a big deal about it. Once I made this fundamental change, amazing things started to happen”. Happen they did . . . the women started to win, resulting in a 22-1-2 record in 1998 (a 92% win rate), followed by a similar record in 1999 whenthe US women won the World Cup - 25-2-2 (89.7%). (The Cincinnati Bengals should be that lucky.)
What a great metaphor for managing – “Catch them in the act of doing something right and then make a big deal about it!” Wouldn’t we all like to have a boss who thought that way?
Build a team
I suggested that a constructive approach is to try to align the job around the unique strengths of each person. When that is not practical, the remaining winning strategy is to surround each manager with people who have complementary skills. Surround him or her with folks who fill in the gaps in their own skill set. Then train, emphasize, and reinforce the notion that “by myself, I can do many things, but together, we can accomplish nearly anything!”
Appointing people when you have misgivings, and then standing back and watching them with arms folded as they fail is simply irrational and unhealthy for all concerned. Let every manager commit him or herself to trying to create the right conditions for EVERY newly appointed person to succeed. My formula includes
- enlightened job design (in the Jim Collins vernacular, -“putting people in the right seat on the bus”)
- creating a healthy and nurturing environment,
- building diverse teams with complementary skills
Let’s make these concepts an ingrained part of our corporate culture and values. Let’s make this second nature.
About the Author
Len Brzozowski is the former CEO of Robotron Corporation. Under his leadership, Robotron was named by Crain’s as one of the leading high tech companies in Michigan and was recognize by the US Chamber of Commerce as one of the 50 most innovative small businesses in the United States.
Len currently teaches entrepreneurship and leadership and is Executive Director of the Xavier Leadership Center.
