People are coming to me realising that they may have neglected underrepresented talent
HR leaders have been thinking about diversity for some time now but in the face of ‘the Great Resignation’ have you got enough diverse talent in your pipeline to sustain diversity objectives within your leadership team? In a video interview with coach and leader developer Jenny Garrett, HRD TV’s Kevin Singel discusses the challenges employers are facing while trying to maintain their DEI objectives and how focus groups can assist with DEI strategies
“At the moment, what people are coming to me for is they’ve recognised that they may have neglected that underrepresented talent,” added Garrett. “They’re wondering what they have to do to create a pipeline to have more diverse leadership in senior roles.”
People unconsciously gravitate to people they have things in common with. Managers and leaders need to be more intentional about engaging informally with people they don’t have as much in common with.
Garrett has an exercise called ‘The Trusted Ten’ – leaders are told to think of the 10 people that are closest to them in the workplace. And then think about the different characteristics of each of those 10 people. Often there’s a lot of commonalities between the leader and their ‘trusted 10’.
“People who are in that out group,” said Garrett, “miss out on structure opportunities, they miss out on informal mentoring, and they miss out on those informal socialising conversations that happen but you as a leader are missing out on the broader perspective and insight that you’d have if you had a little more diversity in your trusted 10.”
To watch the full video, follow this link.
