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Resilience
Inclusivity and Diversity
Three ways they forge resilient teams and gritty cultures.
Posted October 17, 2018
It’s disturbing. It’s also a bit hard to stomach, if not believe. When informed, if not confronted with the real statistics—the under-optimal breakdown of their workforce by age, gender, ethnicity, etc.—too many business leaders still view diversity as, well, adversity.
Some sigh. Some roll their eyes. Others view creating a more inclusive and diverse workforce as yet another HR, or “do good” mandate, another darned box to be checked. Let’s call them the Unenlightened, Level One.
Your level matters. I checked into a hotel last night, and the desk agent offered, “If you like, I can try to get you a room on a higher floor?” “I’m just curious," I asked. "If the lower floors have more and quicker elevators, why are the higher floors more desirable?”
“I never thought of it that way,” she admitted. “But I guess it’s because, the higher you go, the better the view!” Good point. Let’s just say that Level One lacks vision.
As we move up on the diversity and inclusion elevator, there are those who reside in Partially Enlightened, Level Two. They realize that it’s both morally right and good to create a more inclusive and diverse workplace. Better. But there’s more.
Level Three enjoys the penthouse panorama. These leaders understand that not only does drawing, growing, and keeping a richer range of humanity into the workplace create goodwill, it builds great business. The same can be said for leaders of entities whose bottom line is not financial.
Beyond enjoying a competitive advantage, here are three ways inclusion and diversity forge resilient teams and gritty cultures.
1. Diversity Reduces Risk, Enhances Returns.
Why does any financial planner worth their salt advise their clients to diversify their portfolio? Simple. Because diversification reduces risk, and it tends to generate better results.
The soul-stirring, pine-forested mountains of Colorado have an inherent vulnerability. One beetle can decimate everything. Biologists call it “beetle kill.” No diversity. Meanwhile, the most resilient ecosystems in the world are the most diverse. If one challenge or threat arises, or one type of plant gets depleted, others—and, as a result, the entire system—can thrive. Biodiversity equals resilience.
Why is it any different for our teams, our workforce? Isn’t it time we got beyond diversity by category? Doesn’t that seem archaic?
I’ve had college students ask me, “When will skin color and gender become truly irrelevant?”, or, as I might suggest, at least subsumed by the higher question, “To what degree and how well do we seek, recruit, welcome, and equip the most productively diverse range of perspectives, experiences, backgrounds, expertise, voices, capabilities, and yes, challenges, into our world?”
More diverse threats require more diverse answers. That’s why, as the world grows faster, more complex, less predictable, and more chaotic, those entities with the broadest array of humans will outlast and out-thrive the rest.
Unlike the jungle, workplace diversity and inclusion doesn’t just naturally occur. More like a masterfully managed financial portfolio, workplace diversity must be strategically prioritized and deliberately engineered.
2. Inclusion Breeds Gritty Ingenuity and a Bigger Win
When you watch the video of Erik Weihenmeyer, the first blind man to summit Mt. Everest, cross the bottomless crevasses of Khumbu Icefall, and then reach the top, the natural reaction is, “What an amazing guy!”
But Erik would be the first to affirm what his team explains. As resilient and gritty as Erik has to be in order to pioneer such possibilities, a huge part of the success of that, and all of Erik’s breathtaking adventures, comes from the ingenuity of the systems created to achieve the desired result.
When the team “included” Erik, a person with clearly different challenges than the other expert climbers, they knew that would require them to come at their quest differently. The ladders, ropes, communication, gear management, logistics…everything was modified to not just accommodate Erik, but to benefit the entire team.
Inclusion sparks grit. Everyone has to dig deeper—smarter and better—and sacrifice, even suffer, to achieve the most worthy goals. That same grit can be used to tackle the most frustrating challenges that make up everyday life. When that becomes the norm, it becomes the culture.
That day, Erik’s team didn’t just get a blind guy to the top of the world. They broke records for A) the highest number of people from any team to reach the summit, as well as B) the oldest man to make it to the top (Erik’s teammate). They didn’t achieve their goal in spite of being diversely inclusive. They broke records because of it.
3. Inclusion and Diversity Fuel Purpose, Commitment, and Engagement
Former senior corporate executive Jo Marshall launched Culturise, a purpose-driven boutique consulting firm in South Australia, focused on equipping leaders from a broad range of companies to institutionalize, tap, and optimize the full power of diversity-inclusivity-resilience synergies. By not just preaching, but also practicing inclusion and diversity, Jo has emerged as one of the leading, and most influential voices on cultural resilience across her continent. While our research collaboration is young, early returns suggest a potent correlation between inclusivity-diversity-based cultural resilience and achieving desired outcomes.
Much of what she does is simple. But it's heartfelt, deliberate, and, to those who experience her approach, soul-stirring. Starting with her own team, Jo helps people previously labeled as “disadvantaged” become the ultimate advantage by hand-crafting responsibilities—the what and how of work—to not just maximize productivity, but to elevate human dignity for all.
As kind, compassionate, fair, good, and elevating as Jo’s approach may be, there are some hardcore, measurable, and practical upsides to pursuing this brand of cultural resilience. People who previously felt underutilized and undervalued, if not dissed, now feel useful, relevant, and grateful.
When adversity strikes, who responds better and faster? Which team or organization harnesses their hardships? Who is more likely to tackle the tough stuff—to dig deep and do whatever it takes—even to sacrifice and suffer, to achieve the most worthy, purpose-rich, long-term goals?
Overall, diversity and inclusivity generate unmatchable levels of commitment, effort, purpose, and engagement. It’s pretty stunning. Jo’s team would march through a raging wildfire for her, because she lives her values, and she puts it on the line for them every day. You can’t fake the real deal. It’s inspiring to see her teach her clients how to rise up, from Level One to Level Three, and beyond.
Diversity and inclusivity generate resilience and grit: They elevate us all.
