\u201cIf I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.\u201d So said Henry Ford on why he used his own initiative to develop the mass produced automobile \u2013 and the same logic can be applied to the issue of gender equity across organisations today.<\/p>\n
The reason Mr Ford didn\u2019t ask the American people what they wanted was because he knew it was the wrong question.<\/p>\n
Roughly 100 years on the same logic can be applied to managing diversity in the workplace. People keep asking, \u2018Are there enough women in senior management roles?\u2019 In my view, that\u2019s not the right question. The right question is, \u2018Is there enough great talent in the senior management pipeline to drive organisations forward?\u2019<\/p>\n
Viewed this way, diversity in the workplace is not ultimately about gender equality \u2013 it is about leadership success.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s an example. We recently tested a client\u2019s senior executive team for individual leadership capabilities. Like many organisations, the ratio of men to women on this executive team was a long way from 50:50.<\/p>\n
Pre-empting the results, I said, \u2018If the capability of your female executives turns out to be at least equal to the capability of men, then something is wrong with your selection and promotion of women. Because if women\u2019s capability is equality should naturally follow that they will represent 50% of your senior leaders. And if that\u2019s not the case there\u2019s something wrong with the way you\u2019re selecting and promoting women.\u2019<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, the findings came back that the female executives were not only just as capable at leadership as men, they were in many cases more capable than men.<\/p>\n
And this wasn\u2019t an isolated case. Hudson research shows time and again that females have as good as \u2013 if not better \u2013 leadership capabilities as men. In fact, Hudson research from 2013 examining the skills of C-suite executives found women outperformed men on Mental Flexibility, Personal Drive and Managing Complexity & Change.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s return to what I think the real question is when looking at programs targeting diversity in the workplace: \u2018Is there enough great talent in senior management roles to drive organisations forward?\u2019 Put another way, are we systematically blind to a powerful source of talent right before our eyes?<\/p>\n
Gender diversity programs may appear to be about getting women into leadership positions, but that\u2019s an outcome, not what they are ultimately about. What they are ultimately about is illuminating any blind spots and ensuring organisations have the best people possible in leadership positions. What they are about is improving business outcomes.<\/p>\n
Is your company experiencing the benefits of diversity in the workplace?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cIf I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.\u201d So said Henry Ford on why he used his own initiative to develop the mass produced automobile \u2013 and the same logic can be applied to the issue of gender equity across organisations today. The reason Mr Ford didn\u2019t ask…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-1397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership","tag-gender-diversity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4157,"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions\/4157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/1398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/au.hudson.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}