Today’s leaders feel constant pressure to innovate and position their products, services, and teams more creatively than ever before. However, in the Middle East’s highly diverse workplaces, diversity intelligence is critical to success. Leaders who leverage diversity to develop, motivate and empower people to achieve extraordinary results aren’t acting randomly. By aligning diversity intelligence with leadership strategies and communication practices to ensure a truly collaborative, inclusive and engaging work environment, we can inspire our high-performance teams.
Effect of workplace diversity
The world is shrinking every day. Globalisation means companies from virtually anywhere can sell to customers from virtually anywhere, and local markets continue to become more and more cosmopolitan owing to immigration. Target demographics are changing, and businesses that ignore those changes will one day find themselves without anyone to sell to. However, to stay relevant, businesses must do more than simply cater their products and services to these increasingly diverse demographics and it’s unlikely they can even do that successfully without fostering workplace diversity.
What is workplace diversity?
To improve our diversity intelligence, we must first understand workplace diversity, which means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognising our individual differences. Diversity extends beyond race or ethnicity, religion, culture or newcomer status to include factors such as geography, language, politics, gender, beliefs, economic status, abilities, skills and interests.
Diversity is actually rooted in merit and in the appreciation of differences. It focuses on finding the right candidate for the right job regardless of (not because of) their ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender, certain physical/mental abilities, marital status, education, and socioeconomic status – and then leveraging the various benefits that come with having a diverse workforce.
What is diversity intelligence?
It is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity contained within each individual. The concept encompasses acceptance and respect; it is the exploration of our differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. To achieve the benefits of diversity, people need to be comfortable speaking up and feel heard when they do. Great ideas falling on deaf ears is the fastest way to ruin workplace engagement.
By integrating workers from culturally diverse backgrounds into their workforce, Middle East organisations become much stronger. Diversity intelligent leaders ensure that diversity is an integral part of the business plan, essential to successful projects, programmes, products and increased sales. They train themselves and teach their teams that it’s everyone’s responsibility to be respectful, to speak up, to listen and to learn from each other.
The benefits
1. Better problem-solving comes when different people bring different attitudes and experiences to the table. This avoids groupthink and challenges people to think outside the box.
2. Higher productivity occurs when people of all cultures pull together towards a single inspiring goal. Studies show that the more an organisation’s staff reflects its demographics, the better its bottom line because the organisation has a better understanding of their target audience.
3. Better employee relations are a significant benefit as employees need to feel valued if they want to reach their full potential. Organisations that embrace diversity tend to have lower absenteeism and turnover, and higher levels of loyalty.
4. Language skills are obviously needed in today’s increasingly global economy and diverse workers often have this proficiency.
5. Better client insight is crucial. By relating to people of all backgrounds, we gain a greater perspective on how different cultures operate and experience greater success in global business as a result.
6. New processes can result when people with different ideas come together and collaborate. In today’s fast-moving world, there is no longer room for thinking: “We have always done things this way and cannot change”.
Improving your diversity intelligence
1. Adaptable communication practices – people from different backgrounds, cultures, countries, sexes, ages have different approaches to communication, motivation and idea creation – by expanding our awareness of diversity, we can create opportunity for people to feel empowered and thrive as both individuals and teams.
2. Diversity “blind spots” can impede our progress. We need to understand our own natural unconscious biases that influence our opinions and decision-making and adopt strategies to counter our tendencies to judge and conclude too quickly.
3. Diversity “comfort zones” must be overcome. Our instinct is to surround ourselves and hire those like us but there are some excellent tools that help leaders get comfortable with feeling initially uncomfortable.
4. Developing an action plan is about reinforcing a commitment to change.
Diversity intelligence provides leaders with strategic insight necessary to give us that competitive edge. That edge lies within understanding and engaging those you lead and creating an environment that values relationships, personal growth, positive reinforcement and brainstorming – a place where everyone’s ideas matter.
Paul Pelletier is a consultant with PDSi, a Dubai-based coaching and leadership development company.
business@thenational.ae
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