RaceAhead editor (and food and cannabis reporter) Grace Donnelly documented one of the most persistent themes of the most recent Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, California: Allies need help.
Diversity is important and inclusive cultures are essential, but white men, who remain in the leadership majority, often don’t know what to do.
That’s why it’s so important to narrow the broader conversation about workforce diversity to specific tactics that men can use in their roles day-to-day, said PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada: “These men are super supportive, but many of them don’t know how to help.”
When she joined PagerDuty, returning to the tech industry where she worked in the 1990s, she was alarmed that most of the boards and investors she encountered were white and male.
“Things had maybe gone backwards since I left,” Tejada said, so as a new CEO she asked the men around her to work on increasing diverse representation at the company. “I told them, ‘This is not our reality and I’m not going to be able to do this by myself.’”
Now PagerDuty, an enterprise company that mainly serves male developers, has a workforce that is 43% women. Their leadership and engineering teams have both reached gender parity, Tejada said.
Tactics, talking points, and scenario planning have become part of the mix as well.
“The majority of our leaders really want to get engaged in this conversation,” said Terri Cooper, Deloitte’s chief inclusion officer. “So what are the leadership traits that they need to demonstrate?”
She said the consulting firm has encouraged its professionals to become more active and developed six traits to help them be more inclusive leaders, which they call the “six C’s”: commitment, collaboration, curiosity, cultural intelligence, cognizance of bias, and courage.
Which all got us both thinking. What specific tactics are working? What’s the best way to collect and share them?
Hit us back with your ideas while we mull this over at raceAhead HQ. We promised the crowd that we’ll be coming back next year with a much different panel. We’ll need your help to deliver.
Credit: Fortune
via USAHint.com
No comments:
Post a Comment