From Bottom Line to Human Line: Why Leaders Must Prioritise Inclusion

This week we are sharing lessons on how to create a culture of Inclusion from our next expert, Steven Andrew , who was previously the Head of IT at Endeavor, heading up a team of 13, supporting 8 very diverse offices across the Asia Pacific region. He successfully established a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) working group in Asia Pacific that enabled company values and goals to be further extended into this region. The establishment of a local DEI working group, and the implementation of locally-specific DEI strategies, resulted in staff participation, innovation, and collaboration increases of up to 40% in some areas.

Starting with values, Steve touches on the importance of company values and how they must align with employees' values, which helps employees with their own sense of purpose. If there is no sense of purpose, they aren’t motivated in their actions, and if they can't see how their efforts are positively or even negatively impacting the organisation, then they are less likely to be engaged. Steven continues “So, what I do is I try to be as authentic and transparent as possible. I would provide people with as much information as I could, from tech strategy to business strategy and business activities. I don't think you have to be confidential for the sake of being confidential. A leader should be able to identify what can be shared, whether or not it's appropriate to share that information, and whether or not sharing that information would benefit the team and the business. This helps to create an environment of trust.”

Providing people with encouragement and celebrating their wins publicly is also important. From an inclusion perspective, it's relative. Diversity is very different from Inclusion. Inclusion, separate to but as a result of Equity, can be tricky as it involves tailoring efforts to provide team members with the tools required to gain access to opportunities that others have. For example, if somebody is quiet in meetings and they don't necessarily have their voice heard over others who might be more confident and who dominate discussions, give the quiet person the opportunity for a one-on-one afterwards. I've spent a lot of time following up with people one-on-one, particularly those from cultures where speaking up is less common, who were grateful to be able to have their voices heard in a more individualised environment. Engaging team members like this was something that many hadn't actually seen before. A number of quiet team members who shared ideas and perspectives in a more comfortable environment became more and more confident and more and more engaged. These team members also demonstrated increased motivation and enthusiasm.

 I was curious about how effective certain practices were, so I measured participation across a range of areas within the department. Further to what I previously mentioned, I noticed that certain people would not speak up in meetings due to cultural differences or lack of confidence. That and when I was in attendance, I found that many people would just clam up and not speak as they felt that it was not appropriate to speak over their boss. I had to overcome these challenges to increase participation and gain contributions from all members of the team. It's not the case of wanting people to speak just for the sake of it. They had information that the group needed to progress projects. They had skills that I didn't have. They could provide input that would help us formulate strategy. By implementing previously mentioned DEI practices, I was able to increase participation by up to 40%. That was significant, and these team members became some of the biggest and most enthusiastic contributors in meetings and in projects. Helping team members to develop confidence and overcome cultural challenges doesn't happen overnight, but it is worth it. Investing a bit of equity in individuals to ensure that they had opportunities and felt heard and engaged also helped us maintain very low levels of staff turnover. I hadn’t lost anybody in eight years. And of course, I’ve worked with Gen Z team members too. We brought them in as graduates, and in some cases while still studying, trained them up, got them involved in team activities and spent time to understand their individual drivers. Some are now running major projects and events, setting up and leading UFC events, fashion weeks, golf tournaments, art fairs and marathons, to name just a few. By investing a bit of time in staff, being transparent, and explaining the impact of contributions to the business, these staff are now thoroughly enjoying multiple opportunities and are enthusiastic contributors within the business. 

In my experience the way to develop and maintain motivation and increase participation is through transparency, engagement and being an authentic leader. I have always found that it's best to catch more flies with honey. Trusting people, communicating company values and goals, reflecting staff values and goals, and celebrating wins. Everybody likes to be celebrated, even if they get a bit embarrassed by being called out, but secretly they love it, and I made a point of doing that, along with leading by example. By being vulnerable myself, taking my identity and celebrating it, also gave the team much more confidence and comfort in approaching me with their challenges and ultimately their ideas. If I was comfortable sharing with the team, they were comfortable sharing with me and felt confident that they had my support. This had the added benefit of the quick reporting of problems that reduced the risk of smaller issues becoming larger ones.

 DEI has become a politicised term, and it doesn't have to be. It shouldn’t be. 

Answering a question, what makes Steve passionate about taking a deeper look and taking care of the people in such a way, whereas a lot of organisations are still led by the bottom line.

 Steve highlighted that there are multiple contributors.

"Firstly, I just like people. I like seeing people succeed. I like celebrating wins. If I'm coaching somebody or if I'm training someone or mentoring somebody, I'd obviously love to see them succeed. That's something that I genuinely enjoy. That and team success has a positive impact on department goals, productivity and ultimately the company’s bottom line.

I was a key contributor within the DEI group. Partly because being here in Asia Pacific, working for an American company that was primarily led out of the US and the UK, the Asia Pacific IT department was not as visible as IT departments in those other regions, mainly due to time zone challenges. So, there was a want to represent my team to bring them into the broader conversation, into broader global projects within the broader global group. To do that required looking at how we could implement equity-based solutions globally to include the team in APAC and to provide them with career growth opportunities. This ultimately helped to lift the team up by making them more visible, opening up new opportunities and exposing them to a much larger range of skillsets. Ignoring DEI strategies would have been detrimental to productivity, and turnover would have been a whole lot higher if we hadn't provided teams with opportunities to grow.”

If you want to speak to Steve about his methodologies and strategies, feel free to reach out to him directly, Steven Andrew.

Stay tuned for our next week's topic on Digital Transformations!