How to Support a Diverse Group of Leaders in Their Own Leadership Development

How to Support a Diverse Group of Leaders | Arc Integrated

Learning how to support a diverse group of leaders in this day and age is a very important skill to have in your repertoire. In today’s article, I will be outlining five tips for a topic that has emerged as one of the more popular topics that we tackle here at Arc Integrated. The topic is how to support a diverse group of leaders in their own leadership development. So, how exactly do you get a diverse group of leaders and make sure that they get what they need, and that the training is impactful for them so that it creates long term success?

Tip #1: Connect Leaders to One Another

The first tip is to connect the leaders to one another.

You might be asking yourself, why is this valuable? There’s a number of reasons why, but simply put from a learning standpoint, we know that when it comes to learning, the best case outcomes occur when we do experiential learning. Experiential learning is a process where you experience, reflect, think and then ultimately act. When we use this engaging learning process, the longevity and sustainability of the things we learn is exponential as opposed to one way learning. One way learning can take the form of webinars where one person or a group of people are giving out information to an audience that is listening.

The benefit of experiential learning when it comes to diversity is that each person gets to learn: 

  • Cultural practices
  • Empathy
  • Cultural perspectives

Tip #2: Challenge Their Biases

In my experience, when you have a group of people in a room that come from different backgrounds and cultures, there are going to be many inherent differences. As a leader, it’s important to challenge our own biases, but it’s equally important to challenge the biases of others as well. This however, is a very tricky line to distinguish when referring to group diversity. 

Use Dialogue to Figure Out If It Is a Cultural Bias, or a Cultural Nuance

Is it a cultural bias, or just a cultural nuance? How exactly do you go about figuring out the difference? Dialogue!

It’s critical to remain curious and interested. Keep an open dialogue among the diverse group of leaders so they can learn as much as they can in order to figure out if what they are concerned about is a cultural bias, or a bias that you can comfortably challenge.

Tip #3: Remain Curious & Humble

I believe that constantly remaining curious and humble is a lifelong opportunity that spans far beyond leadership. This is not to say however, that these two specific skills do not have deep rooted benefits for leadership as well – they absolutely do. 

In terms of curiosity, it hopefully allows for more learning and works against frustration or anger that comes up during dialog. This is especially important when dealing with a diverse group of people because at some point, you will come across a topic that becomes frustrating. When you are dealing with diversity, people’s perspectives are going to be more nuanced and there will oftentimes be more difference in the room than commonality. By being humble, you hopefully gain perspective that no matter who it is and what their background entails, you can learn something from them.

Tip #4: Know Your Audience

If you are conducting leadership development with a diverse group of people or you have employees where there is a large amount of diversity, it’s important to understand that there are specific perspectives and cultural differences. Therefore, the more you get to know, understand and respect the specific perspectives and cultural differences, the more respect you receive in turn. You can also bring up these conversations with a diverse group of people so everybody can be aware and learn as well. 

Call Out Cultural Nuances and Learn From Them

Here at Arc Integrated, we have a lot of experience when it comes to dealing with diverse leaders. When a type of cultural nuance comes up when we are performing leadership or training, we call it out and ask to learn more about it. This gives not only us, but everybody else around us the opportunity to learn because ultimately the more we can understand that we are global citizens the better off we all will be.

Tip #5: Explore Global Issues to Create Connection & Deepen Learning

When thinking about diversity in regards to leadership development, there are certain issues that go past culture or diversity. The technology of VR (virtual reality) is an emerging technical advancement that is being used more and more in the training and development space. The issue with this is the fact that some countries and cultures aren’t going to use VR as readily yet, and depending on where you live, the prevalence of this technology will be more common or less common.

Another example of a global issue that may supersede culture is the idea of VUCA:

  • Volatility – how fast things can change in the economy, workplace or world
  • Uncertainty – being unsure or unable to predict what is to come
  • Complexity – the amount of factors that we need to take note of
  • Ambiguity – how clear a situation or problem is

VUCA represents a global problem of different challenges that we all face and the type of responses that follow it. It is important to talk about the nuances of VUCA within both our own culture and our own company.

If you found this article interesting and want to learn more, feel free to watch the video version of 5 Tips to Support a Diverse Group of Leaders. As always, if you want to opt in for my Free Changes Playbook go ahead and give it a go! The Free Changes Playbook will explain how to unlock the 7 pillars to create and manage change as well as help reduce stress as a leader.

Be well,

Michael

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How to Use Structure to Improve Company Culture

How to Use Structure to Improve Company Culture | Arc Integrated

Having a reputable and rewarding work culture is often seen as a cornerstone in many successful companies and organizations. That’s why it’s important that as a leader you find different ways to improve the culture of your business or team in order to match the culture you want to see spread throughout the company. One of the many ways to do so is by implementing a meaningful structure that reflects the type of culture that you are trying to grow within your company.  In today’s article, I will be listing five impactful ways on how you can implement structure to improve the culture of your company. 

Performance Evaluations

The first method in which you can implement structure to improve the culture of your workplace is by creating performance evaluations for all of your employees. This is a very common and effective strategy that most leaders have incorporated into their organization. If you don’t have this method as a part of your company’s structure, you should start! Alternatively, if you already have performance evaluations here are a few things you should consider. 

  • The first is being consistent – This is a really important principle. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing these every quarter, every 6 months, or even once a year every year. Whatever it is, make sure to keep consistency in the evaluations.
  • The second is creating accountability – Make sure that there are deliverables at play for both the leader doing a performance evaluation as well as for the employees first.
  • The third is outlining the opportunities – It is very helpful as a leader to make sure that there is a really clear path to what the opportunities at hand are within any given time frame.
  • Lastly giving people choice and autonomy – This is a really important factor when it comes to evaluation because it shows trust with your employees.

Create a Clear and Consistent Process for Meetings 

Meetings are often a time that employees dread, but they don’t always have to be a horrible experience! I believe there is a lot of opportunities to implement a good structure for meetings that will ultimately lead to a greater culture.

Here are some simple tips on how you can create a good meeting:

  • Start the meetings with appreciation. The appreciation can be for something recently learned, an employee in your organization, or even an event that happened recently.
  • Set up a time during the meeting to go over and review any new material, recent learnings, or even the previous meeting so everybody can be on the same page.
  • Make sure that you agree on the actions and deliverables being outlined in the meeting.
  • Lastly, creating clarity for everybody that is involved in the meeting and what exactly are they expected to do or what deliverables are expected from them.

All of these examples are really simple and easy to add to your team meetings so that you can start to generate a culture that you’ve always wanted. For more tips and examples of the processes that you can implement in your meetings, read this article on How to Design an Agenda for an Effective Meeting.

Make Sure Your Hiring Process Supports Your Company’s Culture

It all starts here, with the hiring process. The hiring process is not a one-way street in regards to how you feel that the potential candidate could fit in your organization, but the candidate is also looking to see if the culture and fit match what they are looking for as well. 75% of candidates will research a company’s reputation before applying for a job opening.

Principle 1

Have a really clear metric or decision-making boundary around what is a “go” or “no-go” for the culture in your company. This obviously requires having a clear stance on what the culture of your organization is beforehand

Principle 2

Make sure that you have a really clear job description when entering the hiring process. You can also think of it as “if the job could talk, what would it say about itself”? This can include factors such as:

  • What are the values of the job?
  • What are the skills necessary?
  • What is the best personality fit for the job?

Principle 3

Have real clear transparency about the culture in your company. Make sure that you implement that culture into the hiring process so that they are aware of what to expect.

Ensure All Corporate Processes Match Your Company’s Values

Work-life balance is a great example in showing that your processes do indeed match the values that your company stands for. If your company has a strong reputation and culture for work-life balance but there are processes or even unspoken agreements that suggest that a person should work on a weekend or past working hours, it creates an incongruence within the structure and culture of the company.

In this scenario, the opportunity to change the current structure can have a positive impact on work culture. If a particular software is required to be used after hours, for example, you may need to change the process in order to properly adjust to an acceptable work-life balance that matches the company’s values.

Mind the Norms About Communication

Communication is a topic here at Arc Integrated that we are trained on and well versed in. This is because on a daily basis we see the importance and value that companies put on implementing communication as a skill.

An example of communication can be seen through wanting more human connections. The hope as a leader is that the values you have and try to grow, end up living and breathing throughout the entirety of the company. Ultimately, if all of your company’s communication takes place via email, for example, you lose that human interaction which inherently prohibits human connection. This is of course not to say that we need to completely remove email if you value human connection, but rather find alternative ways of communication that match the values that the company has. That being said, if your company values human connection, my question would be:

In what ways are you communicating beyond email that drives human connection?

If you enjoyed this article I encourage you to take this quiz on our website. It reveals some ways in which you can improve the culture, performance, and productivity of your team. You can also watch the video version on today’s topic – how to use structure to improve company culture

As always you can learn more about emotional intelligence, leadership, and communication by picking up my book CHANGES: The Busy Professional’s Guide to Reducing Stress, Accomplishing Goals and Mastering Adaptability

Be well,

Michael

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Learn more about Arc Integrated:

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