Awareness of how diversity shows up in an organization is expanding. An article in the recent MIT Sloan Management review, Flat World, Hard Boundaries: How to Lead Across Them by C. Ernst and D. Chrobot-Mason (2011), describes five boundaries within which an organization’s members and stakeholders identify themselves:
- Hierarchical levels within the organization
- Organizational function, units, and disciplines
- Partners, suppliers, customers, and communities
- Demographics (gender, age, culture, ethnicity, education and ideology)
- Geography (locations, regions, languages, and markets) homepage.westmont.edu
In training and coaching leaders for effectiveness in diverse work environments, the emphasis is usually on the two latter areas. We overlook the fact that membership in any of these groups has strong emotions attached to it, such as loyalty, pride, respect and trust. I liked this article because the supporting research (by the Center for Creative Leadership) demonstrated that the same capabilities that have been successful in leveraging demographic and geographical diversity are equally effective with hierarchical, functional, and partner diversity.
The findings are that the capabilities required to lead this increasing diversity are 1) having an awareness of the boundaries that identification creates and then 2) managing, mobilizing and integrating those boundaries. It has long been recognized as a best practice for leading diverse teams to begin with creating a safe environment and building trust. The graphic below depicts the practices the CCL suggests for boundary-spanning leadership.
For me, an important finding of this research is that leaders that have the skills to positively influence and create value in what we traditionally consider as the diverse workplace, have an untapped ability to be even more effective across the broader scope of their role.
