Senior leaders are a special breed; position power truly matters.

And white male executives, in particular, lead today in a singular moment – there are early mover advantages for companies who engage and equip their white men to lead on diversity and inclusion (D&I).

White men still hold more than 80% of the senior leadership jobs in corporate America, even though we compose less than 40% of the workforce. An organization will gain competitive advantage when those white male executives ensure that the company:

• Wins, grows, and retains diverse and global talent
• Sells to, serves, and keeps diverse and global customers
• Includes and equips all white men to seek the career advantage in D&I.

To leverage such an edge over competitors, white male executives need to develop three disciplines to lead through diversity and inclusion:

Discipline One - Attend to the ways your position power amplifies interpersonal impact.

People behave differently around you when you are an executive. Their respect may erode into habitual deference; their candor may give way to reticence. The loft in your position may impinge on your personal touch.

The more power your position provides, the bigger the potential mess. I once worked with a CEO who badly botched a development session with a group of high performing employees. Any leader who made the same mistakes would have paid a price, but the impact from her C-level misbehavior stifled productivity, damaged retention, and fueled rumors for months. Ironically, it did teach all observers that female executives can miss the mark just like their male counterparts.

The flip side: I coached a white male vice president at a company in Philadelphia, and he built a brilliant reputation for leading inclusively, by:

• Demonstrating his emotional intelligence through careful listening and consistent empathy for every employee he encountered, including the newest front-line staff members. In one notable instance, this intentionality was seen in his frequent stopping by to talk shop with an employee going through a gender change.
• Transparently sharing his lessons in diversity learning – He started out one speech by saying “There are times when I just want diversity to leave me alone”, and then he went on to explain how he has come to see such a sentiment as part of his privilege and power.
• Holding the white men who reported to him (and their diverse peers) accountable for delivering on their own diversity-related performance objectives.

Make sure that all the people who are supposed to be following your lead actually know who you are. Don’t permit your title to shout so loud that folks don’t hear what you mean to say. Wield your position power with a deft human touch in each connection with your people.

Discipline Two - Lead from the inside out, because it’s tough to catch up in a fishbowl.

The higher we reach in level of leadership, the harder it gets to admit we still have a lot to learn. Leading congruently with our values, beliefs, skills and gifts becomes an executive’s greatest asset – to fail to do so is our biggest risk. Authenticity can’t be faked.

As white male executives, we generally tend to invest less time and energy on diversity that our diverse colleagues. We therefore generate less insight about human differences, and suffer from narrower knowledge and experience. We lead with less savvy on diversity and inclusion. It’s hard for us to admit that – a critical executive temptation is the pretense that we already know everything we need to know to lead at our level.

It takes a lot of confidence (and even some bravado) for every executive to get up in the morning and guide an enterprise. For white male executives and managers, the diversity learning curve can chip away at our self confidence as. Here’s how it often goes:

1)   I don’t know what I don’t know about diversity and inclusion.

2)   I start to learn, and begin to recognize that my diverse colleagues, employees,

and clients know a lot more about what’s going with diversity than I do.

3)   I worry how to lead by applying what I’m learning about diversity, when some of the people I expect to follow me know so much more than I do.

4)   I am mortified to realize that, all along, they have understood how little I know about diversity, and how I’m only now learning to lead on it effectively.

So there’s a fine line between humility and humiliation. Don’t let a fear of the latter prevent you from featuring the former in your leadership brand.

There’s nowhere to hide when it becomes clear to the emperor (that would be me and you) that he is wearing less than he thought. Our followers already know that. We’re highly visible, and it is hard to catch up in a fishbowl.

What to do? Four ideas:

• Coaching – Get 1:1 support from a trusted advisor.
• Peer Mentoring – Commit to learning alongside a colleague: another white guy, or a senior leader who differs from you by race and/or gender.
• Personal Study: Reflect deeply (read, think, journal) on inclusion and diversity.

I recommend Leadership 101 For White Men, and the brother website www.leadershipforwhitemen.com.

• Apply your learning into the other disciplines outlined in this piece.

Discipline Three - Diversity & Inclusion: Connect it to business strategy, or it will lapse into a leadership hobby.

To lead as an executive is to formulate strategies, and to ensure that the strategies evolve and get implemented. Every business asset must add value to that strategic end. Inclusive diversity is no exception.

Here’s my bias: integrate diversity into market-facing lines of business. Your company does not exist to have employees – it exists to find and serve customers, and make money doing so. While a diverse workforce is absolutely essential to sales and service, the return on investing in diversity and inclusion must appear in the financials as revenue, not only as cost.

Ultimately, the winning companies will weave their diversity commitment into their bottom line and their brand. Few do so now, so that’s a clear opportunity.

In contrast, if diversity and inclusion are just ‘nice to have’, then D&I is a sideline commitment, not a strategy to grow the company. When executives (most of whom are white men) do not succeed at driving diversity strategy for bottom line results, then D&I is relegated to the HR cul de sac, where it lapses into a program executives tinker with when they find time. Diversity is not a strategic investment when it is prioritized only when profit margins, legal risk, or negative media attention are on the rise.

Commit to your executive effort on diversity and inclusion as a strategy for growth …. or acknowledge it’s limited utility.

In Closing

Right now, this month, this year, it is time to seize this singular moment, the advantage that comes through engaging and equipping white male executives to lead on diversity and inclusion.

As white male executives, our interpersonal impact, authenticity, and strategic leadership require such a personal investment.

About Chuck Shelton                                       

The managing director for Greatheart Leader Labs in Seattle, Chuck Shelton has developed leaders at Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Comcast, Key Bank, Safeco Insurance, and in more than forty other organizations. Since 1981, he has trained, spoken, consulted and coached on leadership development and diversity management internationally, through more than 270 presentations and projects. Chuck authored the ground-breaking Leadership 101 For White Men: How to Work Successfully with Black Colleagues and Customers, the first book for the six million white men in the U.S. who lead for a living.

Email       chuck@greatheartleaderlabs.com                     

Phone      206.652.3450