YouTube Link: Healing Hearts: Rwanda 20 Years Later by World Vision

Winston Churchill masterfully led the United Kingdom during the difficulties of WWII. He brought in a political adversary, Clement Attlee into strategic meetings in London. The crisis facing Britain required extraordinary talent not just people that you agree with. Churchill invited diversity into the planning and embraced the new strategy that made a difference. Why don’t we see this type of leadership more often in our modern time? Perhaps leaders fail to deal with personal discomfort, and they have a difficult time overcoming common barriers to diversity.

This Podcast will focus on 6 Barriers to Diversity

Fear of Conflict

Patrick Lencioni stated that all great relationships that last over time require productive conflict in order to grow. Unfortunately, conflict is seen as TABOO in the business world. Notice the comparison chart.

Insufficient Personal Network

Most leaders enjoy spending time with others that are just like them. This does not open the door for diverse thought, ideas, opinions, and strategies to impact our leadership. Do your closest friends vote like you do, listen to the same music, and look like you? If so, you need to spend some time expanding your network.

Unwillingness To Deal With Prejudice

Opening yourself to diversity will expand your thoughts and your leadership ability. There is to our world beside vanilla ice-cream. It has been stated the world is like a hand and the people are its’ fingers. If you despise or hate one group of people you lose a finger. Also, you lessen your grip on the world.

Arrogance

Some leaders are so confident in their own genius that they cannot imagine other people adding value to their work. This breeds Uniformity! If you dismiss the ideas of others not like you, you will never reach your potential and never understand why.

Personal Insecurities

Insecurities is a very complex issue that may require a Mentor/Coach to help you. One of the best antidotes for personal insecurity is to think about helping other people and putting them first. If your insecurities are driven by other’s strengths or differences – start working on them or you and your team will suffer.

Failing To Be Inclusive

The biggest discussion to have in this point is about including Millennials into your leadership team. They believe that everyone should be at the table of discussion. This can cause real tension for you as a leader if you are not prepared to deal with this matter realistically. Face the fact that by 2025 75% of the workforce will be made up of Millennials. Currently they feel less included and connected with the people in the workplace than other generations. Stop thinking of diversity as gender, age, and race and start thinking about personality, values, and abilities. This is exactly how Millennials see their world.

LINKS

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