Simona Catana turned to executive education to increase her confidence after she felt that she was subject to subtle discrimination in her job due to her gender. She remembers being the sole female in a conference and being asked to write notes.
A freelance consultant based in Paris, She previously worked as a salesperson for IP security services in London. “When you’re a woman in a male-dominated industry, it can feel a bit overwhelming,” Catana says. Catana is Romanian.
In December 2020, she was enrolled in the Women’s Leadership Excellence program at ESMT Berlin. Students learn bias, build the leadership skills of others and create an inclusive professional network. Catana was able to leave feeling confident, according to her.
“Having others with whom to share a relationship . . . Reflecting on their experiences and the best way to deal with these difficulties, you realize that you’re not alone, which is incredibly powerful,” she says. “You need to be self-assured to speak up, have initiatives, and come up with new ideas because otherwise, you will just sit quietly and wait for things to happen to you.”
Inclusion, diversity, and equity were already top priorities for executives. However, movements like #MeToo, which protests against sexual harassment, as well as the global Black Lives Matter protests that follow George Floyd’s murder in George Floyd in 2020, have heightened attention on the issues.
The shift in attitudes is now increasing demand for education to aid senior managers in facing the issues and opportunities associated with providing diversity, equity, and inclusion at work and managing effectively across a variety of dimensions, including sexuality, gender, or ethnicity. Research from the academic community that links diversification with higher profits has also sparked interest in this field.
Businesses have responded by introducing new courses designed to help bring about structural and cultural change within the workplace. In the year 2000, King’s Business School announced the development of the program Building Gender-Inclusive Workplaces, developed in collaboration with The Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London.
This comes as shifts in workplace practices triggered through Covid have brought inclusion to the forefront. “Flexibility has been seen as a good thing, but hybrid work can be a nightmare for women,” Says Madeleine Wyatt, reader in diversity and inclusion at King’s Business School, citing the increase in work and home obligations for caregivers and parents.
The King’s program teaches participants — females and males are taught how to remove the systemic barriers to gender equality like informal processes and political structures. “There are issues around networking and women, and people of color can access powerful mentors and sponsorship, two big levers you can pull,” Wyatt explains. Wyatt.
Executives are also working to stop the exodus of employees, dubbed”the “Great Resignation,” driven partly by the increasing importance given to corporate culture.
“There’s been a noticeable uptick of interest from organizations — after the murder of George Floyd and others — in addressing past social injustices by bringing in diverse talent,” says Gary Fraser, associate dean for diversity and inclusion at the New York University’s Stern School of Business. “But they’re considering the metrics and not the actual outcomes when someone is hired. This is the reason we’re having issues with retention.”
Within Fraser’s Leadership for the 21st Century course, Fraser teaches a module that focuses on developing intercultural competence and the ability to work effectively with individuals from diverse cultures. Fraser declares that the most important thing is to understand by having a dialogue about the different dimensions of differences to relate and understand them personally.
“The reason that organizations aren’t able to attain the number of numbers they should regarding women and people of color is that they try to conform to a society which isn’t the person they are. They wear the same uniform every day to work but aren’t in a position to express their true persona.”
Shaheena Janjuha Jivraj, associate professor of business leadership, diversity, and entrepreneurial management at the HEC Paris’s Qatar campus, agrees. “There is this assumption that performance elevation will occur if you build diverse teams,” she claims. “But it’s not so simple. Gains won’t be realized until you begin to fundamentally alter the leadership and culture.”
HEC began its Moving Beyond Equality program in Paris this year. The program aims to foster an intentional approach to curiosity to create an atmosphere of psychological trust and security that allows for risk-taking and creativity can thrive. “This is incredibly difficult for leaders as they shift from being the superhero who knows everything to encourage more conversations and asking questions,” says Janjuha-Jivraj.
Innovation is the goal: Boston Consulting Group research finds that companies with above-average diversification in their management report the revenue from innovation 19 percentage points higher than those with more homogeneous leadership.
Yet, Roberto Fernandez, professor of organizational studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is skeptical of the business case for diversity, noting that correlation is not the same as causality. “If that is driving you, you do so with some peril,” he warns. “If you stray too far from the moral case, you risk losing your social license to operate.”
Fernandez co-invents The leading a Diverse Workforce program at Sloan to foster inclusive, diverse, and productive teams and organizations. The main focus is challenging deeply held beliefs. For instance, many participants believe the gender disparities in leadership result from promotions, when in reality, they’re due to exit and hiring patterns, according to Fernandez.
But bringing up these sensitive topics in the classroom could cause tensions among the students. Like the workplace, managing teams with conflicting views requires a cunning hand. “Managed well, diversity is an asset but managed poorly. It won’t add value.”
