It was relatively late in my leadership career when the concept of diversity became something we started talking about. (Or perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention before then.) Mandatory diversity training was directed by the organization I was a part of and I don’t remember thinking much of the information. I don’t think I got it.
A few years later in a CEO role I recall a conversation with a younger, African-American member of our staff who became a mentor to me. She was the first to suggest to me the potential role of implicit bias in our employee evaluation process. At first, I pushed back. But I can remember the feelings as her words sank in and I realized she might be right: about our organization and about me. It was a significant emotional moment. I remember where I was standing in my office.
What she said resonated with a concept I had long believed. It was best summarized in an article I stumbled across about an obscure lung disease early in my pulmonology career: “We see only what we look for; we look for only what we know” (Sosman MC, et al. Am J Roentgenol Radium Ther Nucl Med 1957;77:947-1012). We don’t see what we’re not looking for. I think I was beginning to get it.
As the hospital’s senior leader I noticed that most of the faces around our board table looked just like mine; consistent with about 85% of all hospital executives. Our organization and our patients had a very different demographic and I began specifically looking for leadership candidates who did not look like me in race or gender. I had resolved that it was a matter of bad “optics.” At a minimum, a leadership team that doesn’t reflected the diversity of the organization won’t inspire young leaders from different groups to seek positions of responsibility.
But just settling with optics as the reason for diversity also makes the fundamental mistake of assuming that people who look alike are alike. It assumes that all you need to achieve diversity in leadership is to add people who are different than the majority to make the team look good. But you can have bad optics with a team that looks bad or with a team that merely looks good for the sake of appearance. I realize now that I was missing the point about optics.
It was sometime later, perhaps after working in Africa a few times and then settling into a neighborhood where I am the minority that I feel like I am finally beginning to understand.
The lack of diversity in healthcare leadership is a matter of optics.
But it’s not a matter of looking bad. It’s a matter of seeing badly.
A diverse representation of demographic groups and gender at the executive table brings the ability for the entire leadership group to see the issues of the workforce, the patient population and “customers” more clearly and in ways that would be impossible without the range of perspectives.
Diversity is the lens through which the leadership team can look more deeply into the challenges and experiences of a particular group and community (microscopic) and can look farther into the future in envisioning better ways to address the populations’ challenges (telescopic). Inclusion is the willingness and openness of the team to look through all of the different lenses.
I guess I was right about the optics, but was initially wrong about vision. I am still pretty shortsighted at times and I will never say that I completely “understand” or that I get it. That is a conclusion best drawn by others.
But things are becoming clearer.
Chuck Callahan Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front https://henryv43.wordpress.com/
Henry V 4.3 