We know that building a diverse team has major benefits. Teams with people of different backgrounds, world views and skill sets tend to be more innovative because they're more likely to bring new ideas to the table. They also make better decisions because team members can see each others blind spots. Many leaders understand this. A Forbes survey of hundreds of executives from the largest global companies, showed that the vast majority believe having a diverse and inclusive work force, is crucial to driving innovation. Beyond that, being inclusive is just the right thing to do. But the unfortunate fact is that diversity initiatives often fail. Let's take a look at why that is, and what you can do about it. To make your team more diverse, the first step is to actually set specific goals. For example, you might set a goal of adding two more minority team members or having 50% women on your team. That's key, because when we focus on abstract values, like we need to be more inclusive, it's much harder to motivate people than when they have a clear target to shoot for. While setting these specific goals is important, they're still not enough to make a diversity initiative work. The research shows that people from non-marginalized groups often feel threatened by diversity programs. That was the take away from a study by UC Santa Barbara researchers, who found that white men going through a simulated job application process, believed that the hiring company would treat them unfairly when they were told that the company was pro diversity. If team members don't feel included in a diversity initiative, they're a lot more likely to be hostile to it and to work against it. To create a sense of inclusion and togetherness, you should try to link your diversity goals to common team or organizational goals. Too often, diversity initiatives are framed negatively as a way to avoid litigation, not positively in terms of how they benefit everyone. So with your team, talk about how getting more unique perspectives will help the organization's bottom line or contribute towards your shared strategic goals. This positive, inclusive framing, helps reduce the us versus them feeling that your team members from dominating groups might feel. Another way to get buy-in for your diversity goals, is to proactively build connections across boundaries on your team. Create positive opportunities for employees to get to know and support one another. This can be through the third place concept that we described in course two. Remember that third place is a separate from the home or the office, like a park or a cafe where the community gathers. Creating a third place through offsite retreats, or even just lunches, can help your team members build connections to each other. You should also consider more formal steps, like a mentoring program, where you make sure to pair mentors with team members from a different race, gender, or other background. When you create these connections, team members will start to see others from a different background as part of their own network or their own tribe, you could say. They'll start to proactively look for ways to support their colleagues, and help them advance, without a team leader or supervisor having to force them to do it. That was Coca-Cola's experience, after a race discrimination lawsuit led them to find better ways to promote diversity and inclusion. One of their most successful initiatives involved recruiting and mentoring across racial boundaries, which led to big gains in salaries and promotions for Black and Latino employees. To summarize, if you can set diversity goals, frame them positively, and build team relationships across boundaries, you're going to have a lot more success in creating an inclusive environment. Next we'll look at how you can attack the biases that threatened diversity efforts.
