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Structural Inclusion: Confronting the Reference Man Norms That Leave Most of Us Out
MEET THE REFERENCE MAN. THIS PERSON, OR rather this concept, has influenced our lives in more ways than we realize. Inclusive leaders must confront the Reference Man’s legacy of creating default structures, processes, and norms designed for a very narrow range of humanity.
First introduced in 1975, the Reference Man concept was devised to simplify calculations of radiation exposure. It went on to be used in research models of nutrition, pharmacology, population, and toxicology. Intended to personify all of humanity, the Reference Man was in fact defined in very specific terms: male, twenty-five to thirty years old, 154 pounds, five feet six inches tall, Caucasian, with a Western European or North American lifestyle.
The bias toward young, able-bodied White men can be found in every corner of the designed world. Ever wondered why the line for the women’s toilet is always longer than for the men’s? It’s because the design of women’s restrooms does not take into account their specific needs.
The same biases can be seen in thermostat settings in office buildings, the height of top shelves, the position of light switches, the size of safety masks, the shape of body armor, and the dimensions of crash-test dummies, not to mention clinical drug trials and chronic disease research, where 80% of the cells used are from males. They have even made their way into many elements of digital hardware and software design, from smartphone grips and keyboard key size to voice recognition algorithms.
THE WORLD IS STILL BUILT FOR MEN
VOICE RECOGNITION DEVICES |
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Many voice recognition systems fail to work for female users. Why? It appears that they have been designed to recognize a male voice. This was exemplified by one user’s report that after five failed attempts of trying (and failing) to get her voice recognition system to call her sister, she lowered the pitch of her voice. And it worked the first time. |
APPLE’S SIRI |
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When Apple launched its artificial intelligence system, Siri, it could help you if you’d had a heart attack, but if you told it you’d been raped, it replied, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘I was raped.’” |
MAP APPS |
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Map apps fail to account for women who may want to know the safest, in addition to the fastest, routes. |
HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEMS |
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When Apple launched its health monitoring system in 2014, it boasted a “comprehensive” health tracker. It could track blood pressure, steps taken, blood alcohol level, even molybdenum and copper intake. But Apple forgot one crucial detail: a period tracker. |
FITNESS MONITORS |
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One study of twelve of the most common fitness monitors found that they underestimated steps during housework by up to 74% and underestimated calories burned during housework by as much as 34%. Today, women still do the majority of the housework, so this really matters. |
CAR SEATS AND SAFETY |
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Modern car seats are designed based on male crash-test dummies and are too firm to protect women in accidents. The seats throw women forward faster than men because the back of the seat doesn’t give way for women, who average lighter and smaller bodies. Women also tend to sit farther forward when driving, making their legs more vulnerable in an accident (given the angle that their knees and hips sit). And they have less muscle in their necks and upper torso, making them up to three times more vulnerable to whiplash. So while more men than women are involved in car crashes, women are 17% more likely to die in one.1 |
Adapted from Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (New York: Abrams Press, 2019). Used with permission.
Talent systems have been as susceptible to design biases as any of these other examples. In the past, many human resource leaders embraced a one-size-fits-all approach, convinced that it was the most efficient and effective way to manage hiring, performance, advancement, and reward, particularly as organizations grew and became more global. And indeed, they also believed it would create equality.
Perhaps inevitably, the “one size” in question turned out to be HR’s equivalent of the Reference Man. In this way, unconscious biases were built into talent systems and have served to preserve glass ceilings and to perpetuate unequal outcomes in access, opportunities, support, and rewards.
UNCONSCIOUS BIAS TRAINING IS NOT ENOUGH
Unconscious bias training has been dominating D&I efforts in almost all major corporations—and with good reason, as we’ve seen. This scientifically grounded approach has improved self-awareness and has helped many to admit their biases without feeling judged. But the evidence suggests that unconscious bias training in and of itself has not done much to break down the barriers holding back traditionally underrepresented talent. Glass ceilings remain firmly in place—even in companies that have invested heavily in unconscious bias training—especially for people from racially and ethnically underrepresented groups.
Perhaps this should come as no surprise. Unconscious bias is only one small piece of the puzzle. For organizations to ensure that their D&I investments deliver results, they must take a more comprehensive approach to diversity and inclusion. This starts with driving personal transformation in their leaders and employees by enabling individuals not only to recognize unconscious bias but also to counter and mitigate it. We call this behavioral inclusion.
In addition, organizations need to transform themselves at a systemic level, reexamining and reshaping their talent processes to ensure they are fair and equitable. We call this structural inclusion. Behavioral inclusion optimizes performance through social sensitivity and psychological safety; structural inclusion does it through a process that allows for equal contribution of all team members. Both are critical to enhancing the collective intelligence, decision-making and problem-solving abilities, and creativity of diverse teams working on complex tasks.
Behavioral inclusion training leads individuals on a journey of self-discovery, alerting them to the biases that hamper their decision- making and equipping them to act on this newfound self- awareness by behaving in a more consciously inclusive way.
Typical behavioral inclusion exercises draw on powerful neuro-science research to expose our difficult-to-deny biases in dimensions such as race, gender, age, culture, sexual orientation, and physical and mental abilities. These exercises are highly effective at inducing aha moments in participants, enabling them to recognize unconscious biases that have been influencing their attitudes, actions, and decisions about others.
Many behavioral inclusion programs stop at this point in the process, but individuals can only benefit from their self-awareness journey if they work on building counterbias capabilities as well. This means acquiring the skills, competencies, tools, and techniques that turn awareness into moment-to-moment actions, that help people go from micro rejections to micro affirmations and from micro inequities to micro equities, and to make judgments on a deep understanding and appreciation of difference.
Such a shift in behaviors can be achieved by designing a learning journey that allows participants to practice counterintuitive and consciously inclusive ways of dealing with familiar work situations such as interviewing, mentoring, performance management, and conflict resolution. As you’ll read in the upcoming section on “fit,” these work experiences tend to be rife with culturally reinforced, unconsciously biased responses and can lead to decisions and actions that prevent all talent from reaching its full potential.
Currently, unconscious bias tends to be the focus of behavioral inclusion efforts. But it is by no means the only issue at play. Organizations serious about behavioral inclusion must also address power structures, privilege dynamics, and diversity of social networks. Research conducted by the internationally recognized Dr. Sukhvinder S. Obhi, Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior at McMaster University in Canada, has shown how power interferes with inclusive behaviors and produces negative effects on leaders’ brains.
His work, along with that of other researchers around the world, has shown that power can increase stereotyping, reduce the tendency of the brain to simulate the experiences and behaviors of others, reduce empathy, and impair risk perception. In Dr. Obhi’s words, “It is imperative that leaders fully understand how power can affect them if they don’t use it mindfully. Once such understanding is gained, strategies for the more effective use of power—to create positive change—can be leveraged to move the organization toward better outcomes.”2
INCLUSIVE LEADERS SUCCESSFULLY ENROLL MIDDLE MANAGERS
STRUCTURAL INCLUSION AT WORK ■ Barry Callender, Atlanta
One of the most debilitating realities in companies who declare they are fully committed to diversity and inclusion, and who have invested many resources in it, is the lack of middle management proactively engaged in the D&I efforts. This is a root cause gap, because middle managers are the ones who have the most direct impact on the experience of underrepresented talent. As a result, some people are not fully supported or developed, their talents aren’t fully utilized, and their career expectations aren’t met.
Senior management cannot sit back, admire its visionary enterprise-level D&I strategy, and assume that middle managers will make it happen automatically. Instead, senior leaders must demonstrate inclusive leadership with their managers to enroll them as inclusive managers. Here are three common reasons why middle managers resist such enrollment, and what inclusive senior leaders can do to address them.
Middle managers have difficulty understanding the connection between their objectives and the organization’s D&I objectives.
Typically, many middle managers will complain, “My evaluation is based on productivity, quality, and safety, not D&I. Of course, we should hire more women and minorities and treat everyone fairly, but I can’t focus on everything.” This is a challenge senior leadership must address, ideally before launching the D&I strategy.
First, senior leaders can articulate how D&I is good for the organization, and the critical role of middle managers in achieving and making D&I successful. This is because middle managers are responsible for motivating employees to serve, process, build, and design on a daily basis. Next, explain precisely how success will be measured—for example, by on-time performance, employee engagement scores, customer satisfaction, or rework. Research has proven that all of these can be improved when diverse teams are managed inclusively.
Middle managers are often promoted for their technical proficiencies, not leadership skills.
Creating an inclusive workplace for a diverse workforce brings a level of complexity to management that most middle managers have never considered. Diversity can be even more daunting because, unlike many other aspects of leadership, managers can’t figure it out on the job. If they make a mistake, they understandably feel they have risked offending someone or, worse yet, are actually accused of inappropriate behavior, harassment, or discrimination.
The first step is to provide middle managers with basic talent management skills, including how to manage the careers of the employees who report to them. Diversity and inclusion then needs to be integrated into these fundamental managerial tasks. This kind of integrated training goes a long way in increasing manager effectiveness as well as trust levels between managers and their employees.
Middle managers sometimes believe that diversity does not apply to them because their teams are homogeneous.
To many middle managers, the initial goals and communication around D&I often sound like a new spin on affirmative action—a focus on gender and race—leading to responses like “We have a great team and everyone gets along. What’s wrong with that? The junior person has been here ten years; we all grew up in the same area, have similar cultural backgrounds, love sports, and we’re all family guys. I don’t want to mess around with a formula that works by complicating things with ‘diversity.’”
Combine this mentality with a limited understanding of the less obvious elements of diversity and you have a middle manager who doesn’t see the need to become an active participant.
It’s critical to help middle managers focus on the business and performance benefits of diversity. Are they aware of and can they articulate the different thinking, communication, and work styles of their direct reports? How effective are they at leveraging those differences to foster innovation, creativity, and productivity? Can they identify how unconscious biases show up on their teams and how it affects worker engagement and productivity?
Senior leaders can also emphasize that the ability to successfully manage a diverse workforce is a prerequisite for senior leaders of the company. To that end, managing different teams in different areas should be a part of the company’s leadership development program, increasing the chances that potential senior managers will have led teams with all ranges of diversity.
Behavioral inclusion does indeed help individuals to internalize inclusive behaviors. But what if the organizational structures in which they operate are preventing them from acting in a truly inclusive way?
This is why this other element of structural inclusion is essential for transformation.
Many of the talent systems and processes supposedly designed to optimize human performance are in fact riddled with built-in biases. And while those biases may have been introduced unintentionally, that hasn’t stopped them from undermining the progress of traditionally underrepresented talent at a deep and systemic level.
How do we know this? Just look at the absurdly skewed demographics of the world’s C-suites and boards. Consider the fact that only 7% of current Fortune 500 CEOs are women (and 7%, astonishingly, represents an all-time high). Whenever Korn Ferry conducts disparity assessments of performance ratings or promotability, our findings are very consistent. No matter the industry, the pattern is almost always the same: everything else being equal, women are promoted at a lower rate and paid less than men, and members of racially and ethnically underrepresented groups are promoted less, paid less, and rated lower on performance than White people.
The presence of these exclusionary forces means that it is not enough simply to equip people with counterbias capabilities. Without also addressing the biases of the systems in which individuals operate, you are, so to speak, jogging in a smog-choked city. Addressing systemic biases is what structural inclusion is designed to do.
THE THREE PILLARS OF STRUCTURAL INCLUSION
If you want to build a truly diverse and inclusive organization, you need to transform the organization as a whole—the people, through behavioral inclusion, and the processes, through structural inclusion. We often use a traffic analogy to describe how behavioral and structural inclusion work together. Behavioral inclusion is about everyone learning to be good drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians who abide by the rules and exercise good judgment as they encounter unexpected traffic situations. Structural inclusion is about ensuring that there is proper signage and that there are traffic stoplights, well-marked lanes, speed bumps, and law enforcement to channel people toward desirable actions and decisions. Both are essential for a safe and efficient road system.
While behavioral inclusion focuses on the mindset and capabilities of individuals, structural inclusion requires an organization-wide approach leveraging the three pillars of equality, equity, and inclusive design (figure 6).
Equality is the promise that no one will be favored or disfavored because of who they are or because of any dimension of diversity. It ensures fairness for everyone and represents a deeply held belief in meritocracy. Organizations can pursue this aspiration through their values and codes of ethics and by instituting nondiscriminatory policies and practices in hiring, assessment, promotion, and rewards.
Figure 6. The three pillars of structural inclusion.
Equity is about answering the question of whether the promise of equality was fulfilled. When not, and this is usually the case, equity then becomes about righting past wrongs. It recognizes that not everyone has had equal opportunity to compete in and benefit from the dominant system. People from certain backgrounds start off with unearned advantages or disadvantages that perpetuate inequities in access, rewards, opportunity, and support.
To go back to our traffic analogy, equality is about all road users being largely governed by the same rules (stop at red traffic lights, indicate when turning, and so on), whether they’re driving a car, a truck, a motorcycle, or a bus. The rules have been created to ensure efficiency and safety for all, and nobody wants to see the law favoring one person or group over another.
Equity, meanwhile, is about rectifying the reality that not everyone is able to take equal advantage of the traffic system. This will involve countering the disadvantages faced by certain types of road users by introducing measures such as special parking areas for cyclists, beeping crosswalk signs for people with impaired sight, special lanes for carpoolers, and elevators in subway stations for those with mobility limitations.
If companies are serious about achieving fairness for all, they must first explore every aspect of their talent processes to identify potential inequities and their historical root causes. They can then be eliminated, or at least significantly reduced. To make the outcomes of, and the interplay between, equality and equity possible, organizations need to apply inclusive design.
To pull it all together, real transformation requires a broader set of behavioral inclusion interventions to address barriers to inclusion, including helping individuals to develop counterbias capabilities, or conscious inclusion. Structural inclusion also is needed to ensure that behavioral inclusion sticks—and that means a focused effort to right legacy inequities and, through inclusive design, to establish systems and processes that prevent unconscious bias from happening in the first place.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DEFAULT PERSON
Concerns about the ethical and commercial perils of the Reference Man are not new. Early pioneers include Jutta Treviranus, the founder and Director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University in Toronto, who began exploring the dynamics of exclusionary design in digital products way back in 1993. Focusing initially on disability inclusion, the center developed a set of inclusive design principles that went on to influence thinking at companies such as Microsoft, where it ultimately led to the formation of the Microsoft Inclusive Design team, whose own set of best practice standards are now available open source.
Inclusive design rejects the Reference Man paradigm and recognizes instead this simple truth: there is no such thing as a default person. As the Microsoft Inclusive Design team explains in its manual: “The interactions we design with technology depend heavily on what we can see, hear, say, and touch. Assuming all those senses and abilities are fully enabled all the time creates the potential to ignore much of the range of humanity.”3
Whether you’re designing a workplace, a transport system, or a virtual reality headset, the goal should be to address the needs of all potential users, starting with the most marginalized and excluded populations. This allows you to produce more elegant and streamlined designs that benefit a wider range of humanity. From the Microsoft team again: “Everyone has abilities, and limits to those abilities. Designing for people with permanent disabilities actually results in designs that benefit people universally.”
Think about how those curb ramps for people with disabilities have also made life better for joggers, cyclists, and parents with strollers. Closed captioning, which was created for the hard-of-hearing community, now enables everyone to follow the action in loud sports bars or crowded airports. The high-contrast screen settings that make it possible to read a Kindle in bright sunlight were originally made for people with vision impairments. And what do you think inspired remote controls?
Inclusive design is the antidote to exclusion. As Kat Holmes, one of the leading thinkers on inclusive design, writes in Mismatch, “Ask a hundred people what inclusion means and you get a hundred different answers. Ask then what it means to be excluded and the answer will be uniformly clear: ‘It’s when you’re left out.’”4
It is for this reason talent systems must stop being designed for the default user and instead home in on finding and designing for the overlooked user.
Here are our four core principles of inclusive design for talent systems, inspired by the original inclusive design principles developed by the Inclusive Design Research Centre.
1. DEFINE EQUALITY
The value of equality is enshrined in most vision statements, codes of ethics, and nondiscrimination policies. But what does equality actually mean? The answer will vary from organization to organization. Inclusive design journeys should therefore begin with an explicit, self-reflective exploration and declaration of what kind of equality the organization stands for and how equality manifests itself in talent management practices and processes. The organization must then ensure that its aspirational statements, guidelines, and policies all support this declaration. They must be clear about the nonnegotiables that are expected of every leader, manager, and employee, and about the rules, standards, and guidelines that will ensure that no one is favored or disfavored on the basis of who they are.
2. UNEARTH INEQUITIES
Many of today’s organizations are inadvertently creating and perpetuating disparities through their talent systems. Our second inclusive design principle is to unearth those inequities and discover whether there is “fault in the default.” This can be achieved by examining the data and by exploring the experiences of overlooked talent groups—experiences that can be difficult and even painful. Is the organization living up to its commitments on equality? Do all have the same opportunities, access, support, and rewards? Is all talent being paid equally for equal work?
■ Access. Do employees have equal access to resources, leaders, programs, and other tools they can leverage to achieve their full potential?
■ Opportunity. Do employees have equal opportunity to experience short-term, high-visibility developmental projects or job postings?
■ Support. Do employees get equal support in learning new skills, receiving constructive and honest feedback, and being mentored, sponsored, and advocated for?
■ Rewards. Do employees enjoy equal rewards for comparable impact, and are contributions to the organization always fairly recognized?
3. LEARN FROM DIVERSITY
The only way to break away from the Reference Man and ensure that inequities are not perpetuated is to modify or create systems using input from all users—from the mainstream to the overlooked. This requires a humancentric and empathetic approach. Designers must be curious about people’s vast differences and consider the needs, wants, and aspirations of the most excluded user rather than simply assuming similarity and building their solutions around the lowest common denominator.
4. SOLVE FOR ONE, BENEFIT ALL
Science and experience are showing us that if we can make something work for the exception, then we will end up with a better design for all. Similar successes can be achieved in talent system designs if we specifically address the needs of overlooked users, those whose experiences, mindsets, and visibility are in the minority. But addressing their more intensive needs due to legacies of unfairness and marginalization actually yields a better design for all.
By applying these four inclusive design principles, organizations can develop talent systems and processes that are free from legacy inequities and inclusive of all human differences. The ultimate aim, of course, is to create equality for everyone.
Inclusive leaders understand why these levers are essential and also hold their organizations accountable to inclusive designs that support structural inclusion.
HOW FIT DESTROYS DIVERSITY
As an example of structural exclusion let’s look at one prevalent outcome of the Reference Man’s legacy on talent systems: the unchallenged concept of “fit” when it comes to assessing, hiring, and promoting candidates. How often have we heard the dreaded deal breaker: “She just was not the right fit”?
“What made them not a fit?” is something inclusive leaders are asking more frequently. The answers arise from any number of subjective impressions, such as “the way they talk”—whether they have a non-American accent or because they use more or different words than the typical young, able-bodied White male. These subjective impressions often represent the Greatest Hits of unconscious bias excuses.
KAPOR CAPITAL: FUNDING THE POWER OF TRANSFORMATIVE IDEAS AND DIVERSE TEAMS
One example of a structural inclusion mindset that defies the Reference Man concept comes from the social venture capital investment firm Kapor Capital, which has $350 million in assets under management.
In an investment world where very little capital in the United States goes to start-ups owned by women and people of color (in 2017 and 2018, women received a mere 2.2% of venture capital funding),5 Kapor Capital is committed to countering this inequity. The investment firm puts its money on the powerful combination of transformative ideas and diverse teams to solve real-world problems for millions.
“Our entrepreneurs come from all walks of life. We believe that the lived experiences of founding teams from underrepresented backgrounds provide a competitive edge. Their experiences inform the questions they ask and the problems they identify that give rise to profitable, tech-driven solutions,” says Freada Kapor Klein, partner at Kapor Capital and founder/Board Chair of SMASH.
Their portfolio tells a story of Kapor Capital achieving its mission. According to their website:
■ 60 out of 102 investments (59%) have a founder who identifies as a woman and/or an underrepresented person of color
■ 38% of their first-time investments have a founder who identifies as a woman
■ 34% of their first-time investments have a founder of a racially underrepresented background and
■ 25% of their first-time investments have a founder of Asian ancestry6
Kapor Klein—who is one of four cofounders of a multiracial, multiethnic investment team—describes a consistent philosophy that permeates the various entities and nonprofits housed in the Kapor Center in Oakland, California. In addition to Kapor Capital, the center also houses its signature program, SMASH, a three-year STEM-intensive residential college prep program that empowers students, most of whom are Black and Latinx, to deepen their talents and pursue STEM careers.7 Half of their graduates go to the top 1% colleges and universities.
Also at the center are various of the incubating start-ups Kapor Capital is funding or that need a place to set up shop. These various streams form a “beehive” that is precisely intended to provide access, opportunity, support, and reward to those who have been overlooked by the systems currently in place.
Kapor Klein explains some of the key methods that have led them to defy standard practice:
I’ve been a champion of linking stories and data, because neither one works alone. Stories are anecdotes, not data, and data can be soulless or faceless and intellectual. We have full-time researchers who have put out various landmark studies, one of which is on inequity in access to education in science, technology, engineering, and math in California. Is it a pipeline problem or a bias problem? It turns out that, through a combination of stories and data, the answer is that it’s both. In the entire state, there was a total of only thirty-nine African American girls who took AP classes in STEM. Then we look at big places like Google and say that, yes, there is a pipeline problem that reflects racism by requiring certain credentials, which only perpetuates the biases.
So Kapor Capital invested in a company called interviewing.io, with a platform for anonymous technical interviews, where applicants can do practice interviews with big companies like Uber. When they are comfortable, applicants can unmask themselves. When they do, they show that they are qualified candidates who had previously been rejected at the résumé level without even receiving a phone screening interview.
The Kapor Center’s beehive of structural inclusion has become self-replicating; in helping individuals gain the skills and opportunities they need, they also are infusing those individuals with the same sense of mission to innovate to create products and services that will benefit the many.
For Kapor Klein, inclusive leadership means tying together social justice, human need, and economic prosperity for all: “I have a visceral and historic sense that none of us are free until all of us are free.”
As organizations seek to hire stellar talent, much emphasis is placed on the required qualifications for success in the role, but come interview and selection time, cultural fit or a lack thereof begins to weigh heavily. The intangibles of personality, educational influences, and personal interests become part of the compare-and-contrast of the various candidates.
Even when interviewers use behavior-based interviews and objective competencies designed to mitigate bias, various studies prove that subjectivity has a much greater influence on who gets selected than most want to admit. One such study of management consultancies and law firms, by Kellogg School of Business Associate Professor of Management and Organizations Dr. Lauren Rivera, demonstrated that interpersonal affinity, such as liking the candidate, sharing interests with them, or being able to picture socializing with them, weighed heavily in the hiring manager’s final decisions. It’s what Rivera refers to as the stuck-in-the-airport test (Can I picture hanging out with this person?), and it becomes just as vital as qualifications and experience.8
Additional studies provide hard data showing the influence of other biases in hiring.9 The National Bureau of Economic Research, for instance, sent identical résumés to the same organizations, changing only the names. They found that résumés that had Anglo-Saxon names had a 50% higher callback rate than those with “ethnic sounding” names.
The results underscore how overemphasizing fit can have business consequences that extend beyond optics. Organizations’ investment of millions of dollars to achieve greater diversity and inclusion end up suboptimized as homogeneous hiring continues. The result? More groupthink at a time when businesses need new ideas and innovation.
But there are some understandable reasons for the prevalence of hiring for cultural fit. Korn Ferry Institute research in 2019 found that 40% of new senior executive hires typically leave after eighteen months, so the risk of hiring someone who is different is high. And, to be sure, cultural fit still has an important place in the criteria used in hiring decisions. So let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater but instead apply inclusive design to try to resolve the dilemma.
Fundamentally, the “hiring for fit” concept needs to be redefined. What counts as a real requirement for success must be separated from what is tradition, a preference, or even bias. Is being a great addition to a golf foursome a genuine requirement for success? What about the ability to socialize outside the office? Does the candidate really need to have a degree from the University X (where others on the team attended), or could a candidate from a different program bring a fresh perspective?
The key question to ask is, “If we hire this person, what will they be adding to the mix?” Think of it as akin to financial portfolio theory, where diversification is a key to maximizing returns.
In a collaborative effort with Tim Vigue, now D&I Director at Pixar, we identified different types of fit worth considering: business imperative fit, complementary fit, and future fit.
■ Business imperative fit is when new types of leaders with new skills make a better fit for organizations undergoing business model shifts, such as a financial institution expanding from commercial to retail banking. In these cases, there is less of a need for new talent that fits the current mold of leadership. In fact, those very leaders who had fit so well must now adapt.
■ Complementary fit is when candidates possess a key difference from the existing team that could stimulate new ideas. A culture that has been dominated by type A personalities maybe needs the counterweight of more reflective types. A tight command-and-control hierarchy at a beer manufacturer may require more facilitative leaders to better manage a younger generation that is more egalitarian and collaborative. A hospitality chain that has primarily catered to middle-aged male executives probably needs more female marketing leaders and design specialists. A car company that has negligible penetration in fast-growing racially and ethnically diverse communities would benefit from diversifying its line managers and product designers.
■ Future fit reflects the need for candidates who possess new skills, experiences, and approaches that will enable the organization and its teams to meet emerging challenges as the business environment evolves. For a team that is shifting from being measured on its efficiency to its ability to solve for customer needs, future fit may be about being curious and collaborative instead of structured and directive, for example.
Cultural fit will always be important. It’s natural for people to want to be around those they feel are easy to work with. There is a very real human, even biological, basis for being attracted to people just like ourselves. Plus, the risk of creating disruption in senior leadership by hiring a nontraditional candidate is real.
In a previous era, this logic served companies well enough. But no longer. In today’s hyperdiverse world, the Reference Man simply does not fit anymore—if it ever did.
Inclusive leaders must do the work to dismantle his legacy.
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