Founder & CEO of ExecOnline, an enterprise platform partnered with top business schools to deliver online leadership development programs.
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When was the moment you took your first steps toward business leadership? Was it a tap on the shoulder from someone wanting to sit down and discuss your future? Was it an encouraging pat on the back as you tackled projects of increasing responsibility? Was it participation in an exclusive offsite training?
When an organization recognizes the value of the talent it possesses, it has a competitive advantage. Companies have traditionally focused too much on acquisition to fill their leadership benches. Now, many are realizing having the future-ready leaders they need to execute their specific strategies means providing learning and development opportunities for existing employees.
Leadership development, when done well, can empower people to transition from individual contributors or junior-level leaders into more senior positions. But when an organization fails to provide equitable access to high-quality development opportunities, it does a disservice to underrepresented employee groups and to itself.
Numerous studies have shown diverse organizations are more innovative and attract and retain talent with broader capabilities. Organizations with more diverse teams and leaders are better able to establish trust with partners and clients in a world of increasingly diverse demographics. And organizations with diverse leaders are more profitable. Still, many organizations struggle with diversifying their leadership. What’s happening between the intent and the lack of appreciable progress?
Development Equity: A Definition And Critical New Context
The world is always in some flux, but the 2020 pandemic accelerated many changes, including the skills leaders need to succeed in our new normal. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the global resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, expectations about representation have also accelerated. This means organizations need to embrace these changes or be left behind.
Except it’s not that simple. I define "development equity" as equitable access for underrepresented minorities and women to formalized career-enhancing development opportunities. Unfortunately, many organizations don’t even recognize the disparity in who gets tapped for L&D opportunities, offered high-profile stretch projects or sponsored leadership succession.
In many cases, it’s a matter of unconscious bias. Like most of us, leaders often feel most comfortable seeking out those who remind them of themselves. (More than 70% of sponsors are the same gender or race as their protégés.) Yet, the lack of development equity is a significant barrier to efforts to diversify leadership at all levels.
So, if organizations want real change, they need to establish objective frameworks to assess their actual progress in developing diverse candidates into diverse senior leaders. For example, through my company's Development Equity Council, we’ve partnered with organizations to ensure development equity becomes a powerful tool for improving leadership diversity outcomes across the corporate landscape.
What Doesn’t Get Measured, Doesn’t Get Managed
Organizations are best at driving change when that change is aligned with their mission and expertise. Applying metrics to goals that enhance expertise and competitive positioning increases the likelihood an organization will evolve. There are three key components of development equity that are key to meeting leadership diversity goals:
• Benchmarking: Much of the progress in closing the gender pay gap is attributed to organizations holding themselves accountable by tracking data and benchmarking. The same data-driven approach would make meaningful strides toward development equity. Organizations should be measuring how equitably development opportunities are distributed across multiple categories of identity. And because effective benchmarking is an ongoing process, following best practices can uncover issues, outline new ideas and increase efficiencies in the progress toward diversity goals.
To make a measurable change: Organizations should take the time to build their own data capability or find L&D partners that build measurement into their solutions. Either way, it’s important to be mindful of data privacy concerns and sensitivity around collecting personal data and communicate intentions appropriately.
• Nomination and selection processes: A Corporate Research Forum (membership required) study found 73% of organizations base selections for advancement opportunities on a single subjective nomination. This is not a matter of other employees not proving themselves; it’s that they aren’t part of the informal network that keeps them on the radar of decision-makers.
To make a measurable change: Map your organization’s process and identify areas where subjectivity plays a role. How can you incorporate multiple opinions from a diverse network of individuals? What quantitative aspects can you add to the process to make it more objective?
• Program structure: The two goals of great leadership development are to upskill the leader and provide opportunities for structured visibility in the organization. If someone can't demonstrate to senior stakeholders they can apply what they’ve learned to solve critical business challenges, they won’t change perceptions about their leadership potential. In a Harvard Business Review survey, senior leaders said stretch assignments were key to unlocking opportunities to advance.
To make a measurable change: Look for L&D opportunities with structure. When participants apply learning to a real project, it’s a tangible achievement to present to supervisors and executives for more exposure. Those stretch assignments can then be leveraged into upward mobility for people not previously under consideration for advancement.
Data can drive diversity.
Our new normal is an increased intersection between business and social imperatives, and development equity straddles both. In the past, development opportunities were metered due to perceptions and resources. Now, perceptions are changing, and the shift online has further democratized access, offering quality L&D opportunities at scale at all organization levels.
Part of this change is increased recognition at the C-suite level that leadership development and talent strategy are not just tactical functions; they’re business drivers. And like all other business drivers, their impact can only be fully realized when measured and analyzed.
Organizations that get this right create a long-term competitive advantage as employers of choice who are able to leverage their talent to win. More importantly, organizations that get this right — by moving beyond intention and creating infrastructure and metrics to support true development equity — are the ones that will build the diverse organizations that achieve success today, tomorrow and well into the future.
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