Posted on 04/07/2013 7:14:13 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
How are white male managers doing when it comes to diversity? Great! At least that's what the white male managers said in a recent survey.
What do the non-white, non-male managers think? Not as upbeat.
But according to the study, it's not entirely the fault of white male managers. What we have here, it claims, is failure to communicate.
Lack of candor was a key culprit identified in the "Study on White Men Leading Through Diversity & Inclusion," which compiled results of anonymous surveys of about 700 leaders at eight major companies.
How are white male managers doing when it comes to diversity? Great! At least that's what the white male managers said in a recent survey.
What do the non-white, non-male managers think? Not as upbeat.
But according to the study, it's not entirely the fault of white male managers. What we have here, it claims, is failure to communicate.
Lack of candor was a key culprit identified in the "Study on White Men Leading Through Diversity & Inclusion," which compiled results of anonymous surveys of about 700 leaders at eight major companies.
"This is a baseline, first-of-its-kind study," said Chuck Shelton, the report's author and managing director at Greatheart Leader Labs in Seattle.
Asked to rate the diversity effectiveness among white male leaders in their companies, 45 percent of white men gave a positive rating. Among women and people of color, only 21 percent agreed. Wide gaps were also found in the perception of white men's abilities to coach and improve the performance of diverse employees (33 points difference); build strong, diverse teams (36 points); promote diverse talent on merit (36 points); and include diverse voices in decision making (40 points.)
They are doing great when it comes to being respectful, the survey said, but fall short when it comes to saying what they really think. Too many fear that any criticism or discussion of race or gender will likely get them in trouble, so they avoid it entirely.
Silence can compound the issue. "You don't provide the feedback you would give to the people who look like you," Shelton said. "Ultimately you're discriminating because you're not allowing that person to improve and get ahead."
Shelton has been studying this topic for years and is himself no stranger to the outraged criticism from people with strong reactions to the topic. (For a sample, see the so-called reviews at Amazon of Shelton's 2008 book "Leadership 101 for White Men: How to Work Successfully with Black Colleagues and Customers.")
The survey was taken anonymously by managers at Alcoa, Bank of America, Intel, Exelon, Marsh & McLennan Companies, PepsiCo, Wal-Mart Stores and PWC. About 58 percent of the respondents were white men and about 10 percent of the managers had global responsibilities. Future studies, Shelton said, will focus on making an economic connection between company diversity and their branding, sales, marketing and talent retention.
Alcoa and other big firms that took part in the study said they're eager to use the data to help even their white men to lean into the diversity discussion.
The survey provided the companies with a lot of information to chew on, said Gena Lovett, Alcoa's chief diversity officer. "This is about enhancing our leadership," she said. "You can't fix what you don't know."
While the report revealed encouraging information, she was surprised by some of the gaps. Some managers admitted they had a hard time articulating the business case for creating a diverse workforce.
Now that we know "these are easy to resolve," said Lovett. Easy, she said, because Alcoa already has concrete examples of how diversity impacts the bottom line. They have examples of revenues rising as a business unit grows more diverse and technical innovations when they mix up the team's make-up.
In Alcoa's tech areas, it's very pronounced. "They demand diverse teams. That's the only way they can get innovation," Lovett said. One example she named was the creation of the Dura-brite™ shiny bus wheels that are lightweight and easy to clean. That team was made up of people from several countries, generations and specialities including technicians and plant people.
Also, "Our customers have made it very clear … that they want to see people who look like them," Lovett said, noting that Alcoa is in 31 countries.
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The survey also allows the companies to use numbers where there were previously only anecdotes. "Having that empirical evidence is an eye-opener," said David Thomas, dean of Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Thomas served as a consultant on the study.
He pointed out that the companies that took part in the survey already had good reputations for diversity within their industries. The good reputations, he said, can fool you into thinking everything's fixed. "Diversity is one of those topics in which many people, many companies, they hear the anecdotes and they think they are the exception to the rule," Thomas said.
At McDonough, the MBA program now incorporates work on recognizing unconscious biases, Thomas said.
This isn't going to work for everyone, Shelton said. But "there's a huge group of white men in the middle who are teachable," he said. "That's why the baseline is so encouraging."
This “Diversity” nonsense is a major factor in America’s political, social and economic decline. The Third World is a model of failure and it is a disaster to bring its denizens here and promote them to positions of authority. They bring their failed cultures with them.
We are fast approaching the day when it will be illegal to be a white male in this society.
Ask the Armenians, Jews, Russian "kulaks" etc what comes next.
Sure - Price means nothing so long as there are people on staff who "look like them."
The headline alone told me it was a waste of my time to even read the article.
I’m a white (1/2) male manager and it’s not the diversity, it’s the lack of qualified applicants.
I worked at a place when we heard a woman was going to be hired for a different branch at our apartment. First question (by five different guys) what does she look like?
I’ve gone through miles of resumes and rarely is one a woman.
I have no idea why.
This story is total BS. In any type of survey managers will aways say they are doing things well. Only in liberal fantasyland will people say that they are doing anything less than “good”. My company used to run suverys to find out about perceptions of the company. They quit doing it after having to acknowledge company shortcomings and the wide divergence betwen management responses and employee responses. Managers saw things through rose colored glasses. And guess what...we later dropped off of a best places to work list. LOL
It is difficult to coach and improve performance when you have to deal with people that do not speak the American language and do not share the same American values. Promoting diverse talent on merit? Come on, what does diversity have to do with anything when it comes to merit? As for strong diverse teams, it is very difficult to have a strong team without communication. Words have meanings. It just happens that I use a language that was at one time unambiguous to Americans. Now my words offend diverse people. It is difficult to lead a bunch of diverse people what are pissed off at you. Lastly, it is easy to include diverse voices in decision making, but you have to be able to handle the wrath of making decisions that don't include their "voices".
What a bunch of liberal PC BS! White men are constantly being bullied by liberals in the work place. I just can't convince myself that liberal ways of doing business actually work.
We are fast approaching the day when it will be illegal to be a white male in this society.
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White males are being railroaded out of the American workplace. Just as the liberals like to blame America first, in the workplace its blame the white guys first. The only option left for white guys is to run your own business.
The terrible white man did most of the heavy lifting and thinking to build the nation with the most freedom, most powerful economy, the highest standard of living, to win two world wars, the Cold War and put men on the moon using slide rules and electro-mechanical technology.
Most of that is already lost or on the way to destruction thanks to political correctness and the mindless quest for diversity.
Diversity leads to Detroit, Dearbornistan and eventally we’ll all be living in a Third World cess pit.
“Our customers have made it very clear … that they want to see people who look like them,” Lovett said, noting that Alcoa is in 31 countries.
And this is why in the US, white people have an advantage ( and a disadvantage in many foreign countries)
It is what it is.
The best example of this has to be the popular tv show “the Big Bang theory” It is an excellent show in terms of intelligent dialogue and humor.
But the cast mostly “looks like the viewers” which is overwhelmingly white and occasionally a black person in the background.
This is despite the fact that we are talking about the Cal Tech physics department where Asians are 40% of the students and probably more in the physics dept.
It comes down to that you have to deliver what the customers want (which in the US means white people) and at the same time you want to be fair to your staff which often means not white people.
It is a difficult balancing act.
In the south, it seems now that so many government jobs are controlled by blacks. They do the hiring and they only hire blacks. A white man doesn’t stand a chance at one of these jobs now.
Gollee Gee, Gomer, WHY do you think that could be?
Price means nothing so long as there are people on staff who “look like them.”
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True that. Very good post.
I work at a place that has undergone numerous reorgs just so they can insert the right skin colors and types of people to achieve diversity. Merit has nothing whatsoever to do with any of these promotions. And then the company wonders why morale is not good.
...
45 percent of white men gave a positive rating.
Pardon me, but if only 45 percent rate it even somewhat positive, how does that translate into "Great!" ?
If only 45% of white men liked banana bread, and 21% of women liked banana bread, and even less of other minorities, then you WOULDN"T SERVE BANANA BREAD VERY OFTEN, WOULD YOU?
A white man doesn’t stand a chance at one of these jobs now.
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He wouldn’t want to work for the gubmint anyway unless being suffocated by bureaucracy, becoming an obsequious drone, and mentally withering away are their career objectives.
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