No Bullsh*t Leadership by Chris Hirst

Author:Chris Hirst [Hirst, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2019-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

Ensure equality of opportunity

A leader must understand that some ‘accepted’ aspects of how organisations are traditionally run (the idea of a fixed working day, for example) make life very difficult for some people, and that’s bad news for the overall effectiveness of the team. A typical example involves childcare. It remains the case that childcare responsibilities in most families fall more on women than men (and not just when children are babies). These are large-scale societal issues, but leaders can focus on these and find both structural and cultural solutions to allow people (both men and women) to work effectively and still be great parents. This is a huge topic, and there is not the space here to begin to do it justice, but it would be remiss for a ‘healthy leader’ (more on that in Chapter 7) not to focus hard on this type of question. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but crucially because it will lead to a better, more effective culture where more of your best and brightest are able to perform at their peak more of the time. And they can do that because you are enabling the different aspects of their life to cohabit rather than compete.

Leaders striving to build a healthy working and cultural environment should focus on three key questions, overlaying them across their team and its future requirements. They are:

1. How do we ensure we recruit the most able people?

2. How do we ensure we retain our most valuable people?

3. How do we ensure we promote our most deserving people?

They seem like obvious questions, but in reality the majority of organisations struggle to do these well and fail to grasp the fundamental importance of ensuring equality of opportunity for everybody against each of these. The fundamental error many teams make is to assume that the individual must bend their life to fit within the defined parameters of the team rather than the organisational culture understanding that people-centric solutions will make it better able to attract and retain the best.

In building and maintaining her team, the leader’s objective is to ensure equality of opportunity for all: talent and cultural fit should be the only determinants. But it’s easier said than done – and certainly a complacent, ‘We do it how we’ve always done it’ approach will rapidly be exposed. Addressing with fresh eyes these three seemingly familiar questions is also enlightened self-interest. If you want to be the best, you need the best people, and if you lose close to 50 per cent of your workforce once they start to have families or you only hire people from narrow sections of society (for example) then you’re going to underperform against your potential and increasingly in comparison with others – especially as many are starting to find effective new solutions to these questions.

For example, the gender pay gap that exists in many organisations is the result of failures in the retention and promotion of senior women. Understanding this allows the creation of focused strategies and actions to reduce the gap.

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