What does a 59-year-old white guy, like me, have to say about diversity? Well, unlike people of color, unlike women, unlike those whose gender preferences span unabashedly beyond the opposite sex, I've actually sat in meetings with the good-old-boys at the top as they discussed, derided, and denounced diversity. There were times when I spoke up and other times when, to my embarrassment, I remained silent.
While diversity in upper management has certainly not been achieved, I am here to tell you that the dialogue at the upper echelons has changed. When I talk and listen to the leaders of today, many of whom are still white men, they are speaking about diversity not as a necessary evil, but as an absolute necessity if their companies are to survive and thrive.
Because we compete in a global economy, U.S. corporations have been forced to trim the fat. Rare today are lavish expense accounts, layers of middle managers who have little to contribute except to interject another layer of bureaucracy, manufacturing lines where three people perform a job that could easily be done by two.
So, as businesses look for the next competitive edge, they are finding diversity as a great way to achieve it. Anyone who has read about baseball before Jackie Robinson or basketball before Wilt Chamberlain knows that an extraordinary talent pool was being ignominiously ignored by team owners in professional sports.
In the same way today, business owners are looking at the diversity in their workforce as more than just a survival mechanism. As they expand the scope of their hiring practices, as they recruit into the tiers of middle and upper management non-white, non-male, non-straight executives, they are finding gifted leaders and managers who are able to devise and implement winning strategies that can motivate people to succeed.
And then how do we, the white males, survive in this new global paradigm? We must embrace it. This is truly the only winning strategy. The world has flattened and there is no turning back. If you haven’t done so, please read Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat or listen to it on audio book on your daily commute. He lays out a lucid, compelling map of the global economy that is already in high-gear.
Certainly, we will have to compete harder, learn to communicate more effectively, to collaborate better in teams, and become more enlightened leaders. And just imagine what a wonderful, transformative thing that would be.
Dennis Tardan is a communications consultant and empowerment trainer. His passion is helping people to communicate their core messages with greater clarity, effectiveness and confidence. His company is Tardan Professional Development and he is based in Texas, USA. www.tardanprodev.com. Write to Dennis at .
