Developing Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion Strategies – Part 2: Gaining Leadership Commitment and Engagement

As I mentioned last week, your diversity and inclusion strategy will not be sustainable without commitment and engagement from top leadership.  There is a difference between commitment and engagement, and you need both.  By definition a commitment is an agreement to do something in the future.  Engagement is the ongoing enthusiastic involvement that harnesses discretionary effort.    Engagement is action now, commitment is a promise to act in the future. You first need the commitment before you will achieve engagement.

I imagine that virtually all CEO’s of major organizations today would espouse to being committed to diversity and inclusion.  However, a much smaller number would actually become engaged.  The following table illustrates the difference between a committed and engaged CEO.

How do you move from commitment to engagement?

1. Ask for it. The CEO must first understand the difference. He/she may not have thought about how vital their active, ongoing role really is in ensuring that diversity and inclusion is integrated, sustained and achieves the goals that you have established.
2. If you are at the stage of being offered the top diversity and inclusion professional job in your organization, before you accept, reach a mutual understanding of the engagement you need from the leader in order to succeed. Follow the same process if a new CEO comes aboard.
3. For those top diversity professionals who do not report directly to the CEO, open access is critical. This can be tricky.  I know of situations where the top diversity professional’s immediate boss is a gatekeeper not allowing access to senior leadership.
4. The top diversity professional should be in regular communication with the CEO, building a trusting and open relationship.  Your role is to facilitate the integration of diversity and inclusion into the fabric of the organization, working closely with the CEO to make the connection to business results.

Because I work with many top diversity and inclusion professionals, I know that many do not have engaged, visible leaders. I also know that many of you do not even have easy access to the CEO.

Those companies that are serious and really want to sustain diversity and inclusion, need to take note of the level of engagement of the CEO. I also believe that diversity and inclusion professionals need to have more courage to not accept roles in which structure will not support sustainable progress.