“It is not enough to have diversity in a company, it is important to accept and value everyone’s participation and contribution. Even because the benefits of Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace are widely recognized.” – Lia Garcia, Vice-President of the Lisbon MBA Alumni Club, and Marketing Lead Oncology, AstraZeneca, Spain in an article for Jornal Económico.

 

Lia asks what the impact of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) are in the world of work and how leaders can contribute to increasing D&I and reaping more of its benefits. “As leaders, when recruiting new employees or forming multidisciplinary work teams, we should look for people less represented in the organization or in pre-existing teams and with distinct experiences. In the case of candidate selection, we should reduce bias during the process (for example, by hiding the person’s name and personal data in the curriculum vitae).”

 

Lia Garcia writes that it’s not enough to have diversity in a company, it is important to accept and value everyone’s participation and contribution. And to be able to take further advantage of the opportunities that come from D&I, the Vice-President of the Lisbon MBA Alumni Club asks what, we as leaders, can do.

 

According to the Center for Talent Innovation, the six behaviors that leaders can implement to maximize team potential are: make sure everyone feels heard – as leaders, we should lead by example and listen carefully to team members’ ideas and perspectives; give feedback that can be useful; create a safe environment to receive new proposals and riskier ideas; receive and implement feedback; give teams responsible for making decisions and share and celebrate team success.

 

Lia Garcia, Marketing Lead Oncology, AstraZeneca Spain concludes the article by highlighting that the benefits of D&I are widely recognized and the challenges leaders face nowadays will be in the daily implementation to ensure that we invite a diverse team and that everyone is always invited to participate and truly be listened to.

 

 

Read the full article (original) in Portuguese here.

Source: Jornal Económico