To lead differently requires grit. In a time where “difference” is still feared and excluded, today’s executive and government leaders must harness grit—which is unwavering courage and tenacity—to model and embrace differences in leadership. Government and industry senior leaders are positioned to continue disrupting the status quo among leadership ranks by creating and cultivating space for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) individuals to lead at all levels in organizations. As a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leader at Magellan Federal, I will share why BIPOC and AAPI leaders are critical to business success and offer ways to help senior leaders diversify those who occupy leadership positions.

Why BIPOC/AAPI Leadership is Business Critical

We all can agree that our world is constantly changing. As a nation, we are more diverse than ever. Still, the group of individuals who occupy leadership positions in many industries is quite homogenous, and the absence of adequate representation across leadership tiers in industries is, unfortunately, not new. Nevertheless, in the wake of a global pandemic, political and social upheaval, and a period that is being called “the great resignation,” the call for representation among leadership has increased and intensified.

Senior leaders are having to re-examine how they perceive and practice leadership to secure the long-term success and health of their organization as employees place greater demands on them to be more diverse and inclusive among leadership ranks. While many senior leaders embrace the idea of diversity, they sometimes grapple with understanding and articulating the nuanced need for and importance of diverse leadership.

One reason more leaders from BIPOC and AAPI communities are critical to the health of organizations is because BIPOC and AAPI leaders—like other people groups—approach leadership from their own diasporic lens. Historically, mainstream leadership in our nation has been largely shaped by Eurocentric ideals, views, and experiences. However, as organizations and businesses become more and more of a microcosm of the diverse world around us, our view and expression of leadership must evolve to reflect the diverse environment in which people work.

Additionally, BIPOC and AAPI leaders are critical to long-term business health because BIPOC and AAPI communities have unique lived experiences that inform how they show up in the workplace. When people come to work, they tend to bring their values, lived experiences, and cultural roots with them to varying degrees. In organizations where difference is embraced and celebrated, individuals are more likely to share their authentic selves, which has the capacity to enrich collaboration and team environments. Moreover, when BIPOC and AAPI leaders have the freedom to lead authentically by leveraging their lived experiences, they can positively contribute to organizational outcomes by modeling and establishing the possibilities of an inclusive culture.

While there are many more reasons BIPOC and AAPI leaders are critical to the health of organizations, it is not enough to simply recognize their importance. Senior leaders must take steps to create and cultivate space for diversified leadership.

How to Diversify Organizational Leadership

For senior leaders, creating space for diverse forms and expressions of leadership will require a great deal of personal introspection along with a commitment to examine the way business is done in one’s organization. The following list is only a handful of actions senior leaders can begin to take to diversify their leadership.

1. Confront Your Embedded View of Leadership. If we are honest, many of us are still discovering and shaping our personal commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Contrary to popular belief, this is good because it takes time. However, senior leaders should proactively and diligently confront their personal views, thoughts, assumptions, and ideologies regarding leadership. We all have embedded cognitive scaffolding that creates mental shortcuts to aid in quick decisions. The consistent mental effort required to work against this scaffolding is admittedly rigorous but is critical to identifying biases and errors in our thinking about leadership.
2. Examine What Behaviors and Attributes are Rewarded. When building culture, it is important to know that in many cases, what leaders reward—consciously and unconsciously—influences what is repeated in the organization. Observe how (or if) divergent, yet productive forms of leadership are positively highlighted. Take note of how the word “leader” is ascribed to behaviors. When someone offers a contrasting view, do you or other leaders verbalize their thought leadership to signal that this is a welcomed form of leadership?
3. Adopt a Positive Psychology (Asset-focus) Lens. Historically, psychology has taken a deficit or pathological view when examining and seeking to understand human thought, effect, and behavior. Such a view is also prevalent in our day-to-day endeavors. We tend to gravitate to what is deemed “normal” and reject what is “different,” leading to the tendency to want to put everyone in a familiar group to reduce their degree of difference. Senior leaders can adopt a positive psychology lens and decide to elevate and affirm differences as strengths or assets instead of requiring individuals to conform to normative or traditional forms of leading that can exclude and disenfranchise entire groups.
4. Examine Who is in Your Proximity. By nature, we tend to interact most with those who are in proximity to us. When we diversify leadership at all tiers in an organization, we diversify who is in proximity to employees. Similarly, as a senior leader, diversifying who is in proximity to you can help broaden your worldview, allow you to see and hear new perspectives, and learn about existing realities among your employees that may not have been previously apparent.

 Conclusion

Since the mid-1800s there have been major advances and iterations of leadership theory. Individuals have made it their life’s work to understand and improve how we lead, and we are making progress, but there is still much more work to do, and it requires conscious effort.

What is abundantly clear is that senior leaders who dare to lead differently are always learning how to lead more inclusively and equitably. To make strides in our diversity among leaders across government and industry, we need to remember that all people groups bring distinction to leadership that is informed by their diasporic lens and current lived experiences. Bringing the collective experiences of all people to the forefront and allowing others to lead who have historically been regulated to only the opportunity of followership, will help engage your employees, and ultimately strengthen your relationships as well as your business. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Introduction

Given these extraordinary times, “resilience” has become a very popular word used to refer to a capacity that can be developed in people to withstand disruption or recover from adversity more quickly and completely. It is important to ensure teams remain ready and able to adapt to increasing demands. Historically, more pressure is put on leaders, especially those who need their teams to continue to perform at a high level when it matters most.

In our experience, organizations and their leaders truly care about their employees and understand that while some individual skills can be self-developed, leaders themselves need tangible strategies to create conditions for resilience development and thriving. If a leader has the tools first, then it is easier to set a good example and have a foundation for transferring these skills to their teams.

Magellan Federal delivers cognitive training and coaching services to over 700,000 Department of the Army personnel and civilians each year. We have gained valuable expertise and insights on implementation strategies that can enhance resilience development. In this white paper, we will detail our unique approach based on experience implementing systems that embolden leadership to invest in their most important asset—their people.

The Problem

Quite often, people are promoted into leadership positions because they excel at their job, which intuitively makes sense since they are likely to be top performers at what they do. What we find overlooked is whether people are ready to lead and influence other people. When they get into a leadership role something shifts and they can’t quite do what you thought and hoped they could.

Additionally, leaders face higher demands than the general worker population because they are responsible for their own performance plus those they lead. It is not uncommon to observe these individuals with higher levels of cortisol, an indication that their bodies are not adapting well to these demands. The ability to respond favorably following increases in demands is an essential quality for sustained readiness in a leadership position. Resilience is a term often used to label this quality, but resilience is a complex concept that is often misunderstood, and therefore treated reactively, not proactively within organizations.

Resilience is personal

Resilience can be defined as resources and processes that combine to restore equilibrium, counter challenges, or transform an individual or group. Resilience is a dynamic construct made up of personal and environmental factors such as hardiness, grit, self-efficacy, social support and other lived experiences and learning that combine uniquely for an individual response. Essentially, we all respond very differently to demands and challenges based on a multitude of individual and social resources. Given that these unique resources and processes are able to be influenced, resilience can change and develop over time.

Since leaders generally experience higher demands and resilience is malleable, Magellan Federal believes it is essential to equip leaders with methods to enhance positive adaptation following adversity, laying a solid foundation for increased resilience across the entire workforce.

Our Solution — Human-Centered Leader Training

Resilience is teachable

Research is clear that leaders play a significant role in the performance, resilience, and wellbeing of their people. Therefore, targeted training and coaching for leaders can be a force multiplier for a resilient workforce.

Our depth of knowledge in the science of cognitive performance is broad and deep, particularly in the psychophysiological mechanisms of learning, thriving, and resilience. We have learned it is valuable to first train leaders, so they are equipped to be resilient themselves and better positioned to support their teams. Leaders then need to be supported and coached how to transfer resilience principles to their peers and subordinates.

Our successful coach-the-coach approach has three tenets: Leading Self, Leading Others, and Leading Teams.

• Leading Self: Helps ensure a wider swath of potential future leaders has the self-management skills which are foundational for Leading Others, particularly through volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Principles include:
  • Personal philosophy, values, and core beliefs (self-awareness)
  • Fueling behaviors and restoration (diet, hydration, movement, sleep)
  • Presence (mindfulness, authenticity, confidence)
  • Psychophysiological regulation (readiness for the task and situation)
  • Mental rehearsal (intentionality, deliberate practice, imagery)
  • Self-motivation
• Leading Others: Provides new and seasoned leaders the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the human side of leadership and how to have the most beneficial impact on the lives of those they lead. Principles include:
  • Build trust (consistent discipline and follow-through through the ability to lead self)
  • Develop psychological safety (transparency and vulnerability, applying presence in communicating with others)
  • Promote growth (feedback, mentoring, peer support)
  • Foster motivation (autonomy, supportive leadership, behavior)
• Leading Teams: Provides senior leaders a necessary opportunity to reflect and recalibrate their internal compass, adjust their approach to leading others at a larger scale, and align both with the goals of the organization so they can move forward with increased intentionality and commitment. Principles include:
  • Executive messaging, modeling, implementing and promoting performance psychology principles across the enterprise
  • Building trust in relationships (consistency in Leading Others across the organization)
  • Mental agility, situational awareness, pattern recognition (consistent yet adaptive)
  • Authenticity & Alignment
  • Cultural awareness and sensitivity

Guidance for Organizations

Focus on manager training and support

Meaningful growth requires the transfer of knowledge, demonstration, practice, feedback, adjustment, and repetition. Expertise is accelerated with the support of a coach who can provide both the right level of challenge or adversity and effective feedback to unlock solutions to overcome these challenges and facilitate growth. We have found our greatest success when we take a human-centered approach, arming leaders not only with foundational knowledge communicated with stories and science, but coaching through authentic interactions.

Organizations should support their leaders by:

• Training leaders on general learning principles and how to effectively teach psychological and interpersonal skills to their teams.
• Providing leaders ongoing coaching support in the following areas for improved thriving and resilience:
  • Establishing a secure base
  • Facilitating connection
  • Building and sharing meaning
  • Enabling growth
  • Reinforcing work-life flow
• Using a holistic approach that values principles of physical fitness, mental fitness, social fitness, and spiritual fitness, as well as targeting opportunities for change by leading self, leading others, and leading teams.

Providing growth opportunities in these areas will fill an often much-needed gap—the human dimension of leadership.

Guidance for Leaders

Based on our experience, we recommend starting with these individual steps to build a more resilient workforce:

• Develop deep personal awareness (e.g., purpose, vision, mission, motives, beliefs)
• Develop personal and team mindfulness practices
• Build systems and practices that help you be intentional with time, both yours and your team members
• Establish regular, if not daily, check-ins with team members
• Develop an understanding of what drives your team members
• Celebrate, cultivate, and grow team members strengths
• Express gratitude authentically and liberally
• Learn and respect team members’ boundaries
• Recognize and address the role of emotion and empathy in the workplace
• When facing change or adversity, reinforce a sense of community and shared meaning

Innovating for the Future: Digital Coaching & Mentoring

Many thought leaders in human performance and resilience lead with high-tech solutions and simulation exercises to accelerate learning and optimize performance. While there is utility in technological advancements, we firmly believe in the power of trusted relationships and high-touch engagement.

Magellan Federal recently piloted a digital training and coaching intervention with midlevel managers in the corporate space. The overwhelming majority noted a desire for ongoing human engagement both with an outside expert coach and with a community group. Unsurprisingly, these leaders felt a strong sense of investment in themselves as people but understood how the content, strategies, techniques, and skills would apply in both their work and personal lives.

We are engaged in product development of digital coaching and mentoring technology that will allow for follow-on support with tactical personnel as they rotate duty stations, deploy, or otherwise distribute geographically. We understand that trust is the bedrock of personal and professional development, and that trust is a uniquely human, high-touch phenomenon. Our vision for the near future is service provision that begins human-centered, customized to the client, augmented with technology that allows our coaches and mentors to remain connected and engaged beyond the training environment, affording individual leaders more timely, relevant coaching feedback.

If you are interested in learning more about Magellan Federal’s Resilience training program, please contact our director of human performance, Dr. Jon Metzler, at metzlerjn@magellanfederal.com.

For a downloadable version of this whitepaper, visit MFed Inform.