Unlocking leadership potential: Measuring the impact of culture and DEI interventions
My passion when joining the Clear Company more than 6 years ago was to create an evidence base around the impact of our solutions. I wanted to draw on our values of courage and pragmatism and be transparent about what worked. To see this into fruition, the team and I have made it our mission to help organisations evidence the impact of their leadership programmes, openly sharing what has and has not worked. If you understand culture change, you won’t be surprised to hear that the answer is not the same for every organisation!
However, there are some consistent themes and challenges. Organisations regularly miss the mark by focusing on short term, task based actions and metrics which don't reflect the deep transformation required for cultural change. My top tip is that if you want to see a difference in three months, don’t bother with learning - just tell leaders what to do! Even though you may get some ‘action’ I can guarantee you will not achieve sustainable change.
Embedding change in the day job of leaders is the only way of achieving true change.
Look at your priorities as a leader and how you can tweak your approach to enhance the culture - could you improve your recruitment, encourage challenge in your decision-making team or build in some time to listen and reflect? I am absolutely confident that one leadership intervention alone will not build a new culture.
Having worked with more than 2,000 leaders in 2023 alone, here are my top tips:
The don’ts:
Don’t focus on set tasks. Allyship shows up differently in us all, so giving all your leaders the same way of being inclusive undermines the diversity of skills and experience that you have in your organisation.
Don’t give all leaders the same culture and DEI objectives. In the same way as the set tasks, one size does not fit all!
Don’t attempt to measure impact through action. The true measure of inclusive leadership is in the representation and experience of different people at all levels in your organisation. However, this is a long term goal; it cannot be achieved in the next business cycle. In the short term, you can monitor action based on a commitment made by leaders, but this should only ever be actions that are unique to each leader. Be prepared to put some effort in!
The do’s:
Do provide a steer on what leaders need to do differently. Ensure these are aligned to your vision and strategy, and manage their expectations that impactful change won’t happen overnight.
Do provide opportunities for self-assessment around their confidence levels and ability to act with impact. This is a great way to start to measure progress in the early stages of the journey.
Do focus on longer term impact measurement. Measuring demographic change, particularly around recruitment and retention is key, but more important still is everyone's experiences as individuals. Only by moving away from homogenous groups and breaking down by demographic, business unit, business function etc. can you establish genuine culture change. Focus groups, network groups and ERGs are ideal for support the quantitative with qualitative by sharing the voice of your employees.
Whilst a workshop is a proven catalyst for change in our work, the true change comes when this becomes part and parcel of organisational operation.
The majority of our leadership programmes are 2-4 days long filled with learning, practicing and trying different approaches. Alongside that, we implement pragmatically focused actions and sessions to test, building confidence and courage to bring back into the shared learning environment.