diversity
“PART OF THE PROBLEM WITH OUR SOCIETY IS THAT THERE ARE A LOT OF
PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE WE ALREADY HAVE EQUALITY WHEN WE DO NOT.”
– CATHY GALLAGHER-LOUISY
Gender intelligence is about understanding that men and women
are inherently different but that they bring equally valuable
perspectives to the table. Cathy Gallagher-Louisy is the senior
director, Consulting, at the Canadian Centre for Diversity and
Inclusion (CCDI). She says that building gender intelligence
within work teams is critical to finding the best solutions to
problems.
“A lot of research has shown that diverse perspectives enhance
a leadership team, or any kind of team,” she said. “The gender
intelligence piece of team-building is making sure you have different
people with different qualities and life experiences who
can bring these things to the team to develop better solutions.”
Barbara Annis is an expert on inclusive leadership through
gender and cultural intelligence and the founding partner of the
Gender Intelligence Group (GIG).
“We’ve been working on gender equality in Western society
for over 40 years, equating to two things. One is a numbers game.
The other is the idea that men and women are more or less the
same,” said Annis. “Gender intelligence is about differences, that
men and women may not be equal in numbers but they’re equal
in value.”
UNDERSTAND AND KNOW
Although gender intelligence isn’t necessarily a new concept, it
isn’t something that all organizations are willing to foster just
yet.
“Part of the problem with our society is that there are a lot of
people who believe we already have equality when we do not,”
said Gallagher-Louisy. “There are demonstrated disadvantages
and barriers for certain groups to succeed. For example, the experience
of a white woman is very different from the experience
of a lesbian woman of colour.”
Yet, people are beginning to look beyond equality and see the
importance of inclusion.
“Now, I really see a shift,” said Annis. “We want to create cultures
that value differences, cultures where people feel valued
and included.”
It’s the existence of barriers and the idea of sameness that
gender intelligence works to dismantle so that everyone has an
opportunity to be heard and understood.
Gender intelligence within an organization is about gaining a
deep level of knowledge through study.
“We do a lot of measurement and analytics with companies
to understand the issues in that company and the cultural competence
of their leaders,” said Gallagher-Louisy. “We look at
demographics in hierarchical levels, different regions and types
of jobs to see if there are gaps against what you’d expect. We do
focus groups and interviews so we can get really specific around
the experiences people in the organization are having to show
the leadership team what’s actually happening.”
Annis says that GIG incorporates a model they call Knowledge,
Strategy and Intelligence (KSI) to assist organizations in getting
started with gender intelligence.
“What we’ve found over the last 27 years is that companies
tend to go to strategy too soon. They don’t stay in the knowledge
space to make sure they understand the root cause of their culture.
If you go to strategy too soon, you end up doing what we
call a ‘window dressing initiative.’ For example, saying, ‘Our competitors
are doing this so we should do it, too.’ But if it doesn’t
solve for what’s actually going on, it’s money and time wasted.”
Conducting in-depth analyses of your organizational culture
can be intimidating and the results can sometimes be tough to
take, even when the strategic management of those results can
make or break your organization in the long run. According to
Gallagher-Louisy, the senior leadership team and human resources
need to be sure they’re in touch with what’s happening
in the organization.
“What we’ve seen repeatedly is that senior leaders and human
resources think the organization is more inclusive than the average
of all employees,” she said. “We’ve also found that senior
leaders are not aware of the extent to which people are dealing
with things like discrimination or harassment on a daily basis.
Doing measurements and gathering qualitative and quantitative
feedback from employees helps us to quantify what is actually
happening that senior leaders may not be aware of.”
Gender intelligence isn’t about hiring more women; it’s about
understanding the culture of your organization and how that
culture is helping – or hindering – your level of success, financial
and otherwise.
“You can have great gender balance on boards or executive
teams and zero gender intelligence,” said Annis. “We see that
having greater gender intelligence impacts how you think about
going to market. The correlation between gender intelligence and
financial performance is really the bottom line. The key element
to fix any issue is knowledge; focus on gender differences – what
men and women value as clients, how not to misinterpret those
differences, how to honour them. That’s really what makes the
difference: understanding.”
FUTURE INTELLECT
The acceptance of data by senior leadership teams and their willingness
to participate in fostering gender intelligence is and will
34 ❚ AUGUST 2017 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL