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Employee development and engagement continue to change dramatically (Kelly, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic and the employment trend known as “the great resignation” have increased the greater sense of urgency on leadership development training focused on building great leaders (Kelly, 2021). COVID-19 has also forced organizations to consider innovative, non-traditional, and online approaches to learning and employee development (Kelly, 2021)
By 2060 women of color will represent (51.7%) of the workforce, which will lead to significant changes in the composition of workplaces and potential employees (Pace, 2018). According to research by Hunt, Prince, Dixon-Fyle, and Yee (2018), organizations with more diverse leadership and employee cultures have higher levels of productivity and performance. Firms with more diverse senior leadership compositions and pipelines are 33% more profitable than industry competitors that are not diverse, which makes creating more inclusive organizational cultures important for successful organizations (Hunt et al., 2018).
Many organizations are looking to train managers on diversity and inclusion in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Protests and the #ME TOO sexual harassment revelations. As a result, diversity leadership coaching training was introduced to 8 healthcare managers for 12 months. In the program, managers read the same book each month. They were also given journal prompts for a journal to record their thoughts and learning breakthroughs. Participants were also given case studies based on concepts of each book to allow participants to apply book knowledge to real-life industry-based scenarios as a means to add an experiential component to learning. These 8 participants were also separated into small groups of 4 participants, each meeting twice a month to share their perspectives about the books. Once a month, all eight met to do a book debrief that the leadership development coach moderated. Due to the COVID-19, these meetings took place over ZOOM. The approach offered a low-cost and effective way to educate and train the managers about diversity and inclusion. The leadership development intervention was more effective because it was more extended and impactful than one-off, day-long, classroom or lecture-driven training, which often fails to change behaviors and paradigms. The small group of 4 and the large group of 8 conversations offered a sharing and exchanging ideas that fostered out-of-the-box thinking and encouraged new ways of approaching a problem. The book selection drove the discussions around diversity in constructive ways while giving the managers the knowledge and mindset they need to understand the importance and value of diversity. The approach helped all participants gain new knowledge and develop new levels of understanding and empathy.
Books that were used included the following: