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A speech by V. Robert Hayles
Delivered April 22, 1999
St. Cloud State University
The Rural Diversity Summit
Speech summary written by Frank Clancy
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RealAudio 3.0 |
CONSULTANT ROBERT HAYLES WAS WORKING in human resources at Pillsbury 10 years ago when a young man approached him with what seemed to be a disarmingly simple problem: Everyone in his work group loved to fish.
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| Robert Hayles |
But the young man did not fish. Nor did he have any desire to take up fishing. And as a result, he believed his career at Pillsbury would inevitably suffer because he would constantly miss his colleagues' discussions of important work-related issues.
Thus Hayles, co-author of The Diversity Directive: Why Some Initiatives Fail and What to Do About It, began his keynote address at a conference on rural diversity with a seemingly benign example that stayed far afield of controversial subjects like race, gender, and sexual preference. But Hayles, who has worked as a consultant for universities, government agencies, and private companies around the world, nevertheless made his point: As communities and organizations become more diverse, they must understand the feelings of exclusion - and the consequences - that all too often accompany the experience of being different.
Hayles' speaking style is to engage his audience with questions. He asked the roughly 60 people gathered in an auditorium on the campus of St. Cloud State University how many had fishing licenses. Fewer than half raised their hands. ("You're a very un Minnesota group," Hayles joked.) Then he asked how many had immigrated to the United States, and a few hands went up. Next, he asked how many had parents or grandparents who were immigrants. Many raised their hands. The point was made the majority of Minnesotans have immigrant roots.
Finally, Hayles, who has a doctorate in psychology, asked how many had had the experience of being in a group and feeling different - and uncomfortable. Every person in the room shared this experience. Hayles drove home the personal challenge that diversity represents: "Each of us is responsible for creating an environment in which everyone around us feels comfortable," he said.
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"The most effective human beings I know are able to deal with people who are different from them."
- Robert Hayles | |
Why Should We Care About Diversity?
Hayles, who has served as a consultant for such organizations as the Internal Revenue Service, Stanford University, Ford, and US West, also portrayed diversity as more than a personal issue. It is, he told the audience, a tool that individuals and organizations alike can use in order to become more effective. "The most effective human beings I know," Hayles pointed out, "are able to deal with people who are different from them." Inaction, on the other hand, can be disastrous. Hayles told the well-known story of Gerber's ill-fated attempt to expand its business in Africa. Using its successful marketing efforts in the United States as a model, the baby food maker had put a photograph of a cherubic, dark-skinned infant on its label. Only too late did Gerber learn that in Africa jars and cans customarily show pictures of the food that's inside, not the intended consumer.
Hayles' recommendations were clear: "Make sure you have on your team people who represent a variety of languages, cultures and personality styles so you maximize the possibility that someone will recognize and be able to say, 'We're about to make a mistake.' To make that happen, diversity has to be present and valued. Any group that does not have that doesn't have diversity, and will make those types of mistakes."
Hayles also cited social science research demonstrating the positive impact of diversity in the workplace. One study, for example, showed that investment clubs comprised of both men and women perform better than segregated clubs of either sex. Other studies showed similar results, Hayles said, whether participants were mixed according to race, age, personality type, or gender. "[Diversity] is the right thing to do from a human, ethical point of view," Hayles added. "But it is also the right thing to do from a pure cognitive perspective."
If the argument in favor of diversity is so compelling, why haven't more organizations fully accepted it? "The problem is that we're human beings," Hayles said. "As human beings we don't always do what we know to be right, smart and effective."
How Can We Face the Challenge of Diversity?
In conclusion, Hayles outlined several steps that organizations must take in order to become more diverse and effective. First, he said, they must teach individuals to treat others with respect, offering clear and explicit guidance, for example about words and actions that are not acceptable. And people must know in advance the consequences of acting disrespectfully.
You can't require ordinary people to change their hearts, Hayles lamented. But with leaders, the situation is different. In Hayles' opinion, they must change.
To illustrate this point, he described his experiences at a Mercedes Benz factory in South Africa, where management blamed a lack of productivity and poor craftsmanship on what they claimed was an inferior workforce. (The managers were all white. The workers were black.) Yet, when building a car for Nelson Mandela, these supposedly inferior workers produced a nearly perfect automobile in record time.
After spending time with Mercedes Benz managers - and seeing the disdain with which they viewed their workers - Hayles said, he recommended several structural changes, such as bonuses for increased productivity. Equally important, he told managers that they must learn to treat workers with respect, for he believed their scorn was being communicated to workers, who were, in turn, quietly rebelling.
Several years later, the factory is producing cars that are comparable in quality to those produced at Mercedes Benz factories in Germany. The rate of productivity is also similar. "I use that story as an example of how what we feel affects how people perform," Hayles said. "The heart has a tremendous impact on how we perform."
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