Recently I presented our Diversity of thought results at the Family Firm Institute conference in London.
The feedback I have received from advisors is this is a topic that needs to be discussed. Gender diversity in leadership teams in Family businesses in Australia is increasing but at a very slow pace. Business owners are considering the benefit of diverse minds challenging one another to be key to the business success. It is not front of mind that diversity leads to innovation and increased production and overall business growth.
When I received the opportunity to present our results internationally, I was very mindful that our businesses are generally first or second generation and in Europe and the United States, they are more mature businesses and can be in their 15th generation. So I set the Australian Family Business scene prior to presenting the results.
I wanted to ensure my presentation was interactive so not only did the audience learn from me but we learnt from the audience too. We had a great variety of countries represented including – Hong Kong, Scotland, Dubai, United States, Canada and London.
Most of the audience felt if they asked their clients the same questions, they would receive similar results or slightly higher, showing their is a similar attitude towards diverse leadership teams in Family Business. The main differential was, our results said 58% were open to gender diverse leadership teams. The audience did believe they would have a higher percentage of their clients open to gender diverse leadership teams than our Australian results. This result did raise a lot of questions. Unfortunately, we didn’t ask the flip side but you wonder, does this mean 42% are not open to gender diverse leadership teams?
A number of members of our audience did comment they are seeing a number of female CEOs be introduced in the 3rd and 4th generations. They see this as a very positive change for family businesses.
This is a positive change but what I did note was although there is an openness to gender Diversity, there is still not an understanding of the benefits of diversity of thought in a leadership team. The idea of bringing different minds, different experience, different backgrounds together, will challenge the leadership team to innovate. And this is a very powerful growth strategy for the businesses future.
If you are interested in learning more on how you can implement a diverse leadership team for the future growth of your business, please do not hesitate to contact me on kirsten,taylor-martin@au.gt.com or 8297 2567.