Why organisations keep getting DE&I leadership wrong — and what they can do about it

Catherine Osaigbovo Conscious Leadership

Page Executive Partner, Catherine Osaigbovo, reflects on her recent webinar Building Trust: Safeguarding Against Reputational Fallout in DEI Leadership Selection.

By Catherine Osaigbovo

The DE&I industry is set to hit almost $25 billion by 2030. However, with no universal approach to DE&I leadership and strategy, companies are hamstrung by a lack of clarity, competency and compliance.

This challenge is compounded by the absence of standardised DE&I qualifications and the prevalence of unqualified individuals occupying critical roles. Too often, organisations don't understand the role they're trying to fill. They hire based on passion, lived experience or personality as opposed to demonstrable technical DE&I knowledge, leading to ineffective DE&I strategies that fail to deliver sustainable results.

So how do we get a grip on it? How do we break this cycle and start laying the ground for consistent and successful DE&I in leadership?

As a Page Executive Partner, I’ve witnessed firsthand the transformative power of competent DE&I leadership. Drawing on my experience and insights from speakers at a recent Page Executive webinar, I’m going to outline what DE&I leadership roles entail, some of the common hiring mistakes and what companies can do to make their DE&I initiatives meaningful, impactful and sustainable.

Understanding the role of a DE&I leader

A DE&I leader is responsible for implementing strategies that foster diversity, equity and inclusion in a company. These strategies can come in the form of policies and programmes, such as shaking up hiring methods and setting up employee resource groups (ERGs). However, it is equally important to run training and development to change the day-to-day culture of the company.

The benefits are clear:

A competitive edge through diverse opinions, decisions and innovative ideas
A more engaged and productive workforce
Improved employee satisfaction and retention
A stronger organisational reputation
Improved mental health and reduced levels of burnout

However, according to the Development Dimensions International’s Global Leadership Forecast 2021, only 27% of HR respondents considered their diversity programmes as "high" or "very high" quality. Even more concerning, 15% reported that they lack any kind of formal diversity and inclusion programmes.

Faced with a lack of structure, genuine experts who are already few and far between regularly see companies continuously fall into the same traps.

Common mistakes in hiring DE&I leaders

As CEO of the Competence Center for Workplace Equity (CCWE), Ashanti Bentil-Dhue takes a keen interest in guiding businesses to more strategic hiring techniques. In our webinar, she covered some of the most common pitfalls businesses run into when recruiting for key DE&I positions.

Hiring passionate individuals rather than skilled leaders

CCWE has observed that DE&I hiring often values lived experience and a passion for social justice and activism over tangible skills. While this may be positive from an ethical perspective, it doesn’t necessarily translate into senior leadership buy-in or sustainable strategies and use of resources. Good will alone doesn’t guarantee success; leaders need concrete competencies that they can apply to the realities of a modern-day business.
Overlooking the need for structure and goals

Failing to set clear objectives is another common mistake that usually comes from the hiring team not being clear on what they need from their DE&I expert. Even the most qualified profile will fail if their role is unclear and there is no shared understanding of what success looks like. To avoid this, establish concrete goals and performance indicators that align with your organisation’s strategy and base the job description on those goals.
Prioritising personality over a proven track record

An overemphasis on charisma is a similar stumbling block based on a lack of understanding of the role. Without a deep understanding of what it takes to make a sustainable impact, it’s easy to be swayed by a candidate who speaks eloquently or has a magnetic personality.

Ashanti recommends digging into the details, and asking: “What have you actually done? What did you drive? How did you do it? Did you build it from the ground up?”
Turning to a speaker instead of a strategist

Hiring an educator or spokesperson, rather than an integral part of your leadership team is easy to do — there are a lot of them out there. While part of DE&I leadership involves teaching, you need someone who matches your company culture and can implement structural changes from within.

Establishing a competency-based approach

With no professional body or qualification to prove competence in the DE&I, PageGroup and others are on a mission to fill the knowledge gap. Recently, CCWE ran global surveys, interviews and focus groups, and came up with 13 key competencies that DE&I professionals need. In our recent webinar, Ashanti gave four key examples:

Practising with neutrality: Separating political and personal views from what the organisation actually needs.
Being a neutral source of expertise: Basing advice on evidence and research, not on personal narratives.
Taking an intersectional approach: Seeing inclusion as an all-encompassing effort, instead of focusing on one demographic and alienating others.
Repairing and restoring: Rebuilding trust after broken promises and managing emotions across the board.

Ashanti believes that moving towards a competency-based approach earns DE&I leaders a seat at the executive table because senior leaders see value in their strategic thinking and organisational alignment. “They become an asset rather than, to be quite honest, sometimes a fly in the oil for their colleagues.”

4 steps to secure the right hire

Get leadership and organisational buy-in

As a new discipline, it can be challenging to convince leaders and the organisation at large about the need for DE&I leadership. A prescriptive approach could be met with ambivalence at best and resentment at worst.

However, Hayley Mann, VP of People at Formula E, got around this by running company-wide forums. Employees were encouraged to share how they felt and what they saw as important to help them thrive. “We did a lot of engagement with the organisation to make sure they understood why we were asking these questions and why we were focusing on this agenda.”
Decide what success looks like

Hiring a DE&I leader without having internal expertise can lead to poor decision-making. Hayley was upfront about this in our webinar, saying “We felt we needed internal resources, but we weren’t clear on what we needed them to deliver.”

Hiring Ashanti as a consultant, she made a clear action plan of what the role needed to be. Hayley then used that as a focal point to write a job description that would attract the right person.

Page Executive’s global DE&I Solutions division, led by Director Joanna McCrae, advises our clients on their DE&I strategies and how to create an inclusive hiring process.
Take your time

Although there may be a lot of pressure for you to move fast and show results, Ashanti urges companies not to make reactionary hires. “Slow down and get clarity on what your objectives are and what they need to deliver.” That understanding helps you be more accurate as you review and interview candidates, and avoids wasted time and resources through high turnover.
Turn to an experienced consultant

Hayley claims her move to get Ashanti on board was at the core of her success in hiring Eve, Formula E’s Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Manager. Ashanti’s guidance turned what could have been a pot-luck approach into a shrewd, confident decision with a clear roadmap ahead.

As there are still so few playbooks on how to hire successfully in the DE&I space, the value of expert advice can’t be underestimated. Consultants help by: