Linda Bonanno's Weblog » Diversity

What’s Really Important – Diversity

LBonanno — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:15:17 +0000

There are times when my profession really frustrates me. I don’t know what it is about engineering and programming, but it sure seems to attract a lot of homogeneous people – like hires like. A lot of people are most comfortable working with people who are like themselves. I’ve worked in offices where I am literally the only (or one of a very few) woman in a sea of white men. Working in a geographically diverse company (West coast offices help here) tends to improve upon diversity somewhat, adding Indian and Asian influences, but there are still few women in engineering. The best software engineering team I ever led was diverse – both from a gender and cultural perspective. I somehow put together a team that was close to 50% female, and represented the US, Canada, China, the Philippines, Turkey, and India. We were white, black, yellow and brown. We were conservative, we were liberal. We were single, married, with kids and without. We were Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Agnostic. It didn’t matter, we were a team. There was mutual respect for everyone’s unique abilities and contributions. We didn’t always agree, and there certainly were different viewpoints, which actually improved what the team was able to accomplish. Everyone did their best to approach their differences with kindness and a good sense of humor.

This team reflects my life. I pick my friends based on what kind of a person they are. Do they share my hobbies? Are they kind? Mean-spirited people who take advantage of others need not apply. The older I get, the less I care about differences, I always look for similarities. What’s important??

Age? No. I have friends much younger than I am, and also quite a bit older. Zest for life is what is important.
Religion? No. Just don’t try to convert me. I’ll accept whatever you believe as being the best thing for you.
Gender? No. I’ve met wonderful men and women and count both among my closest friends. Both sexes can also be miserable and unkind.
Sexual Orientation? No. Gay, Lesbian, Straight. It’s not a choice for someone – why should I use it as a choice when finding friends? What matters is self-respect and honesty.
Politics? No. Though, sometimes it is easiest just to agree to disagree on this one. It’s always interesting to hear other opinions and reasons for them.
Nationality? No. Latina, European (too many to count!), Asian, Middle Eastern – I count them all among my friends.

Maybe I am a little naive, but I think under it all we are more similar than different. We are all human. Yes, our experiences and our culture let us have different perspectives, but this is what good relationships are about. Who wants to sit around with people that are exactly the same as you? What can you possibly learn?

What is Really Important?

LBonanno — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:21:41 +0000

Lately I’ve been reflecting about what is most important to me about work. If I were to run my own company what would I focus on? Here’s my top 10 list, in no particular order.

Transparency – I think by now you all know how I feel about this one. Companies are much better off when leaders share more than rather than less.
Doing Good – I want to make a difference, don’t you? If I had my druthers I would work on technology that improves the quality of life. This might be a medical advance, an alternative energy play, or even something like software that makes managing IT infrastructure easier and reduces manual labor. There are many ways to look at this.
Learning – If I am not learning something new, I am not growing. Earlier in my career I read tech books and volunteered for new projects. These days I read management books, and I like to learn from people I work with. Leading teams working on new technology is also fun for me. Read about my learnings in this post.
Smart People – What I really mean is working with people that are smarter than I am. I like to identify people to hire that are wicked smart – and motivated. Delegating is easy with folks like this! I also learn a lot more too.
Collaboration – I enjoy working in a culture where people collaborate rather than compete. It is no fun if work turns into a proposition where if one person wins the other loses. I’d rather have everyone succeed together.
Respect – Everyone, and I mean everyone on the team deserves respect. One of the best ways to demonstrate it is to really listen to what people are saying. You’ll learn a lot about their opinions and what really motivates them. It’s the best way to understand what is important to each member of the team. Some of my thoughts on respect.
Diversity – For me this isn’t just a buzzword. The best team that I’ve ever led had geographic, ethnic, gender, and perspective diversity. Folks didn’t always agree – but that’s what made the team so powerful.How diversity can help you.
Balance – Work is important, but there are other things in life besides work. I’ve done the 100 hour weeks and I can tell you that it really leaves nothing for your personal life. I’m willing to work hard, but I always make sure to take some time for myself too.
Fun – If a work environment isn’t fun the days drag on forever. A sense of fun and play helps foster camaraderie in the team.
Trust – This cuts both ways. Management needs to trust their team to do their jobs to the best of their ability without micromanaging. This includes the flexibility to work how, when, and wherever the person is most effective. In return, the team needs to trust that management is going to steer the company in a fiscally prudent manner and make appropriate strategic decisions.

Relationships with Different Perspectives

LBonanno — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:53:42 +0000

Wow, has it been close to a month since I’ve posted something? As usual, the job search has been pretty consuming. I’ve done a lot of company and technology research, I’ve kept up my networking and my online job hunting, and I spent close to a week out of town, first for an interview and then to visit with some dear friends.

Do you have an old friend that no matter how long you’ve been apart, the second you see each other you pick right back up where you left off? My friend and I have known each other since we were 12. We’ve been best friends ever since. It doesn’t matter that we only see each other every 5+ years or so and that we haven’t lived in the same state in 17 years. We’ve had years (yes, plural) where we didn’t even talk on the phone and barely sent Christmas cards. Doesn’t matter. She’s the one person that no matter what happens she’ll be there if I need her, and vice versa.

The interesting thing is that we’re night and day, black and white, solar and lunar…. however you want to describe it – we’re opposites except for the really important things. That is part of the reason we get along so famously. When I talk to her, I always get a different perspective. Since we’ve had so much history we both can take that difference in perspective at face value and not read any ulterior motives into it. It is invaluable.

What I find to be really sad is when people with different perspectives square off at work. It seems to happen more so than not. It’s a matter of trust – or lack thereof. Both people are there in their own little worlds building walls around their ideas, shoring them up. Heaven forbid they listen to one another and figure out ways to incorporate diverse input.

This single mindedness can also occur in the hiring process. When was the last time you looked at someone’s different experience and instead of saying “they haven’t done exactly what we are doing so the learning curve will be too big” have you said “this person has a lot of experiences that are different yet complimentary to the rest of the team, they will provide a fresh perspective”? Seriously. One of the biggest traps that people fall into is hiring people that are just like themselves. Same ideals, same kind of experiences. Same blind spots. Just because someone hasn’t done exactly what you will need them to do doesn’t mean that they don’t have the facilities to do it. Heck, they might even do it *better* than someone else in your company because they have seen something in the past that either worked really well, or failed spectacularly.

Different isn’t bad. If you take advantage of it, it will make your team and your company stronger.

Diversity Helps Your Business–But Not The Way You Think

LBonanno — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:26:10 +0000

Forbes Article

“…found that members of a social majority are more likely to voice unique perspectives and critically review task-relevant information when there is more social diversity present than when there is not. Moreover, this is true even when the people who are “different” don’t express any unique perspectives themselves. Our research suggests that the mere presence of social diversity makes people with independent points of view more willing to voice those points of view, and others more willing to listen.”

Hmm. Interesting. I wish that I could provide some perspective here, but considering that I always provide an element of diversity to the discussion I am involved in, it is difficult to know if this is true. In engineering I have found that I am typically the only female (or maybe there are one or two of us) in a room full of white men. I am curious what others think about the findings of the article. Does having a person of different race, color, creed or gender participating change the dynamic?

Lifelong Learning

LBonanno — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:26:47 +0000

Recently I had the opportunity to reflect back upon all of the training I’ve received in order to become the leader that I am today. In my career I was extremely fortunate that I received a significant amount of management training before I was even considered for promotion into the role. I find the coaching of potential, junior, and mid-level managers to be critical to longer term success. Even as a senior manager I believe that it is important to continue learning, and to not always fall back on previous experiences.

Early in my career I worked for a company that had a mandatory training and assessment course for all potential managers. It identified if someone was ready to manage people, and the areas in which they were weak and strong. This was a course that could be failed and a person wouldn’t be promoted to a management position if it was. I remember this class as being very stressful. There were timed prioritization of work assignments, interviews, and video taped role playing exercises in which instructors acted as difficult subordinates and customers. This course started my foray into management.

I’ve also had some training that wouldn’t be classified as management training, but it helped me become a much better manager. One form of this type of training that I received is often dismissed by staff as being irrelevant – and that is diversity training. I found it helped me understand how to be sensitive to race, religion, and gender as well as realizing that different people have different motivations for what they do. Engineers may seem to all be very similar but in fact they are not. You can’t expect someone to want to do the same things that you want to do for all the same reasons. Some people care about money, some about life balance, and some about challenging work or career development. I find this to be key to being a good manager because by understanding what a person’s motivations are, you can assign them work that they can be successful at. This training course also was very clear about what is and what is not appropriate in a work environment. In a similar vein, I also took a class that included the Meyers-Briggs Inventory. This was an eye opener for me because it showed how much diversity there is in the various personality types and how the different types are perceived. It also provided suggestions for how to deal with the different types. In engineering there are a few common ones, but there are always some people that are different and harder to read and work with. I happen to be an INTJ in case you are familiar with this method of personality evaluation.

As my career progressed, I signed up for more intensive training courses that spanned longer periods of time. Another company that I worked for footed the bill for a year long class that required me to travel to San Francisco monthly. This program was designed for high potential women managers with a minimum of 7 years of supervisory experience who were being groomed for senior management positions. The program and others like it are run by an organization called Women Unlimited. If you are a woman manager or if you have one reporting to you, I’d suggest investigating this. I found it to be one of the most useful training programs that I ever attended.

Once I got to Director and VP level positions my training focus changed. Now I find it to be a lot more self-directed and individualized. I continue to read books and articles voraciously to learn about new trends and ideas. For the last few years at my last company I met weekly with a psychologist who works with leadership teams at small companies as a career coach. He taught me to depend not only on my analytical capabilities but also on my intuitive abilities. He also taught the leadership team as a whole to be more focused and to use empathy in dealing with one another as a way to speed resolution of issues. This was invaluable. A lot of times in business we focus solely on the analytic and reasoning aspects of our work and little on the people and relationship issues.

These days I also enjoy sharing the knowledge that I have accumulated. As those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know, last year I presented at the IGDA Leadership Forum. I enjoyed preparing my presentation and sharing my management experiences so much that it compelled me to start this blog and become more active in the Web2.0 world. There are a number of pages on this website that give management instruction through examples. I also frequently post and comment upon interesting articles and topics that are personal growth, business, and management related. I am experimenting with the use of twitter to share additional articles that I find interesting that I don’t necessarily feel the need to comment about. I have a regular following on both of these mediums, and it is growing. This is really cool.

Keep on learning. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like you have enough time or that it is worth the effort involved. Do it, you never know when what you’ve learned might come in handy.

Gender Studies… Social Networks & Twitter

LBonanno — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:08:33 +0000

Well, this article in Business Week is interesting. It specifically talks about Twitter and how many followers people have and what gender those followers are. I was curious about this, but I had no preconceived notions of what the outcome should be. As I write this post I’m still trying to decide if I find it relevant or not, and if I do, why. We’ll see if I can come to a conclusion by the end.

Ok, the basics are that men have 15% more followers than women, but women are more prevalent on Twitter than men by a ratio of 55% to 45% (based on statistics gathered in May 2009).

“Even more interesting is who follows whom. We found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman. These results cannot be explained by different tweeting activity—both men and women tweet at the same rate.”

Why is this? Here’s my hypothesis. Looking at the people that I follow on Twitter (My ID on Twitter is lsbonanno) most of the men Tweet about business related topics. They use Twitter to promote their company, their product, and many times, themselves. They Tweet about technical topics too and provide interesting links to articles to read. These items tend to have a large audience – i.e. many people find the information relevant and useful. Most (not all) of the women that I follow Tweet about their personal lives and experiences. These are things that you’d share with friends and family and not a much larger audience typically. Could this be the key? Is it that women are using Twitter to stay connected and men are using Twitter as an extension of work – a way to market? I think it might be.

Something else that came up in this article is how women are the drivers in social networks. AH HA! YES! In the back of my mind I realized this. The people that I see most active on Facebook (but not so much LinkedIn – maybe for the same business reasons as above) are women. They post regular status updates, they update their pictures, they take the quizzes and send the beers, pillow fights, and easter eggs. The men are out there, but on a day to day basis they really are not that active. It’s funny, when they first come onto Facebook, they are very active – but within a few weeks it dwindles down to nothing. Not the ladies. Maybe it is my age group. Women in their 30s and 40s are the backbone of their families and the center of their day to day social networks – it makes sense for them to tackle this “chore” online as well.

Personally I find that I use social networks and Twitter for both business and personal. However, I do apply some boundaries to what I post where.

LinkedIn – Business only.
This blog – I’d say 80% business / technology related with a few lapses here and there (like the Twitter feed).
Facebook – Personal only.
Twitter – A combination of business and personal news.

I guess my conclusion is that in order for me to get more followers on Twitter I need to post more relevant Business/Technology links and topics there. Currently I read many many many articles that I would love to post some commentary about on this blog but I find that I just do not have the time. Maybe Twitter is the place to put those links and a short blurb about what makes them so interesting or entertaining!