DIVERSITY AT WORK ESSAY (2 PAGES DOUBLE SPACE)

Speaking of diversity Kornacki, Martin . Training Journal ; London (Oct 2009): 25-27.

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ABSTRACT (ABSTRACT)  

"That's very basic of course," he adds. "It's not that I go into a company and say you're the mum, you're the dad -

but you can see a model of relationships developed along those lines and what I would do with a family is try to

have a great understanding of the unit as a whole, were the power is and also of the individual personalities. That

is the way we approach our management consultancy; that is the parallel for me."

FULL TEXT  

Headnote

Forner NBA star John Amaechi has swopped the basketball court for the boardroom. Martin Kornacki talks to him

about his new role as an L&D consultant specialising in diversity

"I'd like to have more people doing what I do. I think the work I do is amazing, I love it. I'm essentially doing therapy

on a massive scale." So says John Amaechi, the six foot ten former NBA basketball star turned motivational

speaker.

The British-born 38-year-old has already enshrined his name in sport - in 2007 he became the first pro basketball

player to openly come out as gay.

And now he has turned his hand to the world of learning and development, running a transAtlantic training

consultancy, Amaechi Performance Systems (APS), which develops collaborative working environments that

embrace individuality and diversity.

Perhaps, someone like Amaechi is what the financially and morally battered corporate world needs - a no-

nonsense and, more importantly, credible consultant.

"I think personality factors are important for people who try to disseminate knowledge and train people; I think

there's a level of authenticity when I speak that suggests something beyond simply that I was a hard working,

goodleader, good-follower type in sports," he says.

"There's an authenticity that comes from having a background that's varied, diverse and speckled with bits of

tragedy and bits of success. It's authentic and I think it helps people to relate, it's not that they relate with me

putting a ball in a hole, it's not that they relate to me cutting my hand off, but everybody has moments of triumph

and moments of tragedy and especially in business those can come one right after another."

Amaechi makes a point of distancing himself from any suggestion that his pro-sports background is behind his

consultancy's methods.

At best, he says, sports people with no qualifications in training get lucky and achieve success.

"I was in an office last week with 70 staff speaking 45 different languages - my sports status might get my foot in

the door because no one really wants to talk to a psychologist but will tolerate the idea of talking to a professional

sportsman. That's were it ends though - how can any anecdotal experience I have from playing on a basketball

team have any relevance in this situation?"

So what is it, I ask, that leads so many sports personalities to step across into leadership training and what makes

him so different?

"I'm a little frustrated by the assumption that the skills from one are transferable to the other, to be honest," he

says.

"What makes my work unique is not that I have great stories to tell about that time back in 1996 when my team did

this, and that made all the difference. That is the most obnoxious laddish type of absurdity.

"In the workplace, what makes my work unique is that I can combine specific things, which I can take from good

teamwork and bad teamwork and good leadership and bad leadership from my own sporting background, with

contemporary science."

I suggest that leadership in the current economic climate means acknowledging that the old way of doing things

has not worked - and then doing something about it.

Amaechi agrees that one of the main things that holds organisations back is being badly and inflexibly led. When

issues of leadership and motivation are left to be addressed by individuals who only have a one-dimensional view

of how to carry out their role, problems can arise.

"Say some person may have been in a rugby team - he thinks that some rough, hard words and a few slaps on the

shoulder is the way to motivate his troops. In a sophisticated workplace, volume doesn't inspire motivation, it

inspires fear," he warns.

"It works in the short term because you get a flurry of activity, but what you actually get is people rechecking their

CVs and going out to the marketplace because their organisation is so unsophisticated, so intimidating that they

don't want to be in it any more."

And with Generation Y - people born after 1980 - entering the workplace with high expectations of company ethics

and maintaining a work-life balance, Amaechi believes: "You can't motivate these people through extra money or

bonuses. Most of the research points to the fact that rewards, like money, will eventually lead to demotivation but

that is the basic way companies reward.

"But, anyway, all that stuff is frozen now: you can't promote, you can't give extra bonuses, so you've got to find

other ways and they are to understand clearly who your individuals are and how your group functions and target

soft resources at that - such as time. Just taking the time to listen to employee suggestions, even if they are not

implemented, makes a massive difference to engagement."

When it agrees to work with a new client, APS mandate a week on site as the minimum amount of time needed to

undertake a thorough evaluation. Once on the inside, Amaechi strongly eschews a "cookie-cutter approach" in

favour of a bespoke service, believing that too many management consultants use generic techniques irrespective

of the organisation within which they are operating.

His consultancy's process involves gathering information about an organisation to uncover the inter-personal

dynamics among its employees. It offers individual sessions that anybody can attend and talk freely about their

experiences within the firm.

"It helps us understand whether there is a cohesive vision that is understood and disseminated to all the members.

It helps us understand how the leadership is perceived, because what people do and how that's perceived are two

different things," he adds.

Essentially, APS carries out a form of functional analysis, gathering a personality profile on each individual in an

organisation, which is then used to help line managers understand the nature of the group they are working with.

Amaechi says he can then tell managers: "Your group has these kinds of people in it, when you do this they will

respond in this way. If you really want to motivate them - try this."

The work done by APS is backed up by Amaechi's academic background in marriage and family therapy. He says

he has seen only a few workplaces were you cannot fully apply a familial model.

"The CEO is dad or mum and the board is like granddad, not around all the time but when he speaks, dad listens.

You can feel it when you get to the managers - you've got older children and younger siblings and you can feel how

those principles apply.

"That's very basic of course," he adds. "It's not that I go into a company and say you're the mum, you're the dad -

but you can see a model of relationships developed along those lines and what I would do with a family is try to

have a great understanding of the unit as a whole, were the power is and also of the individual personalities. That

is the way we approach our management consultancy; that is the parallel for me."

As company purse strings remain tight, despite indications of the economic green shoots of recovery taking hold,

Amaechi believes introspection within companies will be the key for development, and it is the role of good

leadership to exploit that potential.

"Companies need to start looking at their personnel, which is why diversity is so important, and they're going to

start asking what the added extras are that they can get. We've got these types of people, how do we best activate

them, how do we best refocus them, how do we best motivate them? And it won't be about money; it will be about

what cultural changes and climate changes and what leadership and management changes can we make to make

these people shine a bit more brightly."

The leaders who will succeed are those that understand the importance of diversity and many are wide of the mark

at present, Amaechi believes. "Not enough is being done; I honestly think that most workplaces have got the wrong

end of diversity. What many workplaces focus on is the compliance aspect, which is almost useless in terms of the

ability of any investment made to translate into a performance benefit.

"People are more sophisticated then that, they recognise when you are simply motivated by making the

environment just good enough so they don't sue you for discrimination - compliance does not lead to performance

gains.

"Leaders have to recognise that diversity is not a facet or project of their work, but it cuts across every stream. If

you are going to do business on the international stage, you are going to be dealing with an incredibly diverse set

of people on visible levels of diversity and non-visible levels - that means everything from personality styles

through to religion and skin colour."

So what does he think of companies that adopt mission statements that claim to champion diversity but expect

everyone to follow a rigid ethos at the same time? Surely there is a conflict?

"Mono-cultures," he says. "You can understand why people would want them because ostensibly you know how to

deal with everybody in your organisation because they are all the same. But it limits you because, although you

may have a great depth of resource in one area, what you lack is any breadth.

"One thing that diversity does is give you more varied ways of combining ideas because there is uniqueness that

comes from personality, work experience, life experience - all these things. This is important because, when we are

faced nowadays with new problems, the old ways of taking care of problems just don't take care of them."

But does diversity have an impact on the bottom line?

Amaechi is clear: "I am not a fluffy psychologist. I am not interested in people coming into work and sitting around

the water cooler, singing songs - that is not why diversity is important. Diversity is important because it delivers a

tangible bottom line.

"The error that people make is thinking that having a certain representative number of different types of people -

two Muslims, a couple of black folks, three gays, some old people, some young people - is enough. That presence

of diversity is not the same as access to the uniqueness they bring to an organisation. That is the point of

diversity, that it cuts across all streams and gives you a breadth and a depth of understanding of your work that

you would not otherwise have."

But how can L&D professionals facilitate this change? After all, their role within organisations will often bring them

into close contact with the very leaders who need to understand this message.

"The job of learning and development practitioners now is to be more relevant than we ever have been," says

Amaechi.

"I think, in the past, we've been able to get away with generic products that touch one or two people and do a half-

decent job. Now we have to target what people really need.

"If you're an L&D person and you're being ignored, it may be because you aren't offering an organisation what it

needs - it's all very well offering people stressbusting ideas and the type of very generic things you see in

companies now but if, as an employee, you've got a line manager who's constantly threatening you with being

fired, that stress-busting half-hour seminar really isn't hitting the spot. What you really need is some management

training for the line manager.

"You need to get access to the leaders in organisations and for them to understand that you've got to be tapped in

to what's going on in your organisation."

For Amaechi, change is fundamental His life has been diverse and, above all, full of principle. Whether it is working

with deprived young people at his philanthropic organisation, the Amaechi Basketball Centre in Manchester, or

judging and mentoring young talent in the BBC's The Speaker competition he always seems to leave a mark.

It is no surprise that much of his work and success in the past has been with young people and I suspect his brand

of forward thinking, open, inclusive management will resonate strongly with Generation Y employees entering the

workplace - and they are, after all, the future.

Sidebar

I am not interested in people coming into work and sitting around the water cooler, singing songs - that is not why

diversity is important

DETAILS

Subject: Workplace diversity; Professional basketball; Management consultants; Training;

Work life balance; Work environment

Location: United Kingdom--UK

People: Amaechi, John

Company / organization: Name: Amaechi Performance Systems; NAICS: 541611

Classification: 9175: Western Europe; 6200: Training &development; 8310: Consultants

Publication title: Training Journal; London

Pages: 25-27

Number of pages: 3

Publication year: 2009

Publication date: Oct 2009

Section: INTERVIEW

Publisher: Dods Parliamentary Communications Limited

Place of publication: London

Country of publication: United Kingdom, London

Publication subject: Business And Economics--Management

ISSN: 14656523

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Source type: Trade Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Cover Story

Document feature: Photographs

ProQuest document ID: 202948958

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Copyright: Copyright Fenman Limited Oct 2009

Last updated: 2017-11-01

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