Chapter 6: Personal Profiles

Overview

We all know that our appearance has an enormous influence on how we are regarded by other people, at work and elsewhere. Magazines are full of advice on how we can lose weight, improve our complexions, and choose clothes to flatter us at that important job interview. However, there is little we can do about two biological truths that shape us physically, mentally, and perhaps even spiritually: our age and gender.

Of course, people do spend enormous amounts of money getting their wrinkles removed and their bottoms lifted simply because they don t want to look old. But basically, if we are lucky enough to live that long, we get old and eventually die and there s nothing we can do about it. We can t do much about our gender either, for even if sex-change operations are performed regularly now in the West, not even the cleverest surgeon would claim the results were perfect.

But what about ethnicity ? It affects our appearance too, but whereas age and gender are quite easy to define, ethnicity is a vague, fuzzy word that has all sorts of other associations, mostly negative (think of ethnic purity , and worst of all ethnic cleansing ). In fact, it is a generic word that includes religion, language, and race. Race is usually the only outward sign of ethnicity, and in large, multiracial cities it is an unreliable one at that. Yet even if we know that assumptions about people based on their appearance are often plain wrong, we still keep making them.

At a Swedish IT firm where I work, a manager told me this true story. A representative from a Japanese firm had come on a visit and was due to meet the manager responsible for the installation of the hardware that his firm had just delivered. As it happened , this manager was in a meeting when the visitor arrived, so the assistant manager went down to the reception area to meet him. As the two men were walking along the corridor the departmental manager appeared from the conference room where the meeting had just finished. Naturally the assistant manager introduced his boss, who was surprised that the Japanese visitor made no attempt either to shake hands or bow. In fact, he appeared to be looking for something as he glanced up and down the corridor. Obviously he couldn t find whatever it was, and driven to desperation, he finally stood on tiptoe and tried to look over the manager s head.

The problem was that the Japanese visitor had expected to meet a white Swedish middle-aged man and was faced, he finally realized, with a young brown- skinned Swedish woman wearing trousers and a sweater. His assumptions about what a manager should look like simply didn t match the reality that he encountered in that particular company. Basing his judgment on his experience back home in Japan, the visitor considered that the manager s age, gender, and race didn t correspond with her status, and thus he didn t know how to relate to her.

Over the last decade or so many international companies have found that similar mistakes in judgment have cost them money because they have not realized the full potential of their employees. They have also begun to see that a more diverse workforce can provide them with a competitive advantage, and they are making efforts to include in their work-force employees with widely different personal profiles ”including people of different ages, genders, and ethnic backgrounds. Companies with diverse workforces are supposed to be more likely to have an inclusive, balanced view of people, processes, customer needs, and business methods in general. What is usually left unsaid is that although diversity is the best option, it is not at all easy ”quite the reverse.

The process of trying to understand unfamiliar points of view, whether they come from the opposite sex, a different age group, or a new ethnic group , takes a lot of imagination and energy, and most of us don t have unlimited supplies of either. If, on the other hand, your team is made up of people like yourself, you can communicate in shorthand because you can take a lot of things for granted without discussion. It s not surprising, then, that many international companies talk happily about diversity in the workplace without actually doing anything to encourage it or utilizing the talents of non-conforming smaller groups already working in the company (whether they happen to be female , older than their colleagues, or from an ethnic minority).

But the world is changing and there is a growing realization that personal profiles that do not correspond to those already on the team, in the department, or on the board might be an asset rather than a handicap, and not only because different skin tones and hair colors provide a more interesting photo for the annual report. For even though employing people of different ages, genders, and diverse ethnic backgrounds is not an easy option, and indeed increases the risk of conflicts and delays, firms are starting to see that it s the right thing to do not only because it is fairer to the individual employee, but because it also contributes to their own long- term prosperity .

• MORAL Including people with another cultural background, age, or gender in your group or team may force you to reexamine what you have previously taken for granted. This may make you uncomfortable, but it is a good thing.