Diversity and Inclusion - Quietly Powerful

Quietly Disadvantaged Talent

In conversations with quieter professionals, I hear examples of how they have felt disadvantaged in the workplace. It is surprisingly common place and yet often not seen as a problem. It is more often seen as the problem for the quieter professionals to fix and fit in. While I have the view that the individuals can develop to overcome some of the disadvantages, I also believe that organisations are wasting talent by not being aware of or addressing these disadvantages.

5 additional insights from 2 years of Quietly Powerful

What started as a little experiment with 15 women for breakfast is growing up – Quietly Powerful is now 2 years old and have now reached thousands of people from around the world. I feel grateful for the memorable moments, inspiration and support from a range of people!

Personality-ism

There have been plenty of discussion and writings about sexism, racism and age-ism. Have you noticed personality-ism, though?

Let me offer a few examples I have personally heard of or experienced…

Strong leadership ≠ dominance

Recently I heard two cases where leaders with track records were unsuccessful for roles they applied for, and they were unsuccessful because the hiring manager was looking for a ‘strong leader’.

One of them wrote to me and said:

“I think they were looking for that [a dominating style of leader] because it is their current workplace culture. They fight, they push each other around…”

Quietly powerful is not just about introverts

There seems to be an automatic assumption that when we talk about quiet people, they are introverts. In many cases this is true, but not always. Having worked on the Quietly Powerful movement for a while now, this is definitely not the case and worth keeping in mind.

War on Wasted Talent

Many have spoken and written about the War for Talent. I wrote an article Let’s stop the war for talent nearly 3 years ago. My thinking has evolved, but my message is largely the same. In fact, I shared at the EEON (Equal Employment Opportunity Network) lunchtime talk on 20^th March that if organisations are serious about talent as a key driver of performance and growth, they need to focus on the War on Wasted Talent.