Diversity in Leadership

Canada professes to embrace diversity, yet there is a striking lack of inclusiveness at the top of its public, private, and non-profit organizations—especially in our largest organizations. For example, visible minorities comprise 16.2 per cent of the Canadian population, but hold only 5.2 per cent of senior management positions in large companies and 1.6 per cent of executive management positions in the public sector.6 In 2006, only 24 visible minority candidates were elected to the 308-seat House of Commons, representing but 8 per cent of the total number of seats.⁷

At the municipal level, the story is similar. In 2006, visible minorities totaled 1.16 million and comprised 46 per cent of Toronto’s population but today only 9 per cent of the city council (4 of 44 councillors) are members of visible minority groups.8 The great majority of visible minority individuals in Toronto are immigrants. Just over one quarter of Toronto’s immigrants (326 thousand out of an overall immigrant population of 1.24 million) are not yet citizens eligible to vote.9 Even when they are subtracted from the calculation of eligible voters to elected representatives, the gap between the proportion of eligible voters who are visible minorities and the proportion of city council members who are visible minorities is substantial. As Ratna Omidvar, President of Maytree, has observed, “Public institutions are a mirror of the society. They reflect the power structure of the society and you see the faces represented in power and privileges.”¹⁰

Figures for the non-profit sector are scarce. But according to one 2005 study conducted in Alberta, visible minorities make up 11 per cent of the province’s population but only 5 per cent of the senior management in non-profit organizations.¹¹

The lack of diversity in leadership within the business, community, and political environments represents an important missed opportunity and a challenge for the future, as leadership is a fundamental driver of performance and productivity. Conference Board research has shown that Canada’s performance in key areas has been slipping relative to the US and other major competitor nations since 1996, when tracking began.¹²

Canada has only a limited capacity to influence global forces, such as trade liberalization, world commodity prices, and political events. But there are other performance and productivity drivers that Canada can affect domestically. These include drivers at the business, community and policy level, such as industrial structure, openness to trade and investment, and urbanization. Organizations and communities also can affect several key performance and productivity drivers such as human capital, social capital, and innovation. To do so, however, organizations and communities need strong leaders in positions at or near the top. Strong leadership can improve organizational and community results; diversity strengthens leadership.

When leadership is diverse, the range of talents and perspectives broadens—bringing a wider array of knowledge, skills, and experiences to an organization. Diverse leaders bring fresh perspectives, market knowledge, creative thinking, and capacity for risk-taking (‘know-how’), and often attract new investors and skilled workers (‘know-who’). Ultimately, their contribution is to improve the financial performance and effectiveness of the organizations they lead, and to strengthen the communities in which they are active.

Excerpted from the “The Value of Diverse Leadership” Conference Board of Canada, 2008