Neuroscience is revealing the obstacles leaders face – as well as some new opportunities – when it comes to leveraging the benefits of workplace diversity.
More than 150 food, beverage, and packaging professionals headed to the Women in Industry breakfast forum last week, hosted by PKN Packaging News and Food & Drink Business, to hear about the latest thinking in leadership development.
Keynote speaker, leadership coach, and author Belinda Brosnan told attendees at the forum, which was held alongside the 2018 AIP National Conference at Surfers Paradise, that the brain loves comfort and likes to operate in autopilot.
The workplace of the future, however, needed leaders that could provide stability amidst chaos in order to navigate the challenges of fast-paced change in the food, beverage and packaging industry, Brosnan said.
With this in mind, leaders must become tuned in and adept at working with people who are not like them.
“We now have amazing knowledge of the brain and how to maximise that so we can lead ourselves well though this change," she said.
“The opportunity for us is to become tuned-in leaders, where we are so aware of how we are operating that we are able to navigate anything.”
Brosnan, who has just launched her book Start with You – Lead from the Inside, said the brain uses up 25 per cent of our energy, which is why we seek to operate in this autopilot mode.
“As human beings, we naturally like people who are like us. That's how we're wired, so how do we bridge that gap? How do we rethink the way we deal with people who are ultimately different to us, in our organisation and externally?
"As human beings, our number one need is to belong... and this can lead to groupthink... and often opportunities are missed,” she says.
Brosnan said the key lies in how we navigate our own biases, an area that she focuses on in her coaching business, which includes Influential Women Masterclasses.
Going deeper with inclusion
A panel of food, beverage and packaging leaders, moderated by Food & Drink Business and PKN Packaging News publisher Lindy Hughson, also included views on inclusion and diversity, with solutions to tackle bias.
McCormick & Co head of global innovation, Jacqui Wilson-Smith said there was a compelling business case for encouraging diversity.
“The studies are really proving that it's more than just about fairness and gender representation; it's actually going to drive commercial results. Diversity is giving us new perspectives, ways of solving problems more quickly, and providing agility to business.”
Nestle Australia manager – Oceania of innovation acceleration, Nina Cleeve-Edwards, noted a disconnect between education levels of men and women, and their levels of employment in leadership positions.
“Women are more educated and highly educated than our male counterparts, and in Australia, education spending comes from the community, the taxpayer,” she said.
In addition to the issue of the underemployment of women, a lack of gender diversity therefore meant that the community was not seeing a return on its investment, Cleeve-Edwards said.
Tna Solutions co-founder and director Nadia Taylor told attendees her company chooses the best person for a position regardless of gender, and offered flexible conditions to attract women, although this wasn't always easy.
“Finding women engineers is really challenging, so this is really difficult for us. My husband and I are very big on getting this gender balance right in our company. We need to start educating people from a younger age and encouraging them. We need to change the mentality at home and in school.”
