Hired because I am a woman? 

Now I know that is a provocative statement—and one which easily could have stopped you from reading any further. But please bear with me as I explain how I have come to embrace this statement, rather than rejecting it outright. As with many other women, this was just the latest step in a long journey, one which saw my thinking and beliefs evolve significantly along the way.

Twenty years ago, if someone had told me that I was hired thanks to my second X chromosome, I would have quit that role on the spot. In my mind, my capabilities were the sole criteria for hiring; were that not enough, I would have preferred to be in another role.

Now I see things differently.

In today’s fast-paced world, the age of the individual contributor is long behind us; organizations can only be successful nowadays when leveraging the power of teams. It is simply impossible for a single individual—no matter how talented—to brainstorm, create, and execute on all the different aspects necessary for value creation. And it has been proven time and again that teams have the potential to become far more effective when they can tap into the talents of a diverse group of team members; diverse in gender, age, nationality and experience for example.

Individuals with different perspectives can truly enhance the value creation of a team enormously in many subtle ways. It can be as seemingly small as asking a different question or focusing on a different part of the process. As a result, diversity is crucial in building high-functioning teams, whether it be strengthening the flow of ideas or building and carrying out plans, all aspects of the process benefit from having multiple viewpoints embedded in the process.

That is why I was almost shocked when I read in the last Female Board Index in my home country, the liberal Netherlands, that the percentage of women in board positions has actually declined from 8% to 6% between 2015 and 2017. Twenty companies even have zero women on their board.

Perhaps it’s time to blog on diversity again.

Why is having a diverse team so important?

Let’s tap into the research once more. A 2018 report from McKinsey found that ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity, especially at the executive level, was heavily correlated with profitability. Diverse executive teams were 33 percent more likely to outperform their peers on measures and indicators like revenue and profitability.

Similar to the arguments made in my previous article, a diverse workforce is more likely to have had diverse experiences as well—which correlates with high performance. As an article in Harvard Business Review puts it, “working with people who are different from you may challenge your brain to overcome its stale ways of thinking and sharpen its performance.” While the authors analyze a series of surveys and studies in their article, the main takeaway is this: diverse teams are more likely to be on top of their game, staying sharp thanks to their heterogeneity. Such groups were more likely to be objective, keeping their biases in check and unearthing new information more accurately, whether it was a game of pricing stocks or a test of determining a defendant’s guilt.

Diversity also reduces groupthink, for logical reasons. If you think about it, groupthink arises from conformity and uniformity; if all members are too similar to each other, then it’s obvious that they’ll reach similar conclusions and solutions. On the other hand, with enough diverse members, teams can encourage dissent, stop stereotyping, and encourage the rise of unorthodox, creative, and ultimately, profitable solutions to existing problems.

As an editorial in The Guardian points out, outsiders have a different perspective and play a role in forcing teams to rethink their assumptions. They cite the example of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a pioneering physicist who discovered pulsars in the 1970s, and who helped bring up many other diverse faculty and students with her. Dame Jocelyn, by merit of her own experience, came to understand something: breakthroughs don’t come out of nowhere—but are instead born of fertile minds which have been nurtured through diverse experiences, perspectives, and upbringings.

Breaking the diversity hire stigma

So in fact, hiring a woman because she is a woman, or hiring someone with a different background because of that background, is not necessarily the sort of prejudicial statement that it may seem at first glance. I see two conditions for this to work.

First, the leadership recruiting for a position need to have a clear understanding of what they are looking for. What is the type of thinking that needs to be challenged? What different behaviors need to be displayed? Does an organization need a different style of leadership?

When this is clear, the search for the right fit becomes easier. Clear communication on the benefits of hiring someone with a different profile than the rest of the team will facilitate the integration of the diverse team members. Otherwise, the individual added to the team might not be comfortable being in such a situation, nor would the team welcome the new member with open arms.

Also, bear in mind that the term “diversity hire” is a fraught one, loaded with a lot of emotional baggage. It does imply that, rather than your skills, you are hired for only your identity—and thus, a drag on the team. In increasing the diversity of a team, be it gender or otherwise, buy-in from the rest of the team is crucial. After all, no one likes it when their boss comes in and mandates a hiring initiative based on diversity alone.

The second condition is strong leadership buy-in with the tenacity to keep on communicating—and the courage to re-explain if needed. Even when some members of the team might reflect with apprehension by mis-framing diversity hire, the leader should create a truly inclusive work environment for the diversity to yield results.

With these conditions in place, it can indeed be the best decision for a company to hire a woman because of a different communication style she can bring to the table, or someone from a different background because of the distinct lens through which that person looks at a problem.

In the end, bringing diverse members together for the unique strength they bring to that team will yield only benefits. I’ve come to realize that companies which recognize this fact will be one step closer to also realizing their ambitions. So if someone were to tell me that I was hired because I am a woman, I would smile and say, “Yes please.”