MAKING WAY FOR PARADIGMS OF DIVERSITY LEADERSHIP

To gain a better understanding of the new leadership challenges that diversity is bringing to organizations, the American Psychological Association provided an Interdivisional Grant to conduct a 1-day Leadership Diversity Summit (LDS). In January 2013, 15 leaders who were diverse across dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation came together to discuss the following questions: (a) How do you view leadership? (b) How is your exercise of leadership influenced by the context in which you lead, the multiple dimensions of your identity, and your lived experiences associated with culture and minority status? (c) How do you project the kind of leadership needed for the future, given the rapid change, growing diversity, and increased globalization in society? Each question was covered in a roundtable session, and discussions were recorded, transcribed, and content-analyzed. As a result, the LDS identified 4 competencies (with 16 dimensions) that are likely to be crucial to leadership in the coming years as organizations become increasingly diverse: leveraging personal and social identities, utilizing a global and diverse mindset, leveraging community and organizational contexts, and promoting a diversity-supportive and inclusive climate. In this article we describe how the LDS was conducted; discuss the framework of competencies that was identified, drawing on the insights provided by participants and on our own experiences as consulting psychologists; and then consider the implications of this framework for current practice in executive coaching and organizational consulting and for future research on diversity leadership.