Diversity drives innovation: Leading for the future, now
Presented by: Patricia Hurter, Lyndra Therapeutics
Patricia Hurter opened the ISMPP 2022 conference with a keynote presentation focusing on diversity. The session challenged us to move away from “lip service diversity” by exploring three fundamentals: diversity, inclusion, and psychological safety. Diversity is multifaceted and every team member can bring diversity and new perspectives in different ways. This is because diversity has both inherent aspects (e.g., ethnicity) and acquired aspects such as language skills, and so it is not always obvious from the exterior, and we need to delve deeper. Diversity is widely discussed across many industries, but inclusion and psychological safety and less commonly discussed.
Diversity is a thing, inclusion is an action, and psychological safety requires the creation of a comfortable environment in which diversity can thrive. When equal emphasis is placed on these three elements, diversity can be truly effective – it becomes not just something we say, but something we do and put into action. The speaker closed the session with an impactful quote: “Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance” – Verna Myers. We (mostly) all like to dance, so when encouraging diversity in your team, think about whether you are being inclusive and providing a safe and open environment. This is when we will empower people to openly share new ideas, generate the best results, and ultimately, drive innovation.
