How to Promote Team Diversity in Your Organization and Beyond

There is much work to do regarding team diversity, from the Oscars to Wall Street and everywhere in between. Our world contains multitudes. Yet, our offices often fail to promote team diversity.The problem plagues nearly every aspect of the corporate world—technology companies included. One particularly problematic area is product management.The product team must represent the voice of the customer and communicate information quickly across teams. The team must reflect the diversity of the customer base to understand their problems, challenges, and circumstances. That’s a lot trickier when the product management group is more homogenous than the target market. How big is this problem? Why is it still happening? How can we fix it? We’ll answer these questions and more below.

Mismatched Demographics

Using data from our State of Product Management Report, we know who holds product management roles. In regards to diversity, some glaring issues and problem areas quickly make themselves known.The racial makeup of product management sees white workers as the majority—59%. In contrast, Hispanic and Black workers each only hold 6% of product management roles. Both examples illustrate an imbalance between the potential users and those people shaping its future.

Gender Inequities

But diversity doesn’t stop at race. Gender inequities exist in product management, although women outnumber men in entry-level and more junior product management roles. But overall, product managers are male 60% of the time, surging to 65% when only considering senior positions. Much of this is due to increased churn for female product professionals, who tend to leave technology within the first ten years of their career far more often than their male counterparts. When it comes time for promotions, biases—conscious or not—prevent senior leadership from elevating women out of fear they’ll quit focusing on their family or other career opportunities.One more important finding from our survey was that 45% of product management professionals have a graduate degree. While a college diploma has long been table stakes for many jobs, getting an MBA or Ph.D. isn’t a practical possibility for many people, particularly those without the financial wherewithal to afford that extra tuition while removing themselves from the workforce for additional years to attain that degree.Marginalized communities—the LGBTQIA population, the disability community, and non-native English speakers—deserve representation in the daily standups and prioritization sessions. And while it’s natural that there aren’t many senior citizens in the trenches at tech companies, it’s another segment of the population that often lacks a voice at the table.

The Problem Persists

Anyone who doesn’t have their head buried in the sand is well aware of these systemic issues. We know that our corporate ranks often don’t match the public we’re aiming to serve with our products, solutions, and services. But knowing there’s a problem isn’t the same as actually correcting it.Brittany Edwards, digital product manager and co-founder of the diversity and inclusion agency, Incorp[​HER]ated, joined us on a recent webinar to discuss these issues. She said that while current events have once again spotlight this perennial problem, there’s much more work to be done."Everyone has slowed down enough the past year to recognize what diversity means and recognize what racial tensions are like in America,” Edwards said. “The positive end of that is that people in leadership positions—anecdotally and off the data largely white males in leadership roles—are identifying the gaps in their organizations or on their teams.”Despite this shared recognition of the situation, numerous hurdles are standing between awareness and a solution. It will take a multi-pronged, dedicated effort to solve things in a meaningful and sustainable way.

Solutions Await

Diversifying product management teams requires a lot more planning than expected. You may encounter many hurdles to clear and lay the groundwork to evolve your team. This begins by identifying and overcoming internal biases. Sometimes the culture of the team or entire organization is so entrenched in forming and retaining its majority representative groups that it’s now actually a welcoming environment for those from different backgrounds.To see a significant shift in the composition of the team, the pipeline for candidates must expand. It must be easy for applicants from different backgrounds to learn about the opportunities, apply, and receive consideration. The marketing team will use various tactics and channels to break into a new market; a similar mindset must exist to diversify the applicant pool.But even once the pipeline expands, you’ll also need to adapt to the corporate culture. “It’s clear that if you’re not actually a diverse company or attempting to become a diverse company, you’re not going to retain those folks,” Edwards said.Not everyone wants to be a trailblazer; some people from diverse backgrounds want to work at a company where they feel welcomed and find a sense of belonging.

Diversifying the Product Management Role

Product management can be particularly tricky for attracting people of color, considering people may not be familiar with the role. The fact people have often never even heard of it, much less considered it a viable option.Product management must counteract the reality that the field is lucky to hit someone’s radar by the time they finish college or already participating in the job market. The profession must establish touchpoints and create programs and resources in marginalized communities.“That drives the pool of candidates and the funnel,” Edwards added.However, what doesn’t work as well are marketing-based strategies using social media and commercials to paint an ideal picture of inclusivity. Potential applicants are looking for authenticity, and that requires companies to put in the actual effort.Apprenticeships, internships, and hands-on programs can get underrepresented populations in the door, interacting with employees and showcasing the job. Companies can also hire third parties to conduct audits and create long-term solutions that genuinely make meaningful changes.“True colors do show, and work is required,” Edwards said.Companies can also work to overcome the gender gap by breaking free of a trend started by Google that’s only gained prominence in the past two decades: requiring product managers to be “technical.” As a breeding ground for product managers, their actions have significant repercussions. When they began preferring product management candidates with computer science backgrounds in 2005—even though women earned only 20% of CS degrees at that time—they put a giant filter on the funnel for product management talent.

Avoiding the “Culture” Trap

When did you think back on previous occasions when you were interviewing applicants or for a job yourself? The concept of “culture” comes up fairly often. Are candidates a good fit for the established culture? Do you think you’ll fit in with the current corporate culture? It’s gotten so ingrained that many hires place cultural fit above specific skills and qualifications.While this may be effective for solidifying the status quo, it’s not a great way to attract a different cohort of candidates or win over an interviewee trying to picture themselves spending 40+ hours a week on the job. Not everyone plays the same sports or video games or watches the same movies and reads the same books, so why would you expect that to be the case for everyone on your team?Hiring for culture fit also breeds similarities. You want various backgrounds and voices, which doesn’t work when everyone feels forced to fit into a singular monoculture.

Why Product Needs to Promote Team Diversity

Hiring a broad spectrum of people is essential in any discipline, but product management can significantly benefit from this practice. Our job is to represent our customers' interests, understand their problems, empathize with them, and create solutions that satisfy multiple scenarios in various settings.To unpack what our customers face in the real world requires changing our perspectives and putting ourselves in their shoes. But the more dissimilar our starting points, the more comprehensive we can be when trying to understand their realities. With a diverse team of product professionals, we’re more likely to approach problems from different angles, ask questions, and notice more contributing factors.When superheroes team up to fight the bad guys, they don’t gather five people with the same skills and outlooks. They assemble a crew from different walks of life, possessing unique skills, powers, and experiences. Your product team shouldn’t be any different, minus the X-ray vision and telekinesis. The sum is more significant than its parts because those parts are complementary yet distinctly different.We’re more apt to account for cultural differences, problematic language, and constraints that might otherwise go unnoticed with a diverse team. Those seemingly minor details can make a huge difference in our products' usefulness and potential for adoption and growth. We want products that can benefit as many users as possible, so why wouldn’t we want to get as many unique voices in the room when discussing them?Watch our free webinar below to learn more about diversifying your product teams and other key trends.