Leading across boundaries and divides - Our View

Since our founding more than 70 years ago, our clients have looked to us to help them navigate periods of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and big shifts in the world around them - globalization, civil rights, technology advancement, shareholder independence, demographic change, and more. These shifts are shaped by and reveal new ways of thinking, new participants in companies’ work, new skills, and competing interests. All that creates boundaries, often built on strongly held personal values. For decades, many business leaders considered such topics “externalities,” which could safely be ignored with the right strategy and operating model. Leaders who made it a practice to engage across these boundaries, especially on the topics most relevant to their business, however, have always been able to attract exceptional people from all walks of life, get the most out of their employees, and outpace their competitors.

Today, leading across boundaries and differences is critical. The world expects more than ever from business on a vast set of social, environmental, technological, geopolitical, and other concerns, concerns that both test the capacity of leaders and give rise to difficult conversations about economic fairness and power. Contentious elections in much of the world provide just one window into differences that go well beyond policy disagreement, are thorny, and grounded in deeply felt and personal values and identity. No leader today can consider them irrelevant to business. On a macro level, increased polarization affects global supply chains, employment practices, global investment and tax policy decisions, risk management, and much more. At the company level, these differences walk in the door every day in the form of employees and customers who insist on being heard. Leading effectively in divisive settings, across internal and external boundaries, is fast becoming key to driving value. Engaging across different points of view does not create distraction. It sheds it. It builds focus, resilience, and performance.

We have long been engaged with our clients around the world on how they effectively lead across boundaries and differences. Our work started with helping clients build boards and management teams that better reflect their employees and the customers they serve. Through understanding and tracking what this meant for different clients in different geographies and industries, we helped them build teams that reflect the realities of their markets today and growth aspirations, and have worked with our clients to get the most out of those teams. This work becomes more – not less – important as technology yet again remakes the workforce and experiences and opportunities across generations and job families continue to diverge. 
 
As a result, we need to have a way of talking about the ongoing evolution of our workforces that neither politicizes the conversation nor ignores demographic and economic reality. We acknowledge that there has been a tendency by many who care about diversity to make the conversation about some and not others. This is our opportunity to make it about all of us.

Many of our clients are widening their apertures and adopting more integrative frameworks, spanning a wider-than-ever set of experiences and identities such as generational, cultural, gender, socio-economic, neurological, racial, and ability differences.

Importantly, this way of thinking and talking must show an intent to include those who feel they have been left out of the conversation. From our perspective, this means we need to stay flexible and open to our clients’ needs, so we can help leaders perform at their best during times when their communities (internal and external) are changing and may be facing conflict and division. This requires focusing on both acknowledging differences and reducing the focus on fragmentation. And this approach is the more accurate, expanding face of diversity and inclusion.

At Heidrick & Struggles, we call this capability “leading across boundaries and divides”

Just before the 2024 U.S. election, we reached out to more than 250 directors and CEOs in the U.S. and asked them how important their ability to lead across boundaries was in that divisive environment. 45% of respondents characterized it as “foundational to be being able to achieve our goals” – and no respondent debated its relevance or growing importance. Looking more deeply, we saw that context is important; that industry, geography, role, size of company and other factors influence how and why leaders think about this. And, the study highlighted broad agreement as well as disagreement (at times, sharp) on the role business should play in leading across societal divides. Fundamentally, and most important, we saw confirmed what our work had long implied; that how a company approaches the challenge of bringing out the very best in every employee – across the boundaries in their business - is precisely up to that company’s leaders. This is fundamental. How they approach these topics and what they believe are not for us to decide. We meet them where they are - respecting the culture, language, and business goals they understand best. (Leading Across Boundaries and Divides) This report was the most pointed outcome, so far, of our explorations with clients on these topics since 2021, when this idea first emerged in our work.

In 2022, we conducted lengthy interviews with directors from around the world – clients with whom we have strong relationships and who were willing to provide candid observations. All pointed to an expanding mandate for business, the increasing role of political and social volatility, and a need to confirm and cultivate the ability to lead across boundaries and division in rising CEOs and directors themselves.

In 2023, we polled top corporate governance experts in the fields of law, communications, activist defense, and asset management. These experts confirmed that a growing variety of people are finding their voice within our clients’ shareholder base and stakeholder community and recommended that directors and CEOs carefully consider and engage wisely across these emerging constituent boundaries. So, late in the year, we began testing early versions of the thesis and the language with clients in different countries.

In 2024, we harnessed our science-based assessment and development framework to target this ability in leaders and teams; and we continued to study and drive deeper engagement with clients on this subject, supported by the data, insights, and recommendations published in Board Monitor and Route to The Top. We also arrived at our thesis and published for the first time on the topic leveraging some of the initial findings from the study. (Board Monitor 2024; Route To The Top; The Connecting Leader)

The business world, for all its faults, has proven its ability to respect our differences, using them as a source of valuable debate on the way to solving complex problems and creating value.

It is likely, especially if you operate in more than one market or culture, that your leaders and managers already face these challenges. When it comes to things like generational challenges, well, we all do.

At Heidrick & Struggles, our colleagues’ belief systems and values are different, sometimes vastly so. They are at times a source of internal conflict and disagreement. They are also a source of creativity and the engine behind our brand. Our differences force us to be curious – to improve our ability to inquire, to listen, to challenge and understand each other - skills critical to the work we do with our clients. “Respect the Individual” and “Grow with Our Clients” are values that unite us in our work. Our ability to work together across the many boundaries and differences within our firm is core to our success. We believe that you, like us, don’t have to look beyond your company to understand its value.

How are companies successfully navigating the current environment?

There are some companies who have been preparing longer than many and are ready for this moment. Here are the principles and practices these companies share.

1. Engagement is hard-wired. Employee engagement and inclusion programs and frameworks are a vital first step. In high-performing companies, these programs set expectations, create room for learning, and help every employee see themselves in an organization’s success story. But, they are just a start. In these organizations, engagement is an action – a observable and expected behavior that has been etched into the culture over years of practice, supported by evidence and reinforced by results.
2. Decision-Making Is the goal of engagement. In the best led companies, inclusion is not about smoothing over differences or forcing consensus. Its about pursuing difference with the shared goal of reaching a decision. Agreement and common ground are frequently reached, but they are not the goal. Decisions are. These companies don’t avoid conflict; they embrace it and learn to do it better. And then, they move on to taking action for the business.
3. Performance at the heart. These companies work relentlessly on performance and success as they define it – ensuring the best ideas rise, the best teams execute, and the best leaders drive outcomes, no matter their personal beliefs or backgrounds.

We believe the capability of leading effectively across the boundaries that divide us represents a growing opportunity for our clients. As a result, we continue to invest in building our deep expertise and long-standing client focus in this area.