Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a chief diversity officer and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A chief diversity officer is responsible for dealing with issues of diversity in any organizational setup making it a first priority agenda. He/she works with other senior management officers to establish partnerships with other institutions or to develop programs and policies that can help bring about diversity within the organization.
Other than that, he/she can perform duties that include; providing proper leadership for diversity issues within the institution, guiding efforts that help define, nurture, and cultivate diversity as an institutional resource as well as ensuring that the institution has the proper capacity to deal with a wide range of diversity issues.
Core Skills Required to be a Chief Diversity Officer
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A chief diversity officer should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Public Speaking:
Public Speaking though closely related to presenting differs in that it is the process of performing a speech before a live audience with the purpose of informing, persuading or entertaining.
A Chief Diversity Officer must be equipped with good public speaking skills to be able to address an audience through presentations or talks to drive the point home and create a reputable record.
Decision Making:
Decision Making is the art of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternative resolutions before settling on one.
A Chief Diversity Officer cannot afford to make poor decisions, that's why he ought to develop a systematic approach to decision making that allows him to make every decision with skill, confidence, and wisdom producing a final choice of competence in the workplace.
Managing at team:
Managing is the administration of an organization which includes activities of setting the strategy of an organization and coordinating the efforts of the employees to accomplish its objectives.
A Chief Diversity Officer must learn the art of creating corporate policy, organizing, planning, controlling and directing organization resources to achieve the aims of the policies formed while making decisions to oversee the enterprise.
Team Building:
Team Building represents various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within the different teams at the workplace.
A Chief Diversity Officer ought to provide team building activities to his team to cultivate better communication, morale, motivation, productivity and help employees know each other better as well as their strengths and weaknesses to be used in building a better workplace.
Developing Others:
Developing others is an unremitting process that focuses on the broader, longer-term growth of individuals to nurture them to their potential and promote future development.
A Chief Diversity Officer needs to support, coach, positively impacts and effectively aid in developing talents of their staff by motivating them to become outstanding in their behavioral change and performance improvement that opens up development opportunities in the organization.
Work Attitude:
Work Attitude is one's feelings towards and beliefs about one's job and their behavior that can tell how it feels to be there.
A Chief Diversity Officer ought to encourage his workers and provide all the requirements for the workplace to ensure a positive attitude is maintained by the employees that can help them get a promotion, succeed on projects, meet goals and enjoy the job more.
Emotion Management:
Emotion Management is the ability to realize, readily accept and successfully control feelings on oneself and sometimes in others around you by being in complete authority over your thoughts and feelings that are generated whenever your values are touched.
A Chief Diversity Officer must be able to manage his emotions as well as assist the staff to control their emotions to ensure that the professional reputation, the efficiency, and productivity is not compromised.
Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional Intelligence is the capability to identify your emotions, understand what they are telling me and realize how the feelings are affecting you and the people around you.
A Chief Diversity Officer should be wise to handle different personalities that carry different emotions presented in the workplace while ensuring relationships are managed more efficiently by respecting your perception and the employee's as well.
Enjoyment of the Job:
Enjoyment of the Job is the ability to enjoy what you do rather than enjoying what you earn from it.
A Chief Diversity Officer needs to creatively learn of ways to motivate his employees to benefit from the workplace by matching their personality to the culture of the organization where they fit best and allowing them to explore their hidden talents to grow and mature with the team.
Personal Commitment:
Personal Commitment is an obligation that you have voluntarily agreed to fulfill without being cajoled or threatened and are willing to be held accountable for the results.
A Chief Diversity Officer ought to understand that though adopting new policies and procedures will be met with resistance, the approach by which safety standards are implemented and enforced influences employee's attitudes and commitment towards the organization.
Hard Skills Required to be a Chief Diversity Officer
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A chief diversity officer should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.