Building a force - diversity without conflict

Brigadier Chris Parsons is Deputy Chief of the New Zealand Army, a role he took on 18 months ago. Growing up in the Far North, Parsons joined the Army straight out of school, signing up as an officer cadet. His career has taken him around the globe, from deployments in the Pacific to Africa and the Middle East. Parsons has also been commander of the Defence Force’s elite New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) and has completed Maters degrees in management and strategy. Parsons became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2000 and was awarded a Distinguished Service Decoration in 2011. Parsons governance roles within the services include the Army Leadership and Management Boards, the NZDF Superannuation Fund, the National Army Museum and the Armed Forces Canteen Council, as well as a number of integrated project boards for major capital projects.

With around 6300 in the Army ranks and 14,000 in the combined New Zealand Defence Force, the organisation’s leaders spend a considerable amount of effort thinking about the future of the force. As Deputy Chief of the New Zealand Army, Parsons is particularly interested in the diverse makeup of the Army.

Building diverse talent throughout an organisation is a key to having a strong pipeline of diverse senior leaders. The IoD’s Getting on Board with Diversity guide for boards notes that diversity at the top requires a diverse pipeline at senior management level to support development into governance roles. The Army is an organisation looking to build diverse leadership at all levels.

Currently, the New Zealand Defence Force is a majority male organisation – 2017 statistics show that females make up 23.3% of the Defence Force (Navy, Army, Air Force and civil staff). Within the Army this figure is 12.8%, although it is higher in officer ranks, where 17.9% are female. The ethnic makeup of the Army includes 1.5% Asian, 4.7% Pacific peoples and 17.2% Māori. However, these figures do not tell the full story, as about a third of the Army prefer to simply identify as New Zealanders.

Parsons is proud that Māori people are more highly represented within the Army than in the general population and that the proportion of Māori grows to over 26% of the Army’s senior enlisted leaders. This growth has happened quite naturally Parsons says and Māori culture within the Army is particularly strong. But more needs to be done to increase the number of commissioned officers that are Māori and Pacific Peoples and to attract other ethnicities and women to the Army as well.

“From a business perspective, diversity is absolutely needed. The vanguard of our diversity programme is currently getting more military women. Women are approximately 50% of the population and yet we are only getting 12-18% in different ranks. Defence will be a stronger organisation and be able to make a more significant impact if greater numbers of women join forces with us.”

“I already know having seen it on operations, a woman in the patrol can talk to other women in the environment and settle situations and maybe save lives. Often the people who are most impacted by conflict are women and kids, and if we can connect with them we can help to improve things.”

A growing Asian population in New Zealand also calls for greater representation of Asian views in the Army Parsons believes, and that requires a bit of a breakthrough to happen. He sees familial relationships as a key to growth – getting to the point where people can say ‘my cousin, my uncle, my dad, my mum’ are with the Army and they enjoy it and contribute to something worthwhile – that will help make the military a more obvious career choice than is perhaps the case now.”

While there is certainly a need to expand the ethnic makeup of the Army, Parsons thinks too much focus can be put on gender and ethnicity. Leaders of organisations need to recognise that diversity comes from factors other than what is dictated at birth – the natural differences that lead to diversity. Nurture is the other, often overlooked, side of the coin that includes a person’s beliefs, cultural and environmental upbringing, education, experiences and their personality type.

“A lot of people think of diversity as the obvious things we can see like gender, ethnicity or age and that by simply increasing their quotas and hoping for the best they’re going to get diversity’s benefits,” Parsons says.

“But it’s wider than that. I think we’re in danger of saying ‘this woman will think this way, or that man is a ‘white, stale, male’ and they all think the same. That’s not true; engineers think differently to artists for example.

“Fundamentally, what we want is the outputs of diversity. To me those are twofold, the ability to connect with a wider audience and the ability to solve problems by bringing different mind-sets to bear.”

What’s more, diversity on its own is not a solution. Deployment into different societies has shown Parsons that diversity can cause conflict when different cultures clash.

“Diversity to my mind is powerful, but it’s not a panacea. If you create a diverse team but don’t spend enough effort on acculturation, diversity can be quite divisive. In the military we help different societies where often that is evident. You can see one tribe is from here and another tribe is from there and they haven’t acculturated well and the result is conflict. So when you are selecting diverse talent you have to figure out how to build the team as well.”

Parsons points to research around how to do this well - where people can keep their identity, their diverse point of origin, but integrate into the team and adopt the culture of their working environment. Within the Army basic training remains the primary means of acculturation, where civilians become soldiers and learn about the values and characteristics that form the Army ethos, without foregoing their own culture and identity.

Parsons recognises that the popular perceptions of Army culture and the stereo-typical characteristics of leaders in the Forces could have a negative impact on attracting diverse people.

“In some ways Hollywood stereo types work against us. However, a modern Defence Force is a multi faceted organisation that thrives on diversity.”

While there are certainly some required traits, such as self-discipline and the ability to operate in difficult environments, there is a really strong focus on bringing out people’s potential and on leadership.

For example, leadership in the Special Air Service is more than being tough: it’s about earned equality and the qualities you bring rather than any concept of pre-determined pedigree, it’s about taking the right road over the easy road, an unrelenting pursuit of excellence and the ability to bring humour and humility to a situation.

“Humour frees the mind,” Parsons says. “Humour can be creative, it can allow you to think of problems in new ways or just deescalate tension and build mate-ship.”

And humility balances out the risks of the ego, something Parsons sees as vitally important.

“If you are going to go in to harm’s way to rescue hostages you need self-confidence, but any strength overplayed becomes a weakness and confidence taken too far can become arrogance. To ensure that doesn’t happen the NZSAS leverage the power of paradox – and focus on humility instead. To me egotism is the enemy of leadership."

Published in Boardroom Apr May 2017