As I have grown in my career as a public servant, I have watched communities fill their vacant positions. Many organizations are filled with high-quality professionals who are extremely experienced and educated. I have presented to full audiences of city/county managers and administrators, assistant/deputy city managers, and department heads. But every time I look around the room, there is one question I have started to ask myself a lot lately: where are the minorities?

In my first seven years of public service, I was a nonsupervisory, nonexempt engineering technician. I met several minorities from all walks of life in that position. Most of whom were in similar non-exempt, non-professional categories. The next seven years of my career I would work at a department-head level, and it became very apparent to me the limited number of minorities who I could call my peer. I have discussed this with a handful of people in city manager or assistant city manager positions, as these are the people who hire department heads.

Lately, I have felt my time for merely talking about this issue has ended, and I firmly believe it is time to do something about it. So, any chance I get, I am going to ask these individuals who manage and lead these wonderful organizations about their hiring, mentoring, and planning for minorities in department-head and executive-level positions. And I think we need to take a hard look at the make-up of professional organization boards as well.

A while back, in a class for my MPA program, we had a guest speaker from one of the top high-performing local government organizations in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This was a very respected individual who had a great career, and I was very honored to hear them speak. They spoke about the organizational restructuring they had ventured into over the last two to three years, including the new pillars of their organizational chart and how they planned for their organization’s future. They started by explaining their organization’s 2020 plan and how it helped make them the high-performing organization they are. Then they spoke about their new plan for 2040. It was a great presentation with wonderful information about how to change the mindsets of people within an organization toward the future, but one thing stuck out to me. The only time I heard the word diversity was regarding diversification of housing. The community wanted diversification of neighborhoods and housing, or affordable housing. This is no doubt a great idea and a much-needed goal for many communities around the nation. However, I was interested in how they were going to create opportunities for minorities—in department-head level positions or higher—to be involved in this great change happening in their organization.

When it came time to ask a question, I raised my hand. “Thank you for the presentation. My experience has shown me that there is a true lack of diversity in the top management and executive levels of public organizations across the Kansas City metropolitan area. This has motivated me to continue my education and strive for these opportunities, hopefully all the way to the city manager’s office one day. I am curious how you all, as a high-performing organization, are diversifying your top management and executive positions so they can help you achieve your goals moving into the future.”

The speaker replied that they had been discussing diversity and inclusion in their office more, and had even contemplated creating a position for it within their organization. They spoke about how they know it is an important thing to hire someone who does not look like themself or the city manager of the city. They spoke about the lack of diverse applicants for their vacant positions, speculating that maybe it was because they are in a suburban community. They said that greater diversity was a goal of theirs, but they needed to do more. Then, they kind of turned it back to me and said, “You know, if you have any ideas on how we can do better, please give me some suggestions.”

This was a little hard to do with five minutes remaining in class and a room full of more questions. This situation did, however, make me understand that perhaps these individuals who clearly know how to manage a city may not know how to address this problem organically. Here are my top ideas on how to diversify your leadership.

1. Do Not Reinvent the Wheel.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard executive-level professionals explain that one of their mentors, friends, or colleagues called them about a vacant position or future vacancy in their organization. I have also been told how individuals are referred to people for jobs. I’ve even been told by a few that someone put in a “good word” to the hiring manager about them. The relationship assisted in getting them a job, or at a minimum, an interview. Though the relationship was not the only thing that helped, it seemed like a big reason that the opportunity became a reality. My guess is you know of someone who has experienced this, or perhaps you have over your career. If it has worked for you or someone you may know, why can’t it work for others? Be quick to help a minority local government professional on their career path along that wheel of success.

2. Inclusion and Diversity Should Be Actions, not just Words.

Diversity and inclusion managers/offices are an important step in helping move us forward with this issue. Guess what? Everyone is doing it! So, ask yourself or ask your leaders, what you are doing differently. Being a reactive organization does not make you a high-performing one. You took time and effort to think about the future of your organization, or the future of your city. Identifying the necessity to diversify your organization is not only a Human Resources concern; it should be discussed with every department and every leader in your organization. It must be embedded within the culture of your leadership in your organization, not assigned to a single position within your organization or a single department. Your succession plan should include a list of people who look different, think differently, have different education backgrounds, and come from different socioeconomic communities. If we aren’t diversifying our organization’s leaders, what change are we really trying to create for our future?

3. Take a Chance on Someone.

I know you might hate the idea of risk. You’ve been trained and educated to avoid it. Diversifying your leadership team should not be a quick 90-degree turn in any one direction. You want to make sure you are placing people in the right position for them to be successful. Their success is your organization’s success, as well as your community’s success. Trust me, the last thing I want is for someone who would not usually be given an opportunity to get one “just because they’re the minority candidate” and be completely set up for failure. You want them to first have the necessary qualifications, education, and experience. We want the opportunity and don’t have all the experience or education you’re seeking sometimes, but we are working hard to get there.

Remember that our life experiences are different than yours. We cannot have experience in opportunities we’ve never received. For example, we may not have all the education requirements yet because we may have had a child as a teenager and had to immediately go into the workforce to provide for our family. Perhaps we started near the bottom of an organization and have been continuing our education to level-up one day, but no one has noticed. The point is that people sometimes have different life experiences that would have prevented them from being all you might need in a candidate. Interview them anyway! Don’t focus on whether we have already done the job; focus on if we can. It may seem like a risk to hire us, but it’s a risk that is worth investing time and energy into because the payoff is great when it is successful.

4. Recruit Local Talent.

There are many great public policy and public management programs at universities around the world. Seek out the public management faculty at your local universities and explain your organization’s hiring needs. Have them help you identify minority talent who can help you close this gap. Having worked in the public sector for as long as I have, I see this done all the time with other community issues. Your local universities are a great resource with lots of talent. Don’t let them escape to another metro area!

5. Become Uncomfortable.

Call people of color in our field—people with an upbringing different from yours who are working in this profession. Identify them, get to know them, meet them for lunch, and build relationships with them. This has worked for so many people, and it will continue to work for others. People of color don’t have a big selection of folks who look like them to call and talk to about city management experience here in the Kansas City metro area. We don’t even have a vast list of people to call about department head experience. You must be intentional about changing something that needs changing. Great leaders are comfortable with becoming uncomfortable.

6. Ask Better Questions.

I do not want to place you against your human resources director, but the reality is your line of questioning may need to be changed to allow us to separate ourselves among your candidates. I get it. You want to know about our leadership, our experience, our qualifications—things that all organizations want to know about. However, try asking about our upbringing or motivations to change the world as we know it.

One of the best questions I have ever been asked in an interview was from my current organization: “Tell us how your life experiences will help you make infrastructure decisions for the city of Raytown.” I got to talk about how growing up we walked many places, sometimes on sidewalks and sometimes not. We would walk to family members’ houses and walk to the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) location for groceries. My mother was always concerned with our safety and told us to “stay on the sidewalk” if it was there. This taught me the importance of sidewalks to a community’s residents.

Our ability to tell you our story is sometimes limited by the straight and narrow questions asked in interviews. Many individuals have polished answers to fit these questions. We are different. Our grit, developed over years of economic and social mobility struggles, leads to strong mental capacity and the ability to overcome the many challenges brought forth by leading and managing a public organization. It is one thing for a person to sit in a classroom and hear about poverty, social mobility struggles, and things nearly all MPAs have learned. However, it is completely different to have lived it, overcome it, and relate to people living in that situation. You will never learn about this grit if you don’t ask questions to help us tell our story. Be different, ask better questions, and let us help you make a difference.

7. Follow the Platinum Rule.

Everyone always says to follow the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you want to be treated”. I say, let’s rethink that! I believe that you should “Treat others the way that they want to be treated.” Why? Because they may not have grown up like you. They probably did not have the same experiences or opportunities that you did. So how do you do this with employees, supervisors, and colleagues? As I stated earlier, get to know them. Develop a relationship; find out who they are and how they want to be treated. Find out what their dreams are. What are their fears and their challenges? In the end, it might be that they want to be treated like you do, but you will not know that unless you take the time to reach out and get to know them.

Conclusion

One of the biggest reasons I am in the local government profession today is because someone did these seven things for me. Today, I proudly call them my mentor because they saw potential in me that I didn’t know I even had. They believed in me, and it made me believe in myself. This was years ago, before I had even decided to study public administration. We must take time to encourage the next generation of minority public professionals. They are the future.

For my fellow minority local government professionals, we must continue to work hard with the highest integrity, continue our education, and maintain our professionalism to be invited to the table of opportunity. We represent our communities every single day in everything we do. I encourage you to find a mentor who looks different, thinks differently, and speaks differently from you. This has helped me tremendously in my career and I have zero doubt you will find it helpful as well. This issue is a “we” thing because only we can change the world together.

 

JOSE M. LEON JR. is director of public works for Raytown, Missouri.