According to Paula Glover, president and CEO of the American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE), diversity, equity and inclusion make up the "secret sauce" of the oil and gas and petrochemical industries.
Paula Glover, President and CEO, American Association of Blacks in Energy
"Getting that right is what makes our organizations successful – profitable – because, at the end of the day, we work in a business," she said.
Admitting this recipe is not new information, Glover noted that profitable organizations not only have diverse leadership groups, but they also "have diverse boards, they do business with diverse vendors, and they have a diverse workforce."
Glover emphasized that companies and organizations would do well to prioritize these essential recipe ingredients in the correct order.
First comes equity
Rather than placing the concept of diversity at the top of the recipe, Glover said she considers equity to be the most essential ingredient in the "diversity, equity and inclusion" recipe.
"It's equity, then inclusion and then diversity -- in that order. And here's why," Glover said at Pink Petro's Energy 2.0 Forum held recently in Houston.
Equity, Glover said, means everyone receives fair treatment.
"Pay equity is really just the smallest part of that story. It is the most easily measured," she said. "Companies can prove whether or not they have pay equity. But it's broader than that. It's the idea that we all know what to expect, that there is transparency, and that consequences are consistent in the same situations for every person no matter what they look like, no matter what their experience is."
It is incumbent upon company leadership to prioritize equity among its workforce because "it's the hardest thing to measure and get right," she added. "For example, how do you define 'ready for leadership?' Is that definition the same whether you're a man or a woman? The honest answer is that it most likely isn't, because personalities are involved. But getting equity right is actually the first step of that."
Inclusion comes second
The second most important ingredient in the recipe for industry success, Glover said, is inclusion.
"We've heard a lot about inclusion. I like to say that inclusion is really understanding the culture of your organization," she explained. "It is the self-reflective process that allows us, as companies and organizations, to be honest about who we are -- honest in a way we are not when we are amongst others."
Offering an example to illustrate the self-reflective nature of inclusion, Glover shared a memory from her childhood.
"There was a phrase that my mother always said: 'Don't put your business in the street.' What goes on at home stays at home," Glover recounted. "As organizations, that's the level of honesty that's required if you're going to have a really inclusive environment."
To achieve this level of honesty, Glover said, leaders must be willing to accurately assess whether their companies' actions fully match what they purport to be.
"Do we act in a way that reflects the values that we have placed on our walls?" she asked, adding that many companies do meet this challenge, but some do not.
Citing another example, Glover shared that at the church she and her family attend, the pastor and congregation begin each service by welcoming visitors.
"We always say, 'We hope you find this to be a warm, welcoming and loving church,'" she said. "I've been going to this church for about eight years, and it took me about four years before I was able to say to my husband, 'I actually don't think this church is all that warm and loving.'"
When Glover's husband asked what led her to feel this way, she responded, "Well, I've been coming to this church for four or five years, and there are only three people here who actually know my name."
This is why it is important at an organization for employees to understand "who we are and whether we are who we say we are," Glover said. "Do our employees reflect that? Does our leadership style reflect those kinds of priorities so everybody is naturally aligned and we see that?"
If an organization has strict work hours with no flexibility for working parents, "what does that say about that organization?" Glover queried.
"What if I say, 'You must be here eight hours a day starting at 7 a.m. and leaving at 3 o'clock, and if anything veers from that, there is going to be a problem with your employment'? What are we telling people with small children who get sick? Or if the school closes, what kind of flexibility are we granting them?"
Glover said that stance is not necessarily "a wrong position" for an organization to take, as long as there are open channels of communication about it.
"It's about being honest about who we are," she said. "These are the kinds of questions to ask for us to better understand how our organizations truly operate. What we know is that it's very nuanced, but we have to get this part right. Otherwise, bringing in a diverse workforce is like mixing oil and water -- it just doesn't work."
Leaders must ask themselves the hard questions and hope or maybe even "beg for really honest answers," she said. "It's not a topic for the meek."
Diversity comes third
While still an essential ingredient to the secret sauce of success, diversity, Glover said, is the third most important ingredient.
"Diversity brings in people with different backgrounds and different thoughts who walk through life on different paths, creating a situation where they can come in and just be who they are and give you who they are," she said. "We know that with all of those ingredients -- equity, inclusion and diversity -- now we have something that could be a really good recipe for our secret sauce."
If any one of those ingredients is lacking or excluded, the quality of the end product may be jeopardized.
"If we try to switch one ingredient out for the other, like you would with a typical recipe, it's going to taste different," she pointed out. "If you say, 'I don't use sugar, so I'm going to use sweetener,' it doesn't mean it doesn't taste good, but it does taste different. Getting the ingredients together and mixing those ingredients just right really are that secret sauce."
Getting it right
It takes more for a company to excel than just providing the three essential ingredients in the industry secret sauce.
"To get it right requires that we all have to be involved," Glover said. "This is not their problem. This is our problem. And when we talk about these issues, it's very easy to talk about the problem as if 'it's the company's problem, it's my CEO's problem, it's my boss' problem, it's my supervisor's problem, it's the board's problem, but I have nothing to do with it.'
"I tell you, you all have a lot to do with it. We all have a lot to do with it."
According to Glover, achieving success requires everyone involved -- from owners, leaders and managers to front-line workers -- to be fearless.
"We have to speak truth to power, and we have to be exceptional listeners," she said. "We have to be empathetic and patient. We have got to have a level of commitment that many of us may not have the patience or the time for."
Glover admitted that embracing and mastering these requirements, while rewarding, can also result in frustration.
"We have to be understanding and we have to be ready, but we have to do this," she said. "And even if you don't have people to do it with you, you've got to do it anyway to create a workforce that is reflective of the workforce we want it to be."
Using an 'engineer's precision'
Glover said she has her own stories about "what it felt like to be the only woman and the only person of color in an environment of 30 other people."
"Those who have been working for a long time know what that looked like 20 or 30 years ago," she said, adding that she had a choice regarding the direction of her career.
"I could stay in it because I actually liked the work -- and probably because I'm a little contrary and I didn't necessarily mind making people uncomfortable," she explained. "I understood that's what I was doing. And at some point, I settled into that role, because I wanted to see some changes happen."
Glover challenged others who don't fit the industry's traditional gender, racial or other workforce templates to consider "that's the role we collectively play in this work."
"Does it sound easy? It shouldn't," she said. "It's not something we can engineer our way to, but we do need to use an engineer's precision."
The ultimate ingredient in the secret sauce for the energy sector's future success, Glover concluded, is its workforce.
"That's the ingredient. It's all of us creating a path, lighting it up and bringing those who may be unfamiliar, who may not be like us and who are going to challenge our thinking, creating a place for them, and then encouraging them to join us," she stated. "Because they are us. They are the secret sauce."
