#558 Leadership, Education and Diversity: Why Strong CVs Can Hide Weak Decisions
Leadership, Education and Diversity: Why Strong CVs Can Hide Weak Decisions
The United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister: Andy Burnham, a Labour politician from the north of England. Anyone expecting a traditionally left-leaning party to assemble an unusually diverse cabinet was in for a surprise. As Niels Brabandt explains in the latest episode of his podcast and videocast, drawing on a current newspaper article, Burnham's cabinet is one of the most Oxford and Cambridge educated in years. For Niels Brabandt, this is not a quirk of British politics. It is a case study that plays out in boardrooms and leadership teams everywhere.
The Oxbridge Problem: A Wake-Up Call for Business Leaders
That a party built on the promise of social mobility would appoint such a homogeneous cabinet raises an uncomfortable question: how does this happen? Niels Brabandt is careful, however, not to let the answer slide into a blanket case against education. The rising trend of anti-intellectualism, which dismisses qualifications wholesale as out of touch, is not a solution in his view. It is simply the mirror image of the same problem.
Education Is Neither a Free Pass Nor the Enemy
The question that matters, Niels Brabandt argues, is different: have people proven themselves outside protected environments, outside the civil service, outside institutions funded by taxpayers or public money, in other words in the private sector, where results are measured and dismissal is a real possibility. A qualification alone tells you little about that. The real risk appears when too many people with very similar backgrounds and near-identical CVs sit around the same table. Groupthink follows almost automatically, even when every individual in the room is genuinely excellent.
Isomorphism: Why We Choose People Who Look Like Us
Niels Brabandt calls this pattern isomorphism, from the Greek iso meaning equal and morphe meaning appearance: people tend to select others who resemble themselves. The result is boardrooms where members can be genuinely hard to tell apart. Yet the scientific evidence is unambiguous. Diversity leads to better outcomes in teams. Anyone disputing that today is arguing against a substantial, well-established body of research. At the same time, Niels Brabandt stresses that representation alone is not the point. What matters just as much is whether people can translate practical, hard-won experience and scientific evidence into effective decisions.
Hard and Soft Success Factors Belong Together
Most organisations ultimately judge people on results, and this, Niels Brabandt notes, is where a frequently overlooked problem hides: some people stay in post for years despite visibly underdelivering, protected by networks or family connections that let different rules apply. Results can be measured hard, through classic KPIs such as revenue, volume or profit, and soft, through what are known as Critical Success Factors such as employee motivation, organisational culture and team morale. A credible assessment needs both.
The Most Important Step: Naming Your Own Bias
Niels Brabandt's central piece of advice to leaders is to accept that no selection decision is ever truly neutral. It is always shaped, whether you like it or not, by your own life story, your background and your social upbringing. As an example, he cites an article from the Süddeutsche Zeitung celebrating a young person for building a 150,000 euro investment portfolio, in which it is mentioned almost in passing that the same person had previously inherited 110,000 euros. Stories like this do more than distort individual career narratives. They quietly shape who we consider competent and who we consider credible in the first place.
What This Means for Your Organisation
For leaders and HR decision-makers, Niels Brabandt draws practical conclusions. Bring in several people with genuinely relevant expertise to selection processes, rather than running candidates through eight rounds purely to spread the risk. Deliberately reduce the factors known to trigger unconscious bias, such as photographs, names or addresses, at early stages of selection. And above all, make sure everyone involved knows and accepts that their decisions are not neutral. Leaders who are aware of that, and who must justify their choices externally as a result, demonstrably make better decisions.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast's and podcast's transcript, read below this article.
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Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Education is a good eighth thing, isn't it? Well, of course. Okay, so we select people by education, by the grade they have, by probably the degree they have. And now you'll say, no, no, no, this is not how it works, you need experience. Okay, cool, so we select them by experience, and you say, well, also, but not only that, we probably need both: experience and maybe qualification, and that gets really complicated.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
We are going to talk about today about leadership, education, and diversity: what you might do wrong, and how you are able to do it better, or to do it even right. We're going to talk about that in the context of the new Prime Minister in the UK, believe it or not. We have a new Prime Minister in the UK. I mean, we didn't have that for a long time, long meaning like 2 years.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And when we talk about leadership, education, and diversity—now, of course, you might think, okay, when Andy Burnham, the new Prime Minister from up north of Manchester, is going to call in his cabinet, he probably will pick the best people, and it's going to be a very diverse group. Very important here, I'm going to show you a real article. I am allowed to quote that under Fair Use, Fair Dealing Act in the US and the UK, and of course I'm able to quote that under German law as well.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
When you now see that suddenly Andy Burnham, the Labour politician, not someone from Conservative, the Labour politician, called him the most Oxford educated people in years. So it's the most Oxford educated cabinet. The question is—so first, of course, when you don't know Oxford, Oxford means either Oxford University or Cambridge University, the two most privileged universities, the most prestigious institutions in the education sector in the UK, with global reputation, top 10 universities in many different rankings. So the question is, how can this happen?
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
You expect, especially from left-wing politicians, to not do that. For a long time, governments were criticized, saying, you have closed circles, you don't know what's going on with the real world, you don't know what working people actually want to have, you just sit in your little bubble and then you take it from there. And we get that impression that might have happened. The question now is, how could this happen? So, first things first.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
One trend we have to stand up against, because we have a trend of so-called anti-intellectualism, where people tell you phrases, and I'm not making this up, where they say, look, this all of these degrees. People then say something like, I know many people who are idiots with degrees. Okay, hear the news, hear the news. So do I. However, I know even more as you call them idiots without degrees. So I'd rather go with degree than without one. I select however. Very important.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Often people say, when you have the university qualification, you are up to the job. That is an almost automatic assumption, and that is not always true. Also, we have an issue when you have too many people, as it happens right now in the UK cabinet, who come from the same background, probably same social class, same social upbringing. That, of course, might not always be the case in the cabinet right now. However, when we see it's usually Oxford, there is a certain level of groupthink.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And groupthink is never great when you form a government. Groupthink will mean that often people, the effect is called isomorphism, people select other people who are just like them. Iso, Greek for equal, morph for appearance. And isomorphism seems to have taken place here. And by the way, when you now say, oh, you know, better these people than all of that diversity nonsense, I just want to be very straightforward here. Please look into science when you say something like that before you embarrass yourself.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
The scientific evidence regarding diversity is so blindingly obvious all over the place available. It's available everywhere. The scientific evidence that diversity favors organizations is unambiguous. It's not even disputed. It's not an argument. It is there, and it's available for you. So either you read it, or you say, hey, I prefer ideologies, I just don't like when other people have rights as well. You can say that makes you, I'm not going to put that word here, but it makes you unsuitable for leadership, for sure.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
The science behind it, very important here, the science behind it does not automatically qualify people to do the job. However, the scientific evidence behind it qualifies people to get to better conclusions. When someone says, hmm, what impact does higher taxation have on countries? Then you can either stick a finger in the air and try to find out by the wind, or you can simply guess, or you can just sit there with your brain and think, or you can look into a wide range of scientific research that tells you what the impact on currency is, the impact on migration, the impact on the mood in the country, the impact on your chance to get reelected, etc., etc., etc. All of that is there.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And we need people who, very important, not only read through that, but then deliver results. And delivering results. When you now say, I don't care about degrees, I don't care about experience, I only care about results. Well, here are the news. People who have more experience and are better qualified deliver better results. Who could have thought? And by the way, these need to be measurable. So you need to have your KPIs, your hard numbers there. However, we also need the CSFs, the critical success factors, which are the soft factors in the game. So very important when you implement this, KPIs and CSFs are both equally important.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
The main part here, however, is we have to accept one thing. Our selection decisions are not neutral. And I know this is a hard pill to swallow, because some people will say, oh, I am so well educated, how can you say anything near that? I'm in a business for 20 years, I know exactly who's a fit and who's not, etc., etc. Well, as Frank Hisebe from Harvard Business School already said, N equals 1 is no evidence. You have to accept that your decisions are not neutral. By the way, neither are mine.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
That is why you bring in more people, while, and now the difficult part begins, you only bring in people who are first, qualified to do so, second, have something meaningful to say during the recruiting process, and third, hold the qualification, the scientific evidence, can be certificate or a degree or whatever else. But they need to have the scientific evidence to make brilliant decisions. Because otherwise, people just look at their notes and say, I like you or I don't. If I like you, I put you forward. If I don't like you, I'm not going to put you forward. And that is not recruiting. That is just awful, opinion-led, randomized decision making. You could actually throw a dice and probably get better results compared to that.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And especially in the UK and the US, we often have the problem that you have 12 rounds of recruiting where you lose great talent immediately, because people say, when you want me to sit through 8, 9, 10, 12 rounds of recruiting, you better offer a massive salary. When you don't offer that, they're going to walk off somewhere else. So very important is you accept that your decisions are not neutral. You bring in other people, but a diverse group of people. So when it comes to education, diversity is also key. But the first thing always is, be aware that your decisions are not neutral. When you say, I have the awareness, I get the qualification, I get the experience, bringing all of that together in an amazing diversified team, then everything will get better from there. And I wish you all the best implementing this in your organization.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And when you now say, I think I have a couple of questions here, feel free to contact me anytime. When you just watch me on YouTube, feel free to leave a like there. Of course, subscribe to my channel. Thank you very much for doing so. And of course, leave a comment here. Always looking forward to discussing with you. When you now listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, I'm very grateful if you could give me 5 stars. Thank you very much for doing so. All of this is available for free, lots of research going in here, all of that freely accessible. We will keep it free, no worries. However, a nice review would be very much appreciated. On top of that, of course, please recommend this channel to friends, colleagues, anyone, online, offline, social media, anywhere you like. Thank you very much for doing that as well.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And of course, when you now say, hey, do you have anything more than the weekly podcast and videocast? Yes, we do. We have the so-called YouTube Shorts. You find them, surprise, on YouTube. Usually once a day at least, we publish a leadership tip. So it pays off not only to subscribe to my YouTube channel, also put the little bell in there, because then you get a tiny, tiny notification when something new is online, so you're not going to miss out. I promised you 365 episodes of leadership tips of me and external experts in this year. I'm already past the 365 mark. So we will have a lot more for you here. I look forward to welcoming you on my channel. And of course, you can follow me on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Always happy to see you there as well.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
When you now say, hey, we need more than a podcast, videocast, we need a trainer, a speaker, a coach, a mentor, consultant, a project interim manager, feel free to contact me anytime. What I do for a living, you can see at nb-nb- sorry, nb-networks.biz, feel free to visit my website. And of course, you can drop me an email, nb@nb-networks.com. Looking forward to hearing from you. By the way, you can drop me an email just to have a discussion, or if you have a booking for me, anything fully available, I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
On top of that, of course, we have live sessions. We have them at least once per month. If you want to be part of the live session, you can ask me anything. And by the way, if you need a private one, please get in touch as well, so we can find a date for your company when you want to have a private session. expert.nb-networks.com, put your little email address in there. As soon as you put your email address in there, you receive, no worries, only one email, every Wednesday morning. It's 100% content at free guarantee. And as soon as you're on there, you receive, every Wednesday morning, the leadership letter. You will get full access to all the articles, to all the blog articles, videos, everything is fully free. All of that. And only via the leadership letter we will communicate when the next live session is, the date, the time, and the access link. It's all in there. So I'm looking forward to seeing you also on my leadership letter.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
On top of that, you can also follow me on social media. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Feel free to follow me on Instagram. You can, of course, leave a like on Facebook, or subscribe to my channel on YouTube, or do all of the above. I'm always looking forward to seeing every single one of you there in the near future. At the end, by the way, very important is when you contact me on any of these meets, you guarantee to get an answer within 24 hours or less. So no worries, there is no long waiting time.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
At the end of this podcast and videocast, it's very important that there is one thing which is always the most important aspect. Apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast, because only when you apply what you heard here and you learned here, you will see the positive aspects that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so. Feel free to contact me anytime. Looking forward to hearing from you. Answer guarantee within 24 hours or less. And at the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this videocast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.