Lenovo Pre-sales Technical Leader Tony Reid is a long-time advocate for change and an active male ally. Nominated for the 2023 everywoman in Technology Awards and the Diversity Manager of the Year Award at Lenovo, he has a powerful commitment to broadening inclusivity in the workplace and believes that progress is inextricably linked to diversity. On International Men’s Day 2022 he discusses his own journey as a male ally, how small changes add up to big changes and why men need to recognise the importance of diversity and inclusion in tech to avoid being left behind.
What defines the idea of male allyship and being a male agent of change for you?
The idea of positive change is inextricably linked with greater diversity for me. I started in technology 20 years ago and if I reflect on the start of my career at IBM and some of the technical teams that I was operating in, we have clearly progressed quite a lot since then in terms of gender diversity. For me, that’s what change looks like, but there is still a long way to go. It’s not just the right thing to do, but as a company, we’re trying to reflect the societies and the customers that we’re supporting as they become more diverse. In my career, I have seen that when everyone comes from similar backgrounds or experiences you tend to come up with similar ideas and to validate each other’s ideas. The strength in diversity is not about just reflecting society for the sake of reflecting it, but in bringing in the advantages of seeing problems from different angles.
When people think about positive change, they often consider the challenge of big moves — but is power really in the accumulation of small, determined ones?
If we all make small changes that’s what’s going to deliver the big change that we need. I remember having a conversation with another manager a few years ago about the language that we had used in job adverts. He was recruiting and just getting a lot of male applicants, and someone mentioned to him the language that we used in job adverts was very male and task/delivery-orientated at the time, which can put certain people off applying. It was something I hadn’t considered before and that made me ask what’s the approach here and what are we trying to do?
How can we improve the diversity of the pipeline in industries that are still male-dominated, such as technology?
Even adjusting the language in job adverts we were still not getting as diverse a list of applicants as we would like, so we looked at other opportunities to do this in a slightly different way and that included hiring for potential. That means hiring people who don’t necessarily have the five years of industry experience you might ‘need’ on paper, but who are capable, and who we can train up over time if they show the right attributes.
Technology is still a male-dominated environment and changing that is partly about trying to create those opportunities for more diverse talent to enter the industry, because if you do what you have always done, you’ll keep getting the same results. If you’re only going to choose people who have experience, you’re choosing from a much smaller pool. Obviously hiring for potential is more of a risk because you’re making a judgment call about someone being capable of getting somewhere. And it’s a challenge for them and for you to help them get there. But the advantage is that it’s more rewarding for the person, the team and the business in the end; you’ve given confidence to someone by having belief in their ability to do the job, and you’ve asked your team to buy in and help that person by mentoring and coaching them to get to that place. And once they do, they have better relationships across the team because they’ve had to forge them to gain that knowledge.
What is your leadership style and how does that fit with your role as a male ally?
I try to be open and inclusive when building a team rather than being top-down in my approach. I think the team buys in more when we share a goal. As a leader you have to make sure you are giving everyone space, because in any team you are going to have those who dominate and those who are quieter. It’s about trying to find ways in which everyone can contribute and feel their voice has been heard.
How important is it for leaders to show their male allyship for it to permeate the culture?
For me, that’s imperative because when you see others step up and recognise the importance and start to talk about this, it makes other people realise that this is something we’ve all got a stake in — for the culture of Lenovo and the industry generally. I’ve worked with people through my career who have done this, and their visibility has caused me to think, ‘Actually, what am I doing? Am I taking a role here?’ Then it’s been about trying to find ways to contribute to the solution. That is something I’ve been taking responsibility for as a leader — recognising its importance and communicating that down.
Are there any spaces for you that particularly show how inclusive workplaces benefit everyone?
Lenovo has employee resource groups for different demographics or groups, and I recognised that there was one missing, for caregivers. I have a son with complex special needs so this reflected my personal experience, but I also believe it’s a group that isn’t talked about much. Caregivers are an often unseen and misunderstood group, and an area that also disproportionally impacts women, but it needs men’s voices to call for change too. Even from discussions I’ve had already with my team here in Glasgow, it’s obvious that there are a lot of shared experiences and issues, even though our circumstances are different. People might be looking after older parents or other family members, but the needs are common around flexibility and the support that’s required. I’m hoping we can advocate for and try to support those groups with measures such as carers’ passports, so that you don’t need to have the same conversation with managers if they change, for example. I’ve been lucky through my career with the support I’ve had from managers, but not everybody is in the same position, so this is about trying to formalise some of that support. Creating better management and personal support and spreading understanding will help us retain critical skills and support our people through difficult times as a responsible employer.
Are there any other areas of D&I you want to influence as a male agent of change?
I think we need to do a lot more work around neurodiversity in the workplace. I reflect on my own experience, where I’ve managed people who are neurodivergent, and on some of the challenges of that, but I also think of some of the successes that we’ve had in those projects. We just don’t have the toolkit as managers across the industry to harness this potential at the moment and it’s about trying to get the best for your team and allowing those individuals to contribute as well. It can add a huge amount to an organisation to do that, because again, they are coming at problems from a different angle and the untapped potential there can be phenomenal.
Is there fear for some men about getting D&I ‘wrong’ and what would you say to encourage men to step up as male allies on IMD 2022?
There are situations where there can be reluctance to engage in discussion around diversity because you don’t want to say the wrong thing, and the polarisation in some debates around diversity now has made that even harder. I would say lean into diversity though; we all get stuff wrong from time to time. There’s nothing scary or even particularly difficult here. This is just about making small changes to ensure we are supporting colleagues, and this could be in the way you speak to people or give everyone a voice across the team or in genuinely listening to different opinions. Ask yourself questions: do you always have meetings in the same way and are they a foregone conclusion or are you genuinely going to take on other opinions as a manager for example. Ultimately, it’s about trying to bring people in. I’d always say to other men, step up because it’s the right thing to do, but don’t be left behind as well, because the industry is moving in this direction. And it’s moving there for the right reasons, so be part of it.
