The Pomegranate Principle

CHAPTER TWELVEPRINCIPLE 5: Onboarding Diverse Talent

The retention of an executive begins in the recruiting process. And the best way to retain a professional or executive of color is to create the conditions in which they can do their best work. That starts immediately after they have accepted the offer to join your company. What expectations were set during the recruiting process? What alignment is there between what the enterprise needs and what this person can deliver? What resources were promised and are those promises actually kept? If you promise a candidate something about budgets or headcount or reporting relationships, fulfilling those promises is critical to building trust. Any misalignment, any gaps not covered during the recruiting process, leave open a space where uncertainty can creep in. It allows a candidate who may be relocating or entering a new industry to be that much more rattled as they settle into their new role. And if they cannot trust the company to keep promises they made when the candidate's leverage was sky‐high as a finalist on a search, what will happen once they join the company and get into the throes of their work?

There are things companies can do to offset that, to put that uncertainty to rest. The first good thing you want to happen, the optimal thing you want to happen, is for this person to get off to a fast start. You want them to build relationships with the key stakeholders inside the company whom they need to influence and impress, ...