When Jerod Mayo was hired in January to be the New England Patriots head coach, he became the fourth Black head coach in the NFL and the fifth when representing BIPOC overall. Despite the player population being around 70% Black, the NFL’s head coaching ranks have always been more than 70% white, and often more than 90%.
This is despite having a rule in place, the Rooney Rule, which required teams with a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one “minority candidate.” The NFL implemented this rule in 2003, when it had just three Black head coaches. After a brief rise, that number came back down to three in 2020. Today, there are five Black head coaches and one Lebanese head coach, who also identifies as Muslim, representing another historically excluded community. Both Mayo and Raheem Morris, the latter recently hired by the Falcons, have yet to coach their first game.
An investigation found that “the league for years did too little to exert the influence it [had] over its 32 teams. Instead, it clung to a policy [the Rooney Rule] that repeatedly proved fallible,” and that “[a] similar pattern played out as the policy spread to corporate America.”
It has been disappointing that some corporate leaders believed that the rule on its own would be a viable solution for their lack of representation in the C-suite. I saw this firsthand while working as a business reporter in the summer of 2020, as corporate America began another rushed diversity push.
Why would we take notes from the NFL on hiring strategy focused on diverse leaders, given it is not an institution known for its progressive fervor – especially knowing that their approach to policy was ineffective?
If you actually want to improve representation in leadership, here are some alternatives:
Step 1: Prioritize culture
According to State of Inequity: Building a Brighter Future for BIPOC at Work, a report by Hue, building a culture of wellbeing is core to ensuring your organization is built with the right culture in mind.
BIPOC leaders often may not get the opportunities they seek at their first or second employers. This may drive them to leave the company or even their industry altogether. The right culture plays a key role in your ability to retain high-potential diverse talent. If you want to have more diverse leaders, offering future leaders a more conducive environment will go a long way.
Step 2: Improve hiring for mid-level leadership
If you want more Black head coaches, that means hiring more Black offensive coordinators and defensive coordinators, the next two seniormost positions on the coaching staff.
In the corporate realm, this means improving recruiting pipelines focused on diverse talent and actively bringing those efforts into management’s goals. Look back at the different jobs that C-suite leaders and CEOs held before taking on that role, and aim to improve representation in those roles.
Don’t just focus on early-career employees. We know that moving up and getting promotions are also a challenge for BIPOC employees – but not due to a lack of skills or experise, as demonstrated by the data in the State of Inequity report. Conscientious leaders should be working to remove those barriers.
Step 3: Focus on development
Everyone has to work to climb the ladder, but some people don’t even see a ladder ahead of them. Developing leadership from diverse backgrounds will help attract additional diverse, experienced managerial talent, and for existing employees, it will be a boon for retention and promotion. This can be tailored coaching by experts who understand the experiences of BIPOC employees, or it can be a program developed with a third party who understands the unique nuances of BIPOC communities.
One example includes Ceridian, who created a pathway for existing employees to opt into a development program that has helped its participants get promoted.
Ultimately, the Rooney Rule on its own hasn’t worked for the NFL, and it’s not likely to work for corporate or small business entities either. It has been found to tokenize candidates and force companies to find people to interview in situations where a candidate has already been selected for the role. Lack of representation in leadership will never have a single solution, as it is the outcome of issues spanning recruiting, culture, and performance management, that require greater attention and sometimes more than an internal team can tackle alone.
