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An insight of diversity in the subsea sector of the oil and gas industry
International Women´s Day 2018 was an excellent opportunity to learn about the status and challenges of female inclusion in the STEM industries. Morgan Harland, General Manager of Subsea and Pipeline at Woodside, shared with us his professional experiences and some honest reflections of what have been achieved and the barriers women still face.
In his 28th year of working in the oil and gas sector, the invitation to key note at the Wavemaker stories launch provided Morgan an opportunity to consider where we stand today, which does show a positive statistical trend. However, he questioned whether this data really means diversity has been achieved since there is still an absence of women in team lead roles and few women performing in senior engineering roles.
An important step in achieving true diversity is exploring and adjusting one’s own unconscious attitudes, which might be influenced by learned perceptions and personal experiences. “We need to attend to “differences” as these are really our “assets”, and this attention will exploit the incremental creativity of diverse group”, Morgan stated. Perhaps humans tend to sub-consciously evaluate people and develop perceptions about others, but it is a combination of differences and backgrounds that fuels this instinct and certainly means diversity.
According to Morgan, “we are entering the era of cognitive diversity and self-awareness is a critical component”. He suggests that, rather than trying to mould people or trying to change who they are, we should become more consciously accomplished and aware of the origin of our perceptions and evaluations. After establishing that, we would be much better prepared to raise awareness of diversity.
Morgan stressed the importance of leadership to achieve diversity and shared four main attributes of successful leaders and people who have inspired and motivated him:
1. Integrity - an internal true north compass to guide the right decision
2. Courage - to challenge for positive change
3. The ability to communicate the context consistently and broadly
4. The ability to listen and in doing so travel outside their own view of the world.
Clearly, the pathway of diversity is complex and sensitive, and we should commemorate the goals achieved so far, being clear that there is still work to be done to ensure that every business and every individual benefits from true diversity.