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At Nous, we believe in the sustaining power of great organisational leadership. Over the past two years, we have launched the Nous Leadership Way (NLW), a leadership model and development program that articulates the core principles of effective leadership at Nous. Developing NLW has prompted Managing Principal and CEO Tim Orton to think more broadly about the challenges of great leadership, the attributes of great leaders, and how we think about these at Nous.
At Nous, we strongly believe in both the virtue and power of diversity.
Diversity is virtuous because it recognises the intrinsic worth of every individual. It is a concept that calls attention to the power dynamics and structures that can lead to the exclusion or underrepresentation of certain groups, particularly from senior levels of organisations. It thus contributes to a more equitable access to opportunities and a more just and compassionate world.
Diversity is a bedfellow of meritocracy, not an opponent of it.
Diversity is powerful because it accesses a broader set of capabilities, life experiences and perspectives than those of a more homogenous workforce. Organisations and teams that can lay claim to a genuine diversity of perspectives – borne of different identities, educations, experiences, backgrounds, and predilections of team members – generally come up with more interesting and innovative solutions to the problems and challenges they seek to solve.
Through diversity, we can better understand our clients and deliver better outcomes for them.
At Nous, we care about diversity because it is both virtuous and powerful. As a business operating in highly competitive markets, we have to engage with diversity in a way that delivers both virtue and power, for its intrinsic and instrumental values.
The goal: A capacious understanding of difference
Seeking diversity naturally leads to the question: Diversity of what?
Perhaps the most common dimensions of diversity are gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. These are important dimensions, but far from exhaustive. We are equally attentive to other dimensions: of life experience, ability, intellectual discipline, character, class, geography, and religion.
Diversity of opinion is also critical. For the marketplace of ideas to function effectively, it needs to include a range of different perspectives. Ideological homogeneity and conformity are anathema to truth-seeking.
In short, we believe in a capacious understanding of diversity. Not diversity across all conceivable dimensions – we do not want to hire people without moral scruples or without a strong work ethic – but across more than the limited set advocated for by many proponents of DEI programs.
We actively seek out difference
Seeking difference requires intention. It rarely occurs naturally or spontaneously. Human psychology presents significant headwinds for diversity in organisations: individuals often cherish the familiar, seek comfort in conformity and fear what is new. Businesses can tend towards groupthink. They can also be inclined to amplify the dimensions of diversity that come easily, are more visible or more celebrated, and ignore those that take more time, effort, and resources.
This is why Nous Leadership Way – our organisation’s leadership model and philosophy – includes ‘Seek’ as one of its tenets. We deliberately chose a verb. ‘Seek’ is a call to action. It is a reminder that diversity and difference need to be consciously sought out, and that this responsibility rests with leaders.
What does this look like in practice?
On the one hand, it is driven by organisational policy and practice. This includes, but is not limited to:
- ensuring that recruitment and on-boarding processes are catered towards diverse cohorts of employees,
- establishing employee networks for different groups to share their experiences and create a sense of belonging and community, and
- collecting the right data to track and report on progress.
All of this must be done with sincerity, lest diversity become an exercise in box-ticking and virtue signalling.
On the other hand, realising the power of diversity has a quotidian character: it is realised in our day-to-day work, and the organisational cultures that we build through our myriad interactions in the workplace. At this level, it requires leaders to:
- actively welcome and include all colleagues, particularly those who may be less likely to step forward,
- seek out the different voices and ensure that team members feel able to speak up,
- promote and celebrate respectful debate and discourage deference to people in virtue of their seniority or other form of authority,
- be attentive to (and explicitly call attention to) the power imbalances that influence and structure the dynamics of teams and organisations,
- model a humble style of engagement, leavened with gentle humour, and
- be forgiving of the inevitable stumbles and mistakes that we all make in our daily interactions.
Sometimes this can involve making people feel uncomfortable. At Nous, we celebrate discomfort (while ensuring safety) and view it as an appropriate investment to realise the virtue and the power of diversity. Its rewards for organisations can be immense.
Get in touch to discuss the power of diversity and how you can leverage it in your organisational context.
Connect with Tim Orton on LinkedIn.
This is the ninth article in Tim Orton's 'Exploring Great Leadership' series. It was originally posted on LinkedIn on 7 October 2025.
You can read the previous article in the series here.
