Hiring and Diversity Without Dropping the Bar

In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I’m joined by Lucinda Duncalfe, serial entrepreneur and Founder and CEO of AboveBoard, an inclusive hiring platform focused on executive and board roles.We unpack why diversity is rarely a pipeline problem and how hiring systems quietly filter out great candidates long before an offer is made. Lucinda shares concrete practices to improve hiring, from simplifying job requirements to moving away from traditional CVs toward capability-based assessment. We also talk about leadership as creating a future and bringing people together, team design through complementary strengths, and why diversity is a dimension of the bar, not something separate from it.In the conversation we cover:why starting at board level accelerates changewhy diversity correlates with performance and decision qualitythe hidden signals that tell candidates “this company is not for you”job descriptions and the “too many bullet points” trapreplacing CV screening with competency and capability assessmentstructured interviewing vs first impressionsbuilding leadership teams through complementary profiles“diversity doesn’t equal dropping the bar”conscious capitalismmentoring as a network, not a single personone powerful principle: intentionalityFind the transcript and links to the references in the companion post.