Companies these days rely on diverse, multidisciplinary teams that combine the capabilities people of different cultural heritage, younger and older workers, and people with different genders and sexual orientations.
But simply throwing a variety of people together doesn’t guarantee high performance; it requires inclusive leadership.
Inclusive leadership ensures that all team members feel they are treated respectfully and fairly, are valued and sense that they belong, and are confident and inspired.
Why Support Inclusion ?
Business Reasons:
- Diversity of markets: Demand is shifting to emerging markets which represent the single biggest growth opportunity of many companies.
- Diversity of customers: An increasingly diverse customer base expects better personalization of products and services.
- Diversity of ideas: Digital technology, hyper-connectivity, and deregulation are disrupting business value chains and the nature of consumption and competition.
- Diversity of talent: Shifts in age profiles, education, and migration flows, along with expectations of equality of opportunity and work/life balance, are all impacting employee populations.
My Personal Values
- Treating people and groups fairly—that is, based on their unique characteristics, rather than on stereotypes.
- Personalizing individuals—that is, understanding and valuing the uniqueness of diverse others while also accepting them as members of the group.
- Leveraging the thinking of diverse groups for smarter ideation and decision making that reduces the risk of being blindsided.
Inclusion and Diversity
You can have diversity without inclusion but that quickly becomes a deficit. If you have diversity with an inclusive environment though, this can be an asset, if managed properly.
Some typical formats:
Low Inclusion with High Diversity:
- Diverse employees are valued / utilized only for specific tasks, creating talent islands. Becomes a burden, rather than a competitive advantage because retention of key players is a challenge, and employee friction increases.
Low Inclusion with Low Diversity:
- Poor inclusion results in low engagement, frustration and disloyalty. Limited talent pool, limited variance in points of view and ideas leads to reduced power in innovation and problem solving. Stable company but disengaged workforce.
High Inclusion with Low Diversity
- Uniform staff are will be highly engaged and loyal. But creativity and innovation will suffer. Stable but static company
High Inclusion and High Diversity
- Brings greater competitive advantage by allowing different points of view, which leads to better decisions and more innovative ideas. Key players who are engaged are easier to retain and employee morale is increased.
This last format requires work, in the form of inclusive leadership.
Three Core Elements of Inclusive Leadership
In our experience, three key leadership attitudes can make a company or team more inclusive.
1. Voice Inclusion (AKA Psychological Safety)
- Creating an atmosphere of psychological safety so that workers are not afraid to disagree, raise uncomfortable issues or to express unusual or innovative ideas.
2. Information Inclusion
- Be as open and transparent as possible. Communicate as much information as possible with your team so they see the full picture as it impacts them and can make informed decisions and take actions based on facts.
3. Decision Inclusion
- Invite team members to participate and have a voice in decisions that impact them and how they work.
Of course these three things are easy to understand intellectually and much more difficult to put into practice. But we have seen some companies make great progress.
More about this later…