Inclusive Leadership – Reap the Diversity Dividend

Embracing Inclusivity in 2023 And Beyond

Inclusive leadership is a leadership style that offers businesses an ethical way to achieve maximum productivity with a diverse workforce. You’re still the boss, it’s your vision, and you’re leading your team on the journey. But with this leadership style you’re accepting and embracing people’s differences and strengths, and open to their ideas. What’s not to like?

In this article, we consider how inclusive leadership offers a practical, humane approach to leading businesses in a changing society. Some of these ideas may seem alien to people used to formal business cultures and transactional leadership styles. But the experts predict diversity, equality and inclusion will soon become the centre of the HR agenda. Leaders and managers should get ahead now, by showing inclusive leadership.

What is Inclusive Leadership, and What Does it Look Like?

One definition of inclusive leadership starts, “The capacity to manage and lead a diverse group of people efficiently.” It continues, “while respecting their uniqueness in an empathetic, bias-free way.” The same definition calls inclusive leadership an authentic leadership style. That means, it’s focused on transparent and ethical leader behaviours. It encourages open sharing of the information needed to make decisions while accepting your team members’ inputs. The result is your people feel their contribution is valued, whoever they are.

The Characteristics of an Inclusive Leader

This isn’t complicated, it’s about being human. Inclusive leaders invest time in connecting with their team members. Their distinguishing characteristics are:

• Relationship building.
• Recognising people’s contributions.
• Empathy.
• Social connection with colleagues as humans.
• Encouraging participation.
• Sharing their vision and helping people align their personal values with the company’s.

Inclusive leadership looks like this:

• Treating all team members with fairness and respect.
• Understanding what makes individuals feel unique, and ensuring they’re engaged and connected to the team.
• Working through obstacles with compassion, and adapting to the needs of others.

What’s Stopping YOU From Being an Inclusive Leader?

Here are some possible barriers:

• Everyone has biases. Learning to recognise them is a key step to an inclusive work culture.
• Diversity of thought needs more attention from leadership teams.
• Leaders overestimate how inclusive they really are.
• Organisational structures can be barriers.
• Leaders lack inclusive skills.

Poorly thought out, inclusive leadership can lead to ambiguity of roles, with a lack of clarity over hierarchy and responsibilities. It can cause more conflict than it solves if teams can’t agree the best way forward. But stay positive, and you’ll succeed.

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How Can You Show Inclusive Leadership?

• Create a supportive environment.
• Diversify your team.
• Establish clear communication.
• Encourage collaboration.
• Educate yourself.
• Have the right attitude.
• Ask for feedback.

Feedback is particularly important. Talk to your people and listen to the grapevine. Take on board what they’re thinking and take the necessary action.

Inclusive Leaders Need to Have Principles

This needs to come from the heart. Here are 5 personal principles researchers identify as necessary for an inclusive leadership mindset:

• Self-awareness.
• Curiosity.
• Courage.
• Vulnerability.
• Empathy.

Insight into Action – 4 Qualities of an Inclusive Leader

Tyra Bremer at Stewart Leadership extends these principles further, considering the sensitivities people are likely to encounter in pursuing inclusivity. She identifies these critical attributes of inclusive leaders:

1. Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and feeling comfortable articulating it.
2. Awareness, specifically self-awareness about whether people perceive you as inclusive, and any blind spots and biases you may have.
3. Humility about making mistakes, and wanting to learn and improve.
4. Curiosity about others, listening without judgement and seeking to understand your team members.

Bremer suggests a further 5 attributes for inclusive leaders to cultivate:

• Collaboration, empowering employees, valuing the diversity of thinking and psychological safety so people can flourish.
• Cultural intelligence, seeing beyond stereotypes and cultural assumptions.
• Empathy, trying to understand people’s viewpoints and experiences.
• Fairness, not playing favourites or managing from the top, involving everyone and challenging acts and behaviours of exclusion.
• Courage to speak up and challenge the status quo and confront your own biases.

Why is Inclusive Leadership so Important?

Inclusive leadership is important because these days businesses can’t go on without it. We live in a changing and diverse business world. Deloitte identify 4 global mega-trends that are reshaping the environment and influencing business priorities. It’s not just talent that’s becoming more diverse. There’s diversity in different markets, the customers you want to attract, and in ideas, including digital tech and hyper-connectivity.

Embracing inclusive leadership helps navigate all this. Inclusive leaders adapt quickly to diverse scenarios and different perspectives, with an open, non-judgemental mind. Embracing diversity doesn’t mean you’ve lost your grip. You’re still in charge, and you’re doing this to get the best outcomes for everyone. And it will pay in productivity and attracting and keeping the best people.

We’ve Taken on Some Diverse People. Now, What Do We Do?

No matter how impressive your diversity headcount looks, you need to establish a supportive environment. This goes back to the first point under the heading How Can You Show Inclusive Leadership?

You need to embrace people’s differences and create a space where everyone can bring their true selves to work. And it needs leaders and managers to set the tone. You don’t need to know it all, HR can advise about how to tackle issues that arise. If you don’t have an HR department, ask your solicitors or accountants. The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s website also has advice.

Before going further, it’s important to remember, current UK legislation supports inclusive leadership in ruling out discrimination, bias, and favour. The Equality Act 2010 sets out clear, streamlined laws to effectively tackle disadvantages and discrimination in employment. It identifies a set of specific protected characteristics employers need to be aware of. These are disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

The Core Traits of an Inclusive Leader

Korn Ferry says the core traits of an inclusive leader are

• Authenticity: Inclusive leaders are humble and set aside their egos. They authentically establish trust in the face of opposing beliefs, values, or perspectives.
• Emotional resilience: They remain composed in the face of adversity or difficulty around differences.
• Self-assurance: Inclusive leaders take a stance of confidence and optimism.
• Inquisitiveness: They are open to differences, curiosity, and empathy.
• Flexibility: Inclusive leaders can tolerate ambiguity and adapt to diverse needs.

For more on these traits, you can download Korn Ferry’s The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Leaders white paper.

The Core Competencies of an Inclusive Leader

Korn Ferry identifies these core competencies:

• Building interpersonal trust: Establishing rapport by finding common ground while simultaneously valuing different perspectives.
• Integrating different perspectives: Considering all points of view and the needs of others, and skillfully navigating conflict situations.
• Optimising talent: Motivating others and supporting their growth, joining forces for collective success, and seeing beyond differences.
• Applies an adaptive mindset: Taking a broad worldview, adapting their approach to the situation, and innovating by leveraging differences.
• Achieving transformation: Willing to confront difficult topics and bring people of all backgrounds along to get results.

Inclusive leaders use these competencies to shape their people strategies, innovation, globalisation, brand and reputation and growth.

7 Pillars of Inclusion

There’s a lot to take in here. Stay sharp. Bear in mind the Australian Sport Commission’s 7 Pillars of Inclusion. This is what we’re ultimately talking about:

• Choice
• Partnerships
• Communications
• Policies
• Opportunities
• Access
• Attitude

What are the Business Benefits of Inclusive Leadership?

We mentioned earlier how inclusive leadership pays dividends in increasing productivity and attracting and keeping talent. There’s plenty of evidence that it helps teams perform better and more collaboratively than authoritative leadership does. Teams make better decisions because they’re involved in co-creation, habit #7 in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

And there’s the wider picture. Many successful global businesses have diverse global teams, giving a broader perspective on their different markets. This also keeps them in touch with their country teams around the world. Global leadership has inclusive leadership at its core, part of the vision.

What are the Top Qualities of Inclusive Leaders?

These are the top strengths Deloitte say inclusive leaders possess:

• Being loyal ambassadors of diversity and inclusion: never miss a chance to spread the word about D & I’s significance at work.
• Accepting their vulnerability and showing it appropriately.
• Combating old-fashioned paternalistic leadership styles.
• Being aware of their own biases and challenging their habitual patterns.
• Communicating excellently – being curious, but also great listeners.
• Understanding and adapting to different cultural norms.
• Being team players, keen to help and do what’s best for the team.

Are We Nearly There Yet?

Sadly not. While inclusive leadership is getting attention, the scale of the solution isn’t yet matching the scale of the problem. That was the message in a March 2021 blog by a group from McKinsey in the US. Many American business leaders were making a commitment to diversity and inclusivity in the wake of COVID and the killing of George Floyd. COVID looked like wiping out six years of progress, particularly for women and black people in industries it hit hard. Yes, more diverse people were being promoted in managerial jobs, which over time would create more proportional representation in management. But for black employees, the McKinsey team reckoned significant advances would take 95 years, on current course and speed.

Lead From The Top In Inclusivity- Leadership Support Can Be Transformational

There’s a long way to go, as McKinsey’s blog reminds us. Even so, inclusive leadership is transforming lives in enlightened businesses. Trans people are comparatively few in the workplace currently, but employers still have a duty of care. In a global FMCG company’s UK business, leadership and HR supported a trans woman when she came out at work. After telling leadership of her decision to do so, she spent time planning the right forum to share her story. She talks about it now to help others in their own journeys, either with their gender identity or in allyship.

HR supported the trans woman in updating their systems with her new name and gender. That’s standard procedure, but the company’s compassion went much further. Her managers were also supportive, checking in regularly to see she was okay. A cis woman manager supported her anxiety over arriving wearing a dress and walked in with her from the carpark. The allyship she received from fellow team members gave her strength and meant more than they could ever know. And she says the support she got from colleagues all over the world was empowering.

Train Your People to Be Inclusivity Leaders

There are numerous courses for inclusivity leadership. Larger businesses will probably choose to run their own, on the same lines. Introductory sessions typically begin with insight into the connection between ‘DEI’ and the business’s strategic objectives. Also covered are the leadership and organisational factors essential for inclusivity success, and solutions for bias-free, decision making.

From there, training programmes can cover:

• The psychology of unintended bias and its nature, causes and impact.
• Personal and organisational risk, and protective factors for, bias.
• The importance of identity safety, where people feel the threat of discrimination is limited, and its impact on inclusion and productivity.
• Specific action steps for promoting workforce identity-safety and people feeling valued. For LGBTQ employees, identity safety in the workplace is particularly important.
• Practices for creating the best outcomes when opinions and viewpoints differ, and the stakes are high.
• Effective ways to communicate and talk about DEI topics.
• Understanding the company’s inclusion strengths, challenges, and opportunities.

And Finally: Compelling Stats, Takeout Insights, and a CEO Who Walked the Talk

Still not convinced about the need for inclusive leadership? Try these stats from Betterup.com. Only 31% of employees believe their leaders are inclusive. That means, less than a third of employees believe their leaders see, value and respect them as a whole person.

Unwanted attrition, especially among employees from underrepresented groups, is an ongoing problem for employers. They leave, taking with them their potential, as well as the insight into why the company isn’t working.  Betterup.com’s research shows 1 in 4 employees feel they don’t belong. And it gets worse. Employees who feel excluded are less productive on future tasks. They have a 50% greater risk of turnover and are less willing to work hard for the team.

Here are two take-out insights to think about:

Deloitte’s Inclusive Leadership Trinity

Deloitte sees inclusive leadership as being about three things:

• Treating people and groups fairly, based on their unique characteristics.
• Personalising individuals as unique but also members of the group.
• Leverage diverse groups’ thinking, for smarter creativity and decision-making that reduces the risk of being blindsided.

The 6 ‘Cs of Inclusive Leadership

Alliteration makes remembering things easier. Here’s a mnemonic about what you need to do well:

• Commitment
• Courage
• Cognizance of bias
• Curiosity
• Cultural intelligence
• Collaboration

It’s easier to remember what’s needed for inclusive leadership with these 6 c’s.

It’s The Real Thing

And finally, it’s easy for businesses to think inclusive leadership is the HR people’s department. But, when a global company’s leadership really commits, the results can be extraordinary. Former Coca-Cola CEO, and later Chairman, Muhtar Kent held himself and other senior leaders accountable for expanding diversity and inclusion. He walked the talk, creating and leading the company’s 2013 Global Women’s Initiative.

At the time, women were making over 70% of consumer purchasing decisions related to Coca-Cola products worldwide. Kent recognised them as the most dynamic and fastest growing economic force in the world. And so, he held his fellow top executives responsible for ensuring women were adequately represented at Coca-Cola. Take the lead from the legend! If you feel you can change your business through inclusive leadership, now’s the time to get out there and do it.

Action: For even more useful content on leadership, check out our ultimate guide on Leadership Skills.