Introduction to Inclusive Leadership
Training to build the foundation of a diverse, innovative, and productive workplace culture.Today’s leaders must be able to effectively communicate and build trusting work relationships with many different kinds of people. We are moving from the era of “command and control” to an era of “engage and include.”
Some individuals have a natural ability to feel comfortable with many different types of people and can easily build camaraderie within their teams. Others are comfortable exhibiting inclusive behaviors themselves but have difficulty coaching and developing these skills among those who report to them. And still others have difficulty establishing comfortable working relationships with specific people or groups.
According to the Gallup Organization, disengaged (exclusive) managers are three times
more likely to have disengaged and actively disengaged employees, costing businesses
billions of dollars in lost revenue each year. If you are working to create a culture that values all employees and is inclusive of differences, your leaders must understand what inclusion is, how it is achieved and what specific behaviors and actions they can take to promote the culture you desire.
Inclusity’s Introduction to Inclusive Leadership Workshop (or series) provides your supervisors, managers, and leaders the personal insight and awareness, knowledge and skills they need to become the best and most inclusive leader possible.
In this four-, eight-, or 12-hour workshop (or series of shorter workshops if desired) we introduce your leaders to up to four Inclusity Models and the tools they need to actively become inclusive leaders.
Learning Objectives:
- Participate in and lead small group discussions about the factors that define their team members, in order to build trust and open communications
- Understand the attitudes and behaviors that create exclusion
- Identify situations in which team members are being excluded
- Increase their commitment to actively include instead of unintentionally excluding
- Utilize models presented during the training to intentionally create more inclusive workplace teams
From The Inclusity Blog
White Men as Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity (IDE) Partners
In this blog, we hear from Patrick Hughes, a facilitator with Inclusity. He openly shares his perspective as a white male in the IDE space; he fits into almost every in-norm, dominant social identifier in our society. Patrick addresses the “elephant in the room” right upfront: ”Hi, I’m Patrick. I’m a white guy with a lot of privilege, and I’m fully committed to inclusion.”
How did you first get involved in inclusion, diversity, & equity (IDE)?
My journey began about 13 years ago when I was completing a master’s program in organizational development. One of the courses was called “Use of Self as an Agent of Change.” We spent a week looking at social identity theory and how who we are impacts our ability to work with organizations, individuals, and teams. This was my first exposure to concepts related to IDE. This was the first time that anyone told me that all of my social identifiers and who I am walking around unconsciously impacts others, potentially in a negative way.As a white male, what role do you play in IDE efforts?
I see myself as a partner, ally, and interrupter. I look at my role as partnering up with other people to make things happen, not leading the charge. I’m constantly looking at how I can be an ally for any marginalized group because I live in so many privileged categories and in-norm groups. I’m looking for ways to partner with or be an ally to folks that aren’t in-norm groups, so I can create inclusion. Also, because of this awarded privilege that I sometimes have, I look for ways to interrupt conversations that may be creating exclusion. I think about how I can use the voice that I’m given because of my gender and skin color to elevate others.
What are some of the lessons learned from engaging in IDE work?
I’ve learned a lot around how to be empathetic and how to hear and value others’ emotions and experiences. When I work with individuals and groups, I want to hear feedback so I can grow and create safe space where we can have relationship and dialogue. I’m not reluctant to initiate and engage in difficult conversations. Through the difficult conversations come strengthened partnerships and new insights. But, this must be authentic. If you engage in this way and don’t mean it, you’ll do more harm than good.
How do we engage white males in IDE efforts?
We need to disarm white men and create a safe space for them to share emotions around feeling excluded in IDE. If we don’t validate their experiences and feelings around exclusion, the overall objective of ensuring that everyone feels connected and valued will fail. White men need to see themselves as part of the solution – not part of the problem where they feel blamed and vilified.
What have you personally gained from working in the IDE space?
I’ve gained a richer life experience and deeper relationships. I’ve gained new perspectives that enable me to be a better leader. I now walk around this world from a conscious place as opposed to unconsciously through my socializations. The socializations and biases that I grew up with are not who I want to be in the world. For me, creating inclusion is creating the world that I want where everyone feels valued and empowered. Previously, I thought I was creating the world I wanted only to realize that there’s unconscious bias getting in the way of that. I wanted to create empowered teams and be a leader that everyone loved and admired, but I wasn’t. I was exhibiting behaviors that were contrary to what I wanted to create.
Why are diversity and inclusion everyone’s responsibility, including white males?
We cannot build inclusion if we’re excluding anyone. White men absolutely need to be at the table. They have the opportunity to leverage much of the power and privilege that they have been given to further the efforts of creating inclusion to benefit everyone. However, white men must be willing to step into uncomfortable situations and embrace change to make this happen. It can feel scary because the world has been set up to benefit them, so why should they want to change. Sometimes you have to risk a little bit to gain a lot. Once I was willing to risk alienating some friends and colleagues or being seen as a traitor or outcast, I found a whole new world open up to me on the other side. That world of inclusion now entails deeper relationships, more productive teams, and exponential growth in my leadership abilities.
5 Things to Consider When Evaluating A Company’s Culture for IDE
So, your organization has decided to make inclusion, diversity, and equity (IDE) a priority. We know IDE culture change is a complex process, and every organization’s journey is unique. However, no matter where you are on your roadmap for developing an IDE program, a culture assessment is the foundational point for an effective IDE initiative.
A culture assessment provides companies with qualitative and quantitative data on their culture, leadership, and equity, including a deep understanding of the views of its workforce and how they experience the organization. A comprehensive culture assessment may include a climate survey (qualitative employee survey), focus groups, leadership interviews, and/or policy review.
A culture assessment identifies areas of opportunity and specific challenges in your organization’s IDE journey to create a strategy for meaningful change. “We want to broadly understand the culture, because we want to do work that aligns with the existing culture,” Mitchell Campbell, Director of Research and Evaluation for Inclusity, shares. “A cultural assessment helps identify an organization’s challenges but also helps us identify positive aspects of culture that we can enhance through the work that we do.”
Inclusity has helped leading companies assess and improve their inclusion and diversity efforts through our comprehensive approach and tailored solutions. Here are some tips to consider when evaluating a company’s culture for IDE:
Measure inclusion, not diversity. One misstep companies take is measuring diversity and mistaking it for inclusion. A company may employ a diverse workforce, but unless diverse employees feel safe, welcomed, and valued, the organization is not inclusive.
Don’t just ask questions about inclusion. When asking questions only about inclusion, you only see part of the picture. Address all the elements of the culture and not just questions about inclusion, even if at face value the question doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with inclusion. For example, asking if leaders are accessible can offer insight about how inclusive an organization is.
Be inclusive of everyone’s perspective. Make sure to talk with individuals at all levels of the organization. Only talking with leaders may give a skewed perspective of the organization. You need the perspective of everyone in the organization, including those in entry level roles and people who are new to the company.
Use a broad definition of diversity. When people think about diversity, they typically think about race, gender, and maybe sexual orientation. You also want to consider things like how long someone has been with the organization, what department someone works in, whether someone is a remote employee, etc. All of these different aspects of someone’s identity in their work role can have an effect on how included they feel, and thus are also important aspects of diversity.
Capture both strengths and challenges in the existing culture. Our instinct is to focus on what’s not going well because that is what we need to change. It’s equally important to focus on strengths of the organization, such as what makes people feel included, because this information helps us to understand what leads to the experience of inclusion within an organization. We can then capitalize on those existing strengths to expand inclusion to others in the organization as well.
Once an IDE culture assessment is complete, it can provide insights to set your organization up for achieving a culture of inclusion. This includes existing strengths that can be capitalized on, existing challenges that need to be addressed, specific social identities that need to receive more or less attention in the inclusion effort, examples about what makes people feel included, and concrete recommendations that can often provide quick wins.
Mitchell uses a medical metaphor to explain the importance of a culture assessment. “When we don’t do a climate assessment, we’re doing the WebMD version of medicine,” he says. “But when we do a climate assessment, we’re doing an in-depth assessment that helps us to better understand the condition and then make specific diagnosis and treatment.”
Contact Inclusity to learn more about how to get feedback from your employees and start taking action to transform your culture and foster equitable and inclusive workplace practices in your organization.
How to Leverage Trust In Leadership to Strengthen Inclusion
Why is Trust in Leadership important?
Diversity and inclusion have been more of a focus the last few years, but an organizational commitment to promote a diverse and inclusive culture is predicated by a climate of trust – especially trust in leadership. “For many years, it’s been about having diversity represented. The way to get from diversity to inclusion is to build trust along the way,” says Tina Jaynes, Executive Vice President of Inclusity. “Trust is a foundational piece to get us from diversity to inclusion, and without an environment of trust, diversity can’t thrive.”
Every organization wants its employees to feel empowered to bring their authentic selves to work. Fostering trust and trust in leadership are key to provide that sense of safety so people can be authentic. When we feel safe, we feel comfortable to open up and expose vulnerabilities. Without trust and psychological safety, employees will struggle to talk about key issues like bias and race in their organizations. But trust doesn’t just happen – you have to earn it! Knowing is only half the battle; leaders must work on themselves, their behaviors and actions to create a culture of trust amongst employees and the workplace in general.
We put a short list of behaviors that leaders can focus on to begin the process of building trust in leadership. Adopting these characteristics can help foster a culture of trust and achieve inclusion, diversity, and equity (IDE) goals, and start you and your company on the path to becoming a more inclusive workplace.
How to Leverage Trust in Leadership to Strengthen Inclusion
Be Vulnerable: Being vulnerable doesn’t imply weakness, over-sharing, or violating professional boundaries. It means being open to potential criticism, trying something new and making a mistake, or allowing your approach to be questioned.
Be Authentic: To be authentic means that you are truly showing up as yourself. Being authentic creates psychological safety in the workplace. People tend to trust you when they believe they are interacting with the real you, and are more likely to feel safe enough to be their own authentic self, allowing them to express thoughts and feelings that can be new and exciting!
Be Courageous: In a trusting work environment, you need to have the courage to share your flaws and accept the flaws of others without judgment. Courage is inspiring – there’s a reason so many books, movies and stories are based on courage. By being courageous and practicing courageous inclusion, you can create a culture that many employees dream of.
Be Empathetic: Empathy, the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling, is an indispensable skill needed to build trust with employees. The key to empathetic leadership is being willing to understand how another person may experience an event or situation without passing judgment or making assumptions, allowing them to feel safe and understood.
Be Curious: Being curious is foundational to creating an environment where people feel valued and really believe that you have a true interest in them and their point of view. Curiosity is one of the most important foundational behaviors of inclusive leaders; it leads to connection, innovation and creating a sense of belonging not just in the workplace, but in life itself.
If you’re intentional about building it, trust can blossom into authentic relationships and a deeper embrace of diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces. As we’ve mentioned before, however, any change in culture must start at the top. That’s why trust in leadership is so important; we must lead by example to create the environment we wish to see. Learn more about our inclusion practice, which can help you foster greater psychological safety and trust in your organization.
Why Inclusion Comes First: 5 way to Lead with Inclusion
Why Inclusion Comes First
The approach to diversity in our workplaces is constantly changing. While there are various acronyms for this work (DEI, EDI, I&D, EDIB), at Inclusity, we think that inclusion matters most. We believe this so strongly that we’re steadily shifting from DEI to use the acronym IDE, which places inclusion first. Making sure that Inclusion comes first forms a a strong foundation for a company’s culture, employee engagement, sense of belonging, and recruitment and retention efforts.
Inclusion Leads to Diversity
Over the years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on diversity with the assumption that inclusion will follow. However, once you bring diverse individuals on board, what is their experience of the workplace culture? If it’s not an inclusive workplace, diversity and belonging just won’t thrive. This is why inclusion comes first, or at least why it should.
Diversity refers to the traits and characteristics that make people unique while inclusion refers to the behaviors that ensure people feel welcome. Inclusion is the conscious effort to support diversity. To sustain a diverse workforce, people have to be taught how to manage, lead, operate, and hire in an inclusive way, which creates an environment in which everyone feels comfortable to be themselves. If you get this right, you’ll naturally attract diverse talent.
Belonging Follows Inclusion
Let’s introduce another letter to the IDE framework – B for “Belonging.” It’s a goal of IDE efforts that people feel a sense belonging. It means people feel the psychological safety to bring their authentic selves to work and truly feel a part of something. Before employees can feel emotionally safe and accepted, there must be a level of inclusion so they’re not facing microaggressions, unconscious bias, and other forms of exclusion. Creating genuine feelings of belonging is a critical factor in improving engagement and performance. And making sure inclusion comes first will help diverse employees feel like they belong!
“Organizations should focus on becoming intentionally inclusive – learning what behaviors lead to intentional inclusion,” Maria White, CEO and founder of Inclusity, shares. “Then, once they achieve that, they can set the course toward becoming a culture of belonging.”
Focus on Inclusion
Following are five ways to make sure inclusion comes first:
Integrate inclusivity into your core values. Including inclusivity in your core values sets the tone for an inclusive company culture. It signals to both new hires and current employees the expectations surrounding diversity and acceptance within the business.
Create an inclusive workplace taskforce. Create a team of people who are knowledgeable on the topic of inclusion and have a passion for it. Encourage the team to come up with strategies that can be implemented throughout your organization.
Assess the culture regularly and take action to address concerns. Confidential surveys, focus groups, and informal discussions can help identify concerns about the workplace climate and potential solutions. Employers should ensure that a diverse cross-section of the workforce is involved in identifying problems and potential solutions.
Expect leaders and managers to participate in behavior-based inclusion training. In addition to increasing awareness, IDE workshops will have the most impact if they are behavior-based. People need to be taught how to engage in the types of behaviors that organizations would like to see.
Practice inclusive leadership. Leaders need to create a safe team environment where all employees can speak up, be heard, and feel welcome. They should embrace the input of employees whose backgrounds differ from their own, foster collaboration among diverse staff, ask questions of all members of the team, facilitate difficult conversations, and give actionable feedback.
An inclusive culture and making sure inclusion comes first is one of the best ways to create and maintain a healthy and diverse workplace that gives employees safe spaces where they can feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work. Pave the way for true cultural transformation by making inclusion a sustainable part of your organization. To learn more about how to put inclusion and diversity into action, explore our services.
Beyond Pride Month: Establishing an LGBTQ+ Inclusive Workplace
Every June, businesses celebrate Pride Month to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community; however, true allyship requires advocacy beyond one month a year. The LGBTQ+ community and its allies need businesses to activate beyond Pride Month and stand behind the community year-round. Corporate America can demonstrate their true commitment through actively working to reduce workplace discrimination and supporting employees who identify as LGBTQ+ in the workplace.
Internationally recognized events like Pride Month should remind us of the importance of fostering fully inclusive workplaces. Instead, many companies fall prey to the phenomenon of “rainbow washing,” which is when businesses align themselves with Pride for personal gain, rather than to genuinely support the LGBTQ+ community. Examples of rainbow washing include public gestures of support such as corporate groups marching in parades, corporations adding rainbow colors to their logos, changing social media avatars, publishing support statements at the start of Pride Month, and using a rainbow to push products — all without the benefits of an LGBTQ+ inclusive workplace. For example, one Fortune 500 corporation updated its Instagram profile picture to include a pride flag despite donating nearly $1 million to anti-gay politicians.
Creating a genuinely inclusive culture means taking year-round action. How can businesses or organizations celebrate and support LGBTQ+ employees beyond Pride Month? There are ways to give more meaningful support to the LGBTQ+ community through intentional and concerted effort to build an equitable and inclusive workplace. The suggestions below promote LGBTQ+ representation and equality in the workplace through actionable steps:
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1. Policies Should Be the Starting Point
Set and enforce policies to protect LGBTQ+ employees such as non-discrimination (including sexual orientation, sexuality, and gender identify) and anti-harassment policies to ensure workplaces are free of discrimination and subtle acts of exclusion (microaggressions).
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2. Offer Inclusion Training
Provide diversity and inclusion training that addresses sexual orientation and gender identity, formal LGBTQ+ awareness training programs, as well as inclusive management training.
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3. Commit to Inclusive Hiring Practices
Level the playing field for all candidates with practices including inclusive job descriptions, bias awareness training for hiring teams, and diverse interview teams.
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4. Promote Formal LGBTQ+ Allyship
Allies are influential colleagues who openly champion and support LGBTQ-inclusive policies and employees. Allyship can take many forms, including implementing programs like Culture Champions, which provide participants the skills and tools to role model and foster inclusion.
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5. Support Employees with Climate Surveys
Conduct research to better understand the culture for employees who identify as LGBTQ+. The purpose of the research is to identify issues and concerns that impact the organization’s ability to have a welcoming and inclusive environment.
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6. Expand Benefits
LGBTQ+ employees often face disparities in access to healthcare and benefits such as parental leave. Offer paid family leave to include LGBTQ+ employees and same-sex benefits. Gender affirming health care benefits allow gender-diverse people to maximize their overall health and psychological well-being.
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7. Establish an LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group
Promote inclusivity and belonging through an LGBTQ+ ERG. An employee-led affinity group addresses the unique needs of the community and improves the working environment for hiring, retaining, and advancing LGBTQ+ employees.
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8. Support Events Beyond Pride Month
Engaging with the LGBTQ+ community beyond obvious events, such as Spirit Day, can send a strong message about a business’ commitment to diversity.
Supporting LGBTQ+ employees can look different from company to company, but the main goal is that every employee feels supported and valued. Employers have a responsibility to make sure all employees feel seen and supported in bringing their true and authentic selves in the workplace. If your company is interested in talking with Inclusity to ensure that you’re providing a truly inclusive work environment for all employees, we’re here to help.