How to lead an inclusive organization
This is targeted towards executives, as opposed to managers or independent contributors.
A few of you who lead organizations to have asked me how to lead more inclusive organizations. To get there, you will need not only diverse hiring practices, but an inclusive environment to retain that talent. I have attempted to summarize suggestions around inclusion below so I can scale the responses that I have given to individuals.
My perspective is that diversity includes who you hire, while inclusion pertains to how you provide an opportunity for your entire team to flourish. People often conflate the two, and discuss “diversity and inclusion,” broadly, without separating the operational arenas.
Given that the holidays are upon us, one can think of “diversity” as who I invite over for holiday dinner whereas “inclusion” is akin to how I make my guests comfortable once they are in my house. We have all had that Uncle that we ignored. Try not to ignore your Uncle!
Inclusionary management is one of your fiduciary responsibilities to your company: it is about getting the most out of your team and valuing each person. It also makes good business sense: diverse and inclusive teams outperform non-diverse and non-inclusive teams both in terms of productivity and economic results. You may also find moral cause to lead a diverse team.
The reason is less important than the behaviors.
Below you can find a set of suggestions for your consideration in running an inclusive team along the retention axis.
Meeting etiquette
While some of the below suggestions might be perceived as common courtesy, I do think they also help foster a more inclusive environment.
- Avoid your laptop and phone when people are speaking, as it conveys that you don’t care about what is being said. Some people process information differently, so they may be on their laptops to process what is being said. This is another reason to know your staff well.
- I’ve participated in many a meeting only to find people often interrupt one another before the speaker has finished his or her thought. I doubt any of us want to see or experience this. Your mileage may vary in your organizations. Different cultures also view interruptions as a sign of active listening, so there are different, location-specific frames that have to be taken into account.
- In response, you can be explicit about meeting rules of the road. A few approaches for fostering more inclusive meetings, especially with a large number of nodes (meaning lots of video or audio additions to a work discussion), is to: 1 | Let people finish speaking, 2 | Raise one’s hand to speak, 3 | Solicit feedback from people who may have been quiet during the call
- Offer a friendly face to presenters: if anyone on your team is presenting, sitting where they can see you, provide positive visual cues for that presenter to signal you’re listening and that they have your support. Junior members often feel intimidated when presenting in front of senior groups.
Personal sphere
- Some, not all of the factors in non-inclusive environments involve simply having a non-diverse social group outside of work.
- One way to rectify that is to diversify your social circle.
- The goal here is understanding “others” and transitioning them to being known, which sounds funny as I type it, but it wholly necessary to lead inclusive environments. Having a diverse social circle makes your diverse organization both easier to lead and more authentic. It also minimizes the burden on women and underrepresented groups to explain culture and gender mores in the workplace because you have exposure to these mores outside of work
- As you are a leader, you should be okay with that ambiguity and time horizon.
Providing support
- As a starting point, vocalize with your team that you want to foster a more inclusive organization. This creates space for discussions and activity that works towards this goal.
- Enlist other leaders on your team to do and vocalize the same intentions, so people at all levels of the organization are working towards common goals and apparent about their intentions.
- Create psychological safety and a sense of confidentiality for people to surface unsettling issues. I do this by saying “safe space,” which, unsurprisingly, makes it clear that you are there to support, not criticize. This is for diverse and non-diverse colleagues. I am a diverse leader, so I have to help others in this journey.
- Welcome difficult conversations at all levels of the organization. You won’t always get it right, but you can open the door and your entire company can benefit from assuming good intent.
- People’s knowledge bases are different, so we need to keep that in mind and be patient, even when the conversation is difficult.
- Give credit where credit is due: this goes for both business ideas as well as recognizing people who have acted as an ally and helped create inclusion on the team.
- Provide feedback that arcs to the positive after meetings, shared with diverse staff in particular. This doesn’t mean avoiding hard feedback, but please deploy the carrot 51% of the time. It costs you nothing to provide positive feedback: please be generous and broad with it.
Employee reviews
- Enforce structured mid-performance review check-ins on your team and throughout your organization
- Enforce that no feedback should be a surprise within your teams
Scaled coaching
- Lead a as a coaching session for your entire team
- Schedule office hours, but tap diverse candidates on the shoulder
- Lead Coaching Circles that cover 1 | “How to lead a meeting” as a coaching session, 2 | “What success looks like at your employer”, 3 | “How to grow your career at your employer” for your entire team, in groups of eight-10, as your schedule permits. (Yes, this is a lot of work.)
Establish connections by showing interest
- Ask getting-to-know-you questions of all of your staff, but especially your diverse staff
- Join an ERG (employee resource group) if they are open, and lurking is wise and acceptable.
- When traveling, I have found it valuable to reach out to the ERGs in each office to both offer insights into your org, key open roles, and to get their feedback about what they are seeing on the ground in each office.
- Q&As, lunches, breakfasts, or office hours are also valuable.
I welcome feedback and comments, and want to acknowledge that this list of suggestions is by no means exhaustive. In fact, I’d appreciate hearing from each of you to further build out these suggestions and share more broadly.
I do hope that you can employ some of these techniques to make your teams more inclusive.
Kind regards, Ty
