MD of FAIRER Consulting Dan Robertson shares four traits of an inclusive leader. Watch the video below or read the article to find out what they are.
One of the big areas that we often talk about in DEI is inclusive leadership.
And even though lots of people talk about it, I think it's really important to say, “Well, what does that stuff mean? What are the principles or the traits of inclusive leaders? How do inclusive leaders think and how do they act?”
There are lots of traits that we can talk about, and we at FAIRER have mapped out some of the core traits and capabilities of inclusive leaders. But there are a few that I would like to pull out:
As a leader, are you aware of your own styles? Are you aware of the things that motivate you? Are you aware of your own biases? Are you aware of your frames of preference and how you see the world? And more importantly, are you aware of how your leadership style impacts those people around you?
The second thing about awareness is it's a two-way street. Are you aware of how other people around you experience life? Are you aware of the practical challenges they face? If we are not aware of ourselves, or of the experiences and the challenges that our diverse colleagues face, it's going to make it very difficult for us to have proper engagement and to treat people inclusively.
And there's been a lot of research around the psychology of curiosity. But what we know for sure is that leaders who are curious – who are interested in other people – demonstrate certain behaviours. And those behaviours are actually relatively straightforward.
For example, "Hey, how's your day? How was your weekend? What's going on for you?" Curiosity is interesting because curiosity is a means to something else. If you are curious, you get stuff back. That facilitation of conversation starts to build your knowledge of the experiences of colleagues around you. That curiosity leads to insight. You get insight from the conversation, which builds your knowledge, which then builds your cultural competencies, and that can facilitate in terms of behaviour. So, curiosity is a big thing.
And most leaders are absolutely shocking and terrible – they can't do this – but psychologists talk about this notion of perspective-taking. And perspective-taking is a real human and leadership skill. It simply means – can you see validity in a viewpoint that you fundamentally disagree with? And that's interesting because most of us find that really problematic. We can't see any validity in something that we fundamentally disagree with.
If you think about the world we're in today – things like Brexit and politics – there are lots of identity politics that flow around. I may fundamentally disagree with your viewpoint on a topic, but if I can see where you're coming from, and I see validity in what you're saying, that's a skill around perspective-taking. So you can navigate around that, but most leaders are closed off to that.
It’s not good enough just to have insight, curiosity, and perspective-taking. As a leader, you need to make sure that you become an advocate and an ally for colleagues around you.
Your job as a leader is to ask questions around who's getting the stretch projects, who's getting on the global mobility programmes, etcetera. Am I making sure that I'm the advocate of somebody who doesn't have that power to speak up in the room? We need to move away from inclusive leadership as just being about awareness and traits, to an inclusive leader that steps in and does something, and uses their privilege and power on behalf of colleagues that don't have that privilege and power within their own organisations.
We also know that inclusive leadership is not some mystical thing. It's actually a set of skills that all leaders can develop. How do leaders develop those skills? Psychology tells us that we all have biases. Human beings have a neurological gravitational pull to people who are like them. We know that for sure.
One of the first skillsets of an inclusive leader is to think about how you connect with people who are different from you. You can do that in very simple ways. Most corporate organisations will have affinity groups, employee resource groups (ERGs) and business resource groups (BRGs). My advice to leaders often is just go along.
For example, when it's International Women's Day, when it's Black History Month, when it's Pride Month – go along, sit in and listen to the conversation. Soak up the vibe around you. The skill of an inclusive leader is about thinking, "What am I hearing that I'm not normally exposed to? And what is this conversation telling me?" I think that's a skill because, as leaders, we need to let go of the concept that we know everything already.
We need to lean into the vulnerability that there's lots of stuff that we don't know about. Start having basic conversations with people and asking them questions around their life experiences. How do they experience gender bias? How do they experience racism? How do they experience homophobia? That basic level of questioning can help to build our awareness. And then that starts to give us the insight, which then gives us the tools to lean into some of the things that we need to do around allyship, sponsorship, and so on.
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