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If somebody asked me, “What is the number one most important leadership skill today? What should every leader be assessed on? What should they be taught? What should every leader cultivate?” — the skill I would pick is inclusion. And figuring out who are the voices who are missing today from whatever the small or large portfolio that you have influence over. Who’s missing from those conversations and those decisions, and how can you purposefully, meaningfully bring them in?
Bridge intention and action
There are a lot of leaders out there with great intentions, with the belief that them being good people who believe in the power of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging is good enough to translate to good impact. The reality is, if you are not inclusive on purpose, if you are not intentionally focused, in every moment, in every interaction, in every single outcome that you have in the workplace and beyond, really in society as well, you’re not going to be able to achieve the type of aspirational diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging that you believe in.
One of the ways that I have found to have these conversations is recognizing that a lot of what we’re tackling today are systems of oppression, and not an individual doing the wrong thing necessarily, or an individual coming in with bad intentions. And, yes, there is that. I don’t want to make light of toxic cultures or people who are exclusionary, or biased, or racist on purpose. But, by and large, there is good intention there. And one of the ways that those good intentions don’t translate into impact is that focus on, “I, as an individual, am a good person,” rather than focusing on how these systems at play are exclusionary and biased.
Certainly, these issues create discomfort, and a lot of that discomfort focuses on, “Well, I don’t mean any harm. I don’t have control over the past, and I don’t see anything wrong with the way that I’m behaving now.” And I think it does require a tremendous amount of humility to be okay with the discomfort, again, because so many of us have not been socialized to have these conversations, to build this awareness, to really take inclusive action on purpose. And really go against some of the defensiveness that comes up. A lot of the defensiveness is very human. What makes people really uncomfortable is most of us have not been socialized to talk about these challenges that especially communities of color and communities with other marginalized identities and marginalization have faced in society, whether in our own homes, whether in society, whether in our education system, to have these conversations. And by the time we reach the workplace – at the time where it really makes a huge difference because you are forced to interact with people who are different than you, which I think is a great thing – we often come in not having the language, not having the capacity, not having the empathy, the emotional awareness and intelligence to really have these conversations meaningfully, which absolutely requires us to face up to our privilege, to lay down our defenses, to be okay, more than okay, with the discomfort that comes with this work.
Cultivate a growth mindset
Based on the fact that we have not been conditioned or educated – or, for people in dominant groups, have never had to really think about what it means to create an inclusive culture or a society – we don’t have a growth mindset toward inclusion. And this means often many of us have a fixed mindset about it where it’s like, “Well, I grew up believing this, so I can’t change” or “I wasn’t taught how to do this, so I can’t improve.” Developing an inclusion mindset focuses on overturning a lot of these myths. One of the ways that we can bridge our intentions behind being more inclusive and actually the action to be more inclusive is through this “BRIDGE” framework. The “B” stands for “Be okay with being uncomfortable.” The “R” stands for “Reflect on what you don’t know.” “I” is “Invite feedback.” “D” is “Defensiveness doesn’t help.” “G” is “Grow from mistakes.” And “E is “Expect that change takes time.” What the “BRIDGE” framework does is it invites people rather than calls out people to reflect on the perspectives that perhaps we’ve held to be true for all this while, especially around communities that are different than our own.
I like to focus on the “E,” the “Expect change takes time,” because action bias tells us when we feel uncomfortable, when we hear, especially as leaders, somebody has faced bias or exclusion or discrimination, or we hear about people having a negative experience, we often just want to rush into action. We want to make change without really stopping to analyze what’s really going on here. What is my role in making change? How can I meaningfully and purposefully take action? And often that comes after you take a beat, stop for a moment, you really think through what’s going on, you build that awareness and education, and then you move towards action.