Managers’ main role is to lead employees and teams to perform well. One effective leadership style that is gaining in popularity for its proven benefits is inclusive leadership. Inclusive leaders bring “a 17% increase in team performance … 29% increase in team collaboration … cut down employee attrition risk by 76%,” according to HBR. The people benefits impact the bottom line, too, as organizations with inclusive leadership report higher innovation revenue, 2.3 times the cash flow, and are 70% more likely to capture a new market.
Inclusive leadership is a style in which leaders and managers include and appreciate everyone for who they are, encouraging and accepting differing opinions, views, and input. This approach creates an atmosphere where employees feel a sense of belonging and uniqueness, knowing that their contributions are valued.
Inclusive leadership is becoming increasingly expected as organizations adapt to the changing demands of new generations. This leadership style is centered around creating an environment where everyone feels seen, listened to, and valued. Organizations that prioritize fostering a culture of inclusive leadership gain an edge in creating high-performing and engaged teams.
Inclusive leadership means working with high levels of openness, honesty, and controlled risk-taking. Making mistakes must be allowed to a certain level, as it is “the route to shaping the nervous system so that it continuously performs better and better,” according to Andrew Huberman, Professor and Neuroscientist at Stanford University.
“The route to shaping the nervous system so that it continuously performs better and better.”
Neuroscientists suggest that the feeling of inclusion and responses to feelings of rejection are perhaps most important to performance and engagement. Organizations that utilize neuroscientific-based frameworks in developing their employees will leverage human drivers for commitment, motivation, and engagement.
One of the brain’s main principles is avoiding danger by alerting brain regions whenever there is a negative event or stimuli. Negative stimuli receive more attention quicker compared to positive experiences. This is called negativity bias, which means humans tend to focus on negative events more than positive ones. Negative information gets more attention, and we are influenced more by negative emotions. Simply put, to the brain, bad is stronger than good. By creating an environment where positive emotions can override negative stimuli, the brain unlocks opportunities for creativity, engagement, and motivation, and inclusive leadership provides this environment.
A second priority the brain seeks is feeling part of the group. Neuroscience refers to belonging as relatedness, and studies show that relatedness is a strong driver for feeling psychological safety. “Without psychological safety, diverse teams that otherwise excel in innovation underperform,” according to HBR. Organizations with an inclusive leadership culture can maintain a high sense of relatedness enable employees to perform higher-quality work, unleash their creativity, and adopt an innovation mindset. In a psychologically safe environment, people dare to contribute and share their views. It is also a key to high engagement.
“Without psychological safety, diverse teams that otherwise excel in innovation underperform.”
Inclusive leadership means managers speak, act, and engage using a language (verbal and non-verbal) that opens up for questions, input, and employee engagement. These leaders demonstrate authenticity and empathy. When you are surrounded by inclusive leaders, people speak more freely about their thoughts, ideas, and feelings. They are willing to share differing opinions. There is respect amongst teams and their individual differences. Collaboration and initiative-taking are also stronger than in environments without inclusive leadership.
Curiosity, courage, accountability, humility, authenticity, and empathy are the most important traits of an inclusive leader. These mean:
Managers who master inclusive leadership let employees feel understood, appreciated, treated fairly, and accepted for who they are. Inclusive leaders show authenticity and create an environment where employees have greater input into teamwork.
Developing inclusive leadership is an ongoing process. Similar to developing a brand, it takes time to build the needed trust, but it is quick and easy to ruin. Inclusive leadership must be woven into the corporate and leadership values and a central part of the leadership culture.
When developing the foundation for inclusive leadership, start building on what works well today to increase the likelihood of people living the new way forward. Also, learn what does not work today and remove the necessary barriers.
Inclusive leadership is a central tool for teaching managers how to lead. Managers need to learn examples of what great inclusive leadership looks like and what not to do.
How can organizations and managers set the foundation for making inclusive leadership traits easy to apply? Begin by including the inclusive leadership traits in the leadership performance measurement, often called a Leadership Growth Survey. Gather the input for what works well and what might be hindering leaders from leading inclusively and use it in Step 2.
A best practice is also to create a feedback support group of 2-3 people that the manager trusts. Group members can be peers, direct reports, or someone else in the organization. Each group member shares feedback on the manager’s ability to lead with inclusive traits in the moment, helping the manager learn how they are perceived.
In CatalystOne Engage, you can easily set up your Leadership Growth surveys by adding additional questions to your pulse survey and choosing from a neuroscience-validated question library.
Tip! Ask for input using question statements such as “In our organization, diverse perspectives are included in the decision-making,” “In our organization, leaders actively seek new ideas from the employees,” “In our team, we dare to try new ideas that can benefit the organization,” “My manager seeks my input and views by asking questions that expand solution thinking,” and “My manager is curious, open for new suggestions and show an authentic interest in listening to my input.”
Once you know what works well and what might be in the way of inclusive leadership, you can build the foundation for what inclusive leadership looks like for the leaders in your organization. For example, focus on developing or updating:
Expand inclusive leadership to cover cultural values and principles by teaming up with your communications department. Ensure your inclusive leadership and culture strategy aligns with the internal and external communication strategy for a consistent message about your inclusive culture.
Run a slightly more in-depth Leadership Growth Survey every two months and keep two or three inclusive leadership questions in your monthly pulse survey. After each survey, incorporate the measurement results into team meetings, discuss the measurement outcome, and plan the improvement actions together. To ensure inclusive leadership traits, the manager must listen to what is said and act on the results of how they portray an inclusive leadership style.
The manager feedback support group provides relevant instant feedback after a meeting, for example. By providing instant feedback, the manager can reflect on and act on it immediately.
For managers in the feedback support group, using a brain friendly-feedback framework will impact the effect of the feedback. Learning how the brain responds and reacts to feedback is key.
Inclusive leadership is part of the foundation for a modern, high-performing organization. It requires a human-centered culture where leaders’ communication and actions are key to developing and maintaining the right environment. While inclusive leadership takes deliberate focus and can be ruined in an instant, getting it right pays off for employees, leaders, and the bottom line. The best foundation for high-performing organizations is when people have a habit of working in alignment with how the brain works. While change happens at a fast pace in our society and organizations, our brains still have much of the same structure and instincts as 40,000 years ago.