If we’re friends of Twitter, you might have noticed that in the past few weeks I’ve posted a lot of tweets about Diversity, Inclusion, Leadership, Self-awareness, Cultural Intelligence and Active Listening, to name a few.
It’s not a coincidence — it’s because I’ve been taking an online course on Diversity & Inclusion — Inclusive Leadership: The Power of Workplace Diversity held by the University of Colorado System, which I recently graduated. :)
So, during a few intensive weeks I took a deep dive into remembering, learning and acknowledging a lot of ideas that I hope will make me a better professional, will help me understand there are always two sides on the same story and that we should always listen with the intend of understanding, not to reply.
We can no longer only talk about diversity in the workplace. Without inclusion, diversity alone can do much harm to a company. Conventionally, leaders are the ones that guide the change, the way in which diversity and inclusion become part of the brand culture, but let’s take a step back and remember what leadership is.
“Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal. — says Kevin Kruse in “What is Leadership?” 2013 Forbes article
Leadership is different from management. Management involves planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling, and a manager is someone who performs these functions. Leadership, by contrast, primarily deals with influence. A manager may or may not be an effective leader. A leader’s ability to influence others may be based on a variety of factors other than his or her formal authority or position.
Leaders set the tone of their organization. If they lack emotional intelligence, it could have more far-reaching consequences, resulting in lower employee engagement and a higherturnover rate, so emotional intelligence is an important characteristic of an inclusive leader.
Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of those around you. The term was first coined in 1990 by researchers John Mayer and Peter Salovey, but was later popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman.
Here are the four core competencies of emotional intelligence that leaders and not only should identify and work on improving:
1. Self-awareness
2. Self-management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management
But emotional intelligence is not the only feature of a highly inclusive leader, as shown by a research from Deloitte. This research identifies six signature traits:
1. Commitment: They are deeply committed to diversity and inclusion because it aligns with their personal values, and they believe in the business case for diversity and inclusion.
2. Courage: They are humble about their own capabilities and invite contributions by others.
3. Cognizance of bias: They are conscious of their own blind spots as well as flaws in the system, and work hard to ensure opportunities for others.
4. Curiosity: They have an open mind-set; they are deeply curious about others, listen without judgment, and seek to understand.
5. Culturally intelligent: They are attentive to others’ cultures and adapt as required.
6. Collaboration: They empower others and create the conditions, such as team cohesion, for diversity of thinking to flourish.
You can read more from the study here: https://bit.ly/34pssmv
With all of these in mind, would you say you are an inclusive leader? Or that you are surrounded by inclusive leaders in your workplace?
