It's Time To Make Inclusive Leadership Easy
It is my firm belief, after nearly 20 years of supporting, developing and growing employees, that it has become too difficult, complex and confusing to be an effective leader in the 21st century. It is also my firm belief that inclusive leadership doesn’t have to be so complicated (or emotionally charged).
I have experienced first-hand how disastrous it is to be led by someone that doesn’t understand how my operating system works. And while we as leaders would never ask an employee to start working on a new computer system without training, we don’t regularly treat the management of human resources with the same logic. People leaders and HR professionals typically aren't required to study human behaviour and psychology in their formal training, yet understanding the brain is crucial in the business of people, akin to having an owner's manual.
Along that same vein, when we do train employees on new computer systems, we teach them not how the coding and programming was done to build the system, but simply how to navigate the tool and accomplish only the tasks they need to perform. The goal of the training being that the employee can then effectively use the system without knowing its inner workings. The same goes for managing people; we don’t need to be psychologists to understand how to get the most out of our people and how to treat them the way they want to be treated, we simply need to learn how to perform the core behaviours that will engage the majority of the team, the majority of the time.
This blog sets out to do exactly that; provide leaders with only practical actions and tasks they can perform to become inclusive leaders and get the most optimal performance out of their people.
You can expect every post to provide you with tested approaches that you can apply immediately to build an inclusive team, real life examples putting theory into action, showcasing the positive impacts of inclusive leadership and referencing tools that could be used to support the application of the learning principle.
Topics I will address include:
1. Building Relationships and Trust – the foundational pieces that needs to be in place for any leader to create an inclusive team.
- Communication
- Building Trust
- Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
2. Developing and Motivating Teams – De-mystifying the path to garnering the highest quality and volume output from team members
- Goal Setting and Alignment
- Delegation and Empowerment
- Mentoring and Coaching
3. Managing Performance and Conflict – the most powerful steps to getting the most out of ALL of your team members, especially during difficult times
- Performance Management
- Conflict Resolution
- Change Management
4. Leading with Integrity and Vision – an introspective into the work a leader needs to do on themselves to become truly inclusive leaders
- Self-Awareness
- Vision and Strategy
- Integrity and Ethics
It is my personal mission to positively impact the leadership style of as many leaders as possible, ultimately changing the employment landscape to be more inclusive and welcoming. I shape this path so that my daughter may walk into a corporate world where her brilliance is not tamed but treasured, where the rhythms of work match the cadence of her mind, where she is met not with walls but with open doors and where success is not a battle against herself, but a harmony within.
