When we look back, 2020 will be remembered as the year of the coronavirus. But a second issue flared up this year, encouraged by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police and other incidents with a racial edge in the U.S. and Canada. So 2020 has also been the year of renewed attention to diversity, as organizations struggled with inclusion and belonging. And no vaccine will make it magically disappear in the near future. We must find solutions within ourselves and our organization. 

The Five Disciplines of Inclusive Leaders

By Andrés Tapia and Alina Polonskaia

Berrett-Koehler, 216 pages, $39.95

Inclusive Conversations

By Mary-Frances Winters

Berrett-Koehler, 192 pages, $25.95

A good starting point is to clarify some of the jargon bouncing around. “Diversity is about getting a mix of different people in the door, inclusion is about ensuring that mix is working well, and equity is the promise that they all have equal access, opportunity, support and rewards,” Andrés Tapia and Alina Polonskaia sum up in their new book The Five Disciplines of Inclusive Leaders.

They define inclusive leadership as executives who interact with the diversity around them, build interpersonal trust, take the view of others into account, and are adaptive. Since 2015 they have assessed more than 3,000 managers on inclusive leadership, testing assumptions through fieldwork, and mapping out competencies, traits, experiences, and cultural drivers.  

Leaders must have a positive disposition towards differences and even further, a belief that differences are desirable. Along with that, authenticity, emotional resilience, self-assurance, inquisitiveness, and flexibility are critical. They build those competencies into the five disciplines of inclusive leadership:

  • Builds interpersonal trust: This is the foundation. It involves instilling trust and the ability to value differences. “Interestingly, each initially leans in the opposite direction of the other, but then they come full circle to reinforce each other, for optimal inclusive impact,” the consultants note. Instilling trust requires finding common ground across differences while valuing differences requires surfacing the implications of differences to better understand others. Call it the paradox of inclusion: Inclusive leaders must focus on what everyone has in common and also proactively unearth their differences.
  • Integrates diverse perspectives: This is perhaps the most difficult discipline to master. It requires patience and humility to balance the ideas and wishes of various stakeholders, managing conflict. But most executives have a bias for action and struggle with slowing down to handle the complexities of diversity. Inclusive leaders listen more than they talk. They recognize inclusion is about listening to all voices. They know that the extra time they spend on the front end working through conflict will save time in the long run. They also know that embracing and encouraging diversity will make their team more creative, diligent, and successful.
  • Optimizes talent: The consultants note that much of the promise of diversity, however, stalls because of unrealized potential. That comes because most leaders and managers are trapped by their own unresolved biases and lack of inclusive skills. So you must work to overcome those deficiencies, driving engagement, developing talent, and generating collaboration with all your people, paying attention in particular to underrepresented and overlooked groups or individuals. The consultants urge you to follow poet Maya Angelou’s advice: “People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
  • Applies an adaptive mindset: This is where you broaden your impact beyond your own team to the wider organization. It requires situational adaptability, dealing with whatever comes your way, in whatever shape or form. But accompanying that should be a global perspective, which is more than managing cultural differences across different groups of people. It’s about curiosity and an understanding of the changes occurring in the world, be they political, social, or environmental. George Santayana captured this discipline with these words: “A person’s feet must be planted in their country, but their eyes should survey the world.” 
  • Achieves transformation: This is the destination: With courage, helping to transform your unit or organization for a more sustainable and equitable future. Think Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, who transformed baseball by breaking the colour barrier. 

On that path, inclusive leaders face many thorny conversations that they must stickhandle through, building trust and uncovering solutions. But fear and grievances from past injustices get in the way. 

Diversity and inclusion consultant Mary-Frances Winters sees people repeatedly struggling to find the right words for such chats. “It’s not that most people do not want to engage in inclusive conversations; they do not know how. They do not know what to say so as not to offend or be accused of insensitivity or worse,” she writes in Inclusive Conversations.

She divides the workplace into two: Those who have historically found themselves in dominant power and those who have traditionally been subordinated and marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or some other dimension. We don’t normally view our organization in those terms; we’re all supposed to be on the same team. It’s also hard to admit you may have been part of the dominant power group. Denial sets in.  But it’s a vital distinction to keep in mind as you seek to be an inclusive leader.

She says it will take more than a positive intent and a desire for equity to hold inclusive conversations with your teammates. Eight conditions are required: Commitment; cultural competence; brave and psychologically safe spaces; an understanding of equity and power; the ability to address fear and fragility; grace and forgiveness; trust and empathy; and belonging and inclusion. 

In her 35 years as a consultant, she doesn’t feel we have fundamentally changed the structures and systems that deal with historically subordinated groups. That’s why commitment is listed first. Think through how dedicated you truly are to changing things. Consider where that desire stems from – intrinsic, something that bubbles up from within, or extrinsic, something pushed on you or that you feel you must do (or pay lip service to) these days to be promoted. As well, think of how you can improve your own knowledge and understanding of the differences in culture within your workplace, so that you have the competence to accomplish change – or the more ambitious transformation Tapia and Polonskaia preach.

We have been told repeatedly that tough conversations require safe spaces. But Winters sees it differently. She argues we need to create brave zones, where deep truths can be expressed without fear of retribution. Safety in these brave will be quite different for the two groups she divides the workplace into. When dominant groups discuss race “safety” means “you will not make me feel uncomfortable.” But for those who have historically been marginalized, “safety” often means “I can make you feel uncomfortable (even if that is not my intention) and you will listen without defensiveness, dismissiveness, and ‘whitesplaining,’” in which a white person explains to a black person the true nature of racism. So there may be discomfort and discord but you must strive to make everyone feel safe enough to be brave.

In the same vein, you need to face up to the fear and fragility which exists these days. “Many people are afraid of talking about diversity and inclusion topics for fear they might get it wrong and not be forgiven. Acknowledging these fears is an all-important step in engaging in inclusive conversations,” she says.

Remember that how much you may want a united team, differences remain, and they are profound. In particular, she stresses race is a dynamic in all cross-race conversations. If you are white, you need to realize the Black person is aware of that dynamic, even if they might not admit it. So if you are white, consider what role you play in the conversation. How might others with a different identity be feeling?

It’s a difficult dynamic. But a critical one. Diversity has become a major organizational issue for 2020 and beyond.