Despite the abundance of information in our hemisphere surrounding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, topics heavily debated almost daily in the news and on social media, the need for Inclusive Leadership remains crucial to an organization’s success in Canada.
Inclusive Leadership has proven to yield the following organizational outcomes:
- Lower turnover.
- Enhanced employee engagement and retention.
- Increased creativity and innovation.
- Overall higher performance.
- Greater chances of attracting new markets.
Inclusive Leadership is a competitive advantage and powerful approach that should be embraced and developed by executives and leaders across all industries and sectors to enhance both internal and external client experiences. Especially now as communities across Canada continue to grow and evolve, and individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds play a larger role in Canada’s socio-economic fabric. As most of Canada’s population growth and diversification stems from immigration, there has been, and will continue to be, a gradual organizational shift across industries and sectors.
Understanding Inclusive Leadership
Inclusive Leadership is a management style that embodies specific values, traits, and behaviours, aiming to foster a sense of belonging, individuality and inclusiveness in the workplace. With our society becoming increasingly diverse, there is a pressing need for leaders in all sectors to enhance their skills and capabilities in Inclusive Leadership. This unique skillset influences workplace culture and strengthens the organization’s ability to meet client needs, foster innovation, improve decision-making, and tap into new markets.
Identifying Inclusive Leaders
Royer Thompson has consistently found this to be true through our work with progressive organizations in Canada. We have seen firsthand how Inclusive Leaders promote employees’ uniqueness, foster a sense of belonging, provide meaningful employee recognition and appreciation, and support organizational efforts around change and inclusion.
Although Inclusive Leadership intersects with other leadership styles, like transformational, ethical, and servant leadership, specific behaviours and personality traits distinguish Inclusive Leaders.
A Harvard Business Review study suggests that Inclusive Leaders emphasize authenticity, question the status quo, value ongoing learning, ensure fairness in opportunities, and believe that inclusion should be a mindset across the organization, not just an HR responsibility. Six key traits have also been directly linked to inclusive leaders: bias cognition, cultural intelligence, curiosity, courage, collaboration, and commitment.
Harnessing the Power of Inclusive Leadership
A multi-level construct, Inclusive Leadership combines inclusive competencies and practices, rendering ripple effects that impact not only individual contributors but also work teams and the organization.
Inclusive Leadership has been shown to strongly correlate with employees' perceptions of psychological safety and empowerment while promoting identification among work groups. This is key from a risk management perspective, as evidenced by policies and legislation that cover aspects of psychological safety in the workplace.
If you are curious about learning more about Inclusive Leadership and how to shape inclusive leaders, teams and climates within your organization, please get in touch.