How Inclusive a Leader are You?

There is a lot written about the organizational benefits of inclusion. And as we enter a phase of more accelerated change, these benefits take on even greater importance.

These benefits include

• Innovation
• Agility and resilience
• Robust decision making
• Trust and engagement
• Productivity
• Better quality talent pools

We also know that there are deep seated systemic reasons why inclusion can be hard to achieve. Currently a lot of focus is placed at addressing these systemic issues through organizational initiatives such as unconscious bias training or amending external recruitment practices.

However, what is happening at the individual leader level? Do we know if one leader is more inclusive in their leadership than another? Does inclusion get scored when evaluating leaders? and if so, then on what basis? Do you know if your personal leadership approach is truly inclusive, even if that is your intention?

And how does a leader hold both a focus on inclusion and on high performance?

Inclusion is now critical for all organizational leaders, and yet there many individuals who don’t know how to evaluate their own level of inclusion, and how to modify their behaviour to become both more inclusive and a better leader of a business in change.

We want to address this gap through some research on what makes for effective inclusive leaders. An effective inclusive leader is someone that is both effective at leading boundary spanning businesses, and incorporating inclusive practices to drive performance.

We will be using an established, highly regarded, global, well researched leadership diagnostic to ensure our approach is both robust and practical.

We are looking to establish:

• What behaviors make for an inclusive leader in Asia Pacific?
• And how do these inclusive leadership behaviors match up to high performance behaviors?
• What are the costs of ignoring inclusion? Personally, and at team level.
• What hurdles exist for leaders who are trying to become more inclusive?
• And how can they get around these?
• When is a leader likely to be facing tough moments on inclusion?
• And how do they make the right decision in these critical moments?

We are looking to partner with organizations and senior leaders interested in these critical inclusive leadership questions and issues.  So, if this area of inclusive leadership is of interest to you, and or your organization, then please reach out to learn more about our research process and your potential participation.