Inclusive leadership: Embrace the friction
More and more organisations are realising the tremendous value of leaders developing the skill of inclusiveness. The skill not only helps foster more diverse and equitable workplaces, but also sits at the heart of innovation and creativity – helping teams to better bring together ideas and perspectives to solve complex challenges. Deliberately practising inclusive leadership (and, yes, it is a skill that can be practised) can rapidly accelerate the growth and development of leaders across organisations, from the C suite on down. But for many organisations there is something called a knowing – doing gap. Leaders “know” (or assume they do) the value of inclusive leadership, and would consider themselves inclusive leaders. But when we work with their teams, they tell a very different story. Leaders have good intentions, but these aren’t always being matched by action. If the benefits are clear, and peoples’ intentions are good, why the gap?
