Imagine this. You’re browsing job listings and come across a company with this perk: After five years, employees get a 10-week sabbatical to rest and recharge. Sounds great, but there’s a catch. Anyone who has taken more than 10 weeks of leave across their entire tenure with the company until that point is ineligible. It might sound reasonable at first, but there’s a problem—the policy isn’t inclusive.
Why? Because the policy excludes certain people based on their life circumstances. Any employee who took maternity or primary caregiver leave would be ineligible for the sabbatical. The same goes for someone with a chronic illness or someone who took medical leave to recover from a serious injury.
A more inclusive perspective could help the company resolve this problem and prevent future issues. Learn how creating an inclusive workplace benefits your entire organization—and discover the key leadership competencies associated with inclusivity.
What is inclusive leadership?
Inclusive leadership focuses on creating a safe and supportive environment for all employees. Inclusive leaders make an effort to understand how cultural differences, life experiences, and environmental factors may affect individual employees’ needs. Inclusive leaders strive to eliminate inequality and provide equal opportunities in the workplace. Without inclusion—the practice of creating a welcoming environment where all employees feel respected, heard, and valued—teams may struggle to thrive.
What are the benefits of inclusive leadership?
In an inclusive environment, employees feel empowered to share their ideas—which allows the organization to benefit from their team’s diverse perspectives. This helps businesses build a diverse thinking team, or an organization with collective intelligence encompassing multiple viewpoints.
Building an inclusive environment benefits employers and employees alike. When employees feel emotionally safe and understand that opinions are valued, they’re more likely to report an overall favorable opinion of their workplace—and they may be less likely to leave. Better employee retention in turn helps businesses save money and operate efficiently.
What makes an inclusive leader?
An inclusive leader is dedicated to creating a fair and welcoming working environment. Inclusive leaders seek to understand and consider different viewpoints when making decisions so they land on the best course of action. These are some of the qualities that help business leaders practice inclusivity:
Open-mindedness
Managers will encounter new ideas or concerns when managing people. Building an inclusive culture requires approaching unfamiliar concepts with curiosity and openness.
Having an immediate, knee-jerk reaction—like laughing dismissively or shutting down an unfamiliar idea—can unintentionally signal to employees that their perspectives aren’t taken seriously. Over time, this can create an environment where people feel disrespected, misunderstood, or hesitant to speak up at all. Contrast this with a leader who is eager to hear about different backgrounds and perspectives and it’s easy to see who’ll rally their troops more effectively.
Humility
Humble leaders aren’t afraid to take personal responsibility for their mistakes or learn from their peers. Inclusivity is all about recognizing and welcoming diverse perspectives. To do this, leaders work to recognize their own limitations and trust peers to help them understand other perspectives. Humility helps inclusive leaders recognize and move past any missteps productively.
Flexibility
An inclusive workplace responds to employee needs. Flexibility could mean rethinking or revising corporate policies based on feedback from different groups of people or even making an exception for one employee based on their circumstances.
Dedication
Inclusive leadership requires dedication. Building an inclusive environment may take time—leaders must remain committed and continue to pursue their goals. Successful leaders will take time to address and resolve problems instead of backing away at the first challenge.
How to implement inclusive leadership
- Ask questions
- Consider unconscious bias training
- Write inclusive job descriptions
- Share information equitably
- Demonstrate flexibility
- Solicit feedback
Implementing inclusive leadership is a multi-part process. These are some of the steps you can take to start building an inclusive workplace:
1. Ask questions
Becoming an inclusive leader requires building strong social awareness, and talking with team members can help senior leaders develop this skill. Make time to discuss work experiences and challenges. Practice active listening by asking questions and being emotionally present in meetings. Focus on developing a true understanding of the elements that affect your team to remove roadblocks and provide support.
2. Consider unconscious bias training
Unconscious bias training helps leaders build self-awareness by examining the mental shortcuts and assumptions they may hold about different groups. These personal biases are often unintentional, but they can still influence hiring, promotions, and daily interactions, leading to a culture of exclusion rather than inclusion. By surfacing and addressing these biases, organizations can take a proactive step toward building a more inclusive culture.
3. Write inclusive job descriptions
Inclusive leadership starts long before someone joins the team—it begins with how you invite people in. One key opportunity is the job description itself. The way your job descriptions are written and the language you use can signal either a culture of inclusion or exclusion. For example, gendered pronouns, industry jargon, and unnecessary requirements can all turn people away. To foster inclusion, you might:
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Write job descriptions in the second person, addressing the applicant as “you,” rather than in the third person, which necessitates the use of pronouns.
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Avoid unnecessary niche acronyms in favor of clear, plain language.
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Interrogate the requirements you have that are outside of the job skills. For example, it may be unnecessary to require applicants to be native English speakers when fluency in the language would be completely sufficient.
Thoughtful, inclusive job descriptions help ensure candidates from all walks of life can picture themselves contributing—and belonging—on your team. It also shores up their confidence that they’ll be treated fairly while at your company.
4. Share information equitably
Work to create equal opportunity by sharing information about things like promotion opportunities, grants, and scholarships through official channels. Ensure that internal announcements are distributed to the entire staff in the same manner. Sharing information with your social connections at lunch or other events may not feel like discrimination, but it can contribute to an unequal distribution of information.
5. Demonstrate flexibility
Inclusive leadership requires an evolving, rather than static, approach to fairness. It can require you to make room for individual circumstances without compromising the core values behind a policy. For example, you may opt for flexible holidays to honor a range of cultural and religious observances, rather than a set list.
6. Solicit feedback
Ask for input about your leadership style and about your organizational policies. Work to create an environment where employees feel encouraged to provide feedback and have plenty of opportunities to share. Keep in mind that employees from underrepresented groups may have had their opinions dismissed in the past.
Consider providing an anonymous feedback option to assure employees that they won’t face any repercussions for sharing opinions. Approach critical feedback with a growth-oriented, open mindset and look for opportunities to improve the employee experience.
Inclusive leadership FAQ
What is inclusive leadership about?
Inclusive leadership is about creating an office environment where every employee feels comfortable voicing their needs and sharing their ideas. Inclusive leaders create environments where teams can thrive. Without inclusion, different perspectives may be present but unheard. By fostering a culture of respect, trust, and open communication, inclusive leaders unlock the full value of employees, driving better collaboration, creativity, and problem solving.
What are the four qualities of an inclusive leader?
Open-mindedness, humility, flexibility, and dedication are four of the most important inclusive leadership traits. These qualities help leaders learn from others and make the adjustments necessary to build an inclusive culture over time.
Why is inclusive leadership important?
Inclusive leadership benefits employers and employees. An inclusive workplace helps employees feel safe and understood. Fostering a welcoming environment is good for business because strong morale can increase productivity and reduce employee turnover.
