Inclusive Leadership Practices to Cultivate Belonging at Work 

This article originally appeared in The Healthy, High-Performing Cultures Issue of Performance Matters Magazine. To request a print or digital copy of the magazine, click here.

An organization’s employee well-being or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) efforts may garner reactions such as fear of alienation or saying the wrong thing. Despite those mindsets DE&I work matters deeply. According to research by Catalyst, only 31% of employees report “often” or “always” experiencing inclusive team norms at work—and marginalized groups experience even less. Yet, a survey by Survey Monkey found that 78% of employees say it’s important to work for an organization that prioritizes DE&I.
Being intentional about DE&I and caring for employee well-being are critical to someone’s ability to thrive. Yet there are misconceptions that these efforts are separate initiatives; or, that it’s complex or time-consuming and will add weight to everyday workloads. There may also be perceptions about the organization’s approach to DE&I and employee well-being; as reported by Lever, nearly half of employees who took required diversity training said that it felt like a checkbox on their company’s diversity goals.
This is why it’s important to incorporate both DE&I and well-being within ways of working. By providing accessible, realistic, and tangible ways to integrate both, leaders can elevate their real-time decision making and daily routines with increased empathy and listening. Keep reading to learn how organizational leaders at already embedding simple techniques for themselves and their teams to positively impact culture, employee experience, and DE&I goals.

D&I in practice at ESPN

As a high-performing organization, ESPN has ongoing goals to cultivate a sense of belonging and nourish well-being across their “always on” culture. They envisioned a conversational approach that would equip leaders to deepen their knowledge, create new habits, coach teams, and drive accountability. TiER1 partnered with ESPN to design and develop a leadership coaching series that repurposed their existing well-being and D&I framework so that they could successfully embed ideal practices into everyday ways of working. These actions included:

1. Leaders (and their teams) adopt behaviors that continue to promote holistic health and inclusion with clear connection to performance.
2. Leaders model behaviors that encourage teams to adopt new habits and routines in hybrid work environments with diversity in mind.
3. Leaders better navigate responding to and supporting employees, including at the moment of need.

As you can see, these are not “separate” or “additions” to everyday workloads, but integral to leadership practices.

Tips for getting started

Here are practices to consider for incorporating DE&I and well-being into your organizational ways of working:

• Examine team dynamics to uncover exclusive and unhealthy practices. From there, shift to celebrate differences and change decision-making processes (including adjustment to power dynamics).
• Open 1:1s or meetings with an emotional inventory or check-in. Then explore ways to better support at this moment. (Tip: use mood association such as distracted, somewhat present, fully engaged.)
• Provide tangible examples of how leaders can lead and show up during difficult conversations by demonstrating curiosity, emotional intelligence, empathy, and inclusive behaviors.
• Reflect and assess unconscious bias related to leaders’ daily interactions, decision making, and ability to explore trepidation; then provide spaces to discuss.
• Address burnout by establishing better boundaries, knowing the signs and symptoms of burnout to observe, and revisiting any narratives that may contribute to feelings of powerlessness.

Embedding inclusive practices at work

When it comes to impacting others, how we work is just as important as the work we do. The ongoing practices of acknowledging bias, mindful behavior, emotional intelligence, inclusive conversations, and willingness to examine team dynamics can seamlessly be incorporated within our everyday interactions. It takes curiosity and empathy. Organizational leaders already are applying these simple techniques to create new habits and ways of working for themselves and their teams positively impacting culture, employee experience, and DE&I goals.

This article originally appeared in The Healthy, High-Performing Cultures Issue of Performance Matters Magazine. To request a print or digital copy of the magazine, click here.