How to drive high-performance through inclusive leadership

In their culmination of over 20 years of research, Miller and Katz, in the ‘The Inclusion Breakthrough’,? defined inclusivity as: “a sense of belonging; feeling respected, valued and seen for who we are as individuals; and a level of supportive energy and commitment from leaders, colleagues, and others so that we – individually and collectively – can do our best work”.

This is often the case when we talk about inclusivity. We talk about employees bringing their whole selves to work – but what does this mean in practice? To answer this, we need to look at culture which itself is driven by behaviours. When it comes to our leaders, what behaviours are we valuing and rewarding to drive high-performance? Which leadership behaviours do we need to foster, to drive an inclusive culture?

Let’s imagine a leader who worked on a project that allowed the company to win an important tender. They stayed late every evening and started early each morning, often responding to emails and answering calls on weekends.

In turn, the organisation celebrated their success by acknowledging all their demanding work and all the extra hours they put in. If this sounds familiar, what message does this send to your leaders and to your employees? Celebrating success in this way shapes a strong narrative and an expectation of the type of worker that will succeed in your organisation; and more importantly the type of worker who cannot. For some, working all those extra hours is just not possible – your part-time employees, those who have caring responsibilities, and those who wish to maintain a work-life balance –not to mention treading the tricky terrain of encouraging over-work often leads to burnout.?

How inclusive and equitable is this message, if we are defining high-performance behaviours that are not accessible to everyone?

Instead, there should be a focus on celebrating behaviours such as collaborating with colleagues or developing a trustworthy relationship with the client – behaviours that have contributed to this success AND that drive an inclusive culture and inclusive leadership.

Luckily, there are other ways to defining (and celebrating!) high-performance leadership behaviours for your organisation and your leaders. A notable example of that could be seen through the work Hanover did with the Dudley Building Society, which resulted in their leaders strengthening their self-awareness and impact; something they continue to develop which is a credit to their commitment.

Once you have defined those behaviours, the next step is for your leaders to develop self-awareness and acknowledge the existence of their own bias as well as the inherent biases of the wider socio-cultural environment in which they lead.

Through sessions focused on inclusive leadership such as Hanover’s 1:1 coaching, you can support leaders to develop inclusive behaviours such as: