Almost everyone at work wants a culture in which they feel fully included. Yet creating a genuine climate of inclusion rests neither on a handful of one-off initiatives nor on diversity alone: what leaders do shapes the culture of the organisation.
This article shows why inclusive leadership is a strategic talent management issue, how data from personality assessment can help identify leaders likely to behave inclusively, and how these capabilities can be developed over time.
For executives, HR directors and heads of talent management, what is at stake goes well beyond quality of working life. More inclusive leadership can strengthen team performance, innovation, engagement, trust and the organisation's ability to make the most of every form of diversity.
How many people do you think want to work in a culture where everyone feels included? Almost all of them: 99% of employees attach importance to a working environment with an inclusive culture.¹
In one sense the recipe is simple enough: whatever leaders value becomes what the organisation values. Building an inclusive culture therefore takes inclusive leaders.
What happens when an organisation lacks them? The consequences are far from trivial.
A recent survey found that 31% of respondents in the United States had felt excluded at work. Of those, 55% said the experience had prompted them to look for a job elsewhere.¹ Put another way, out of every 100 employees, roughly 17 might consider leaving their organisation because they feel excluded.
Retention is not the only measure affected, either. A lack of inclusion at work can also drag down productivity, engagement, quality, innovation and many other outcomes that determine performance.
"Organisations often ask for coaching support on inclusive behaviours," explains Arlene Pace Green, PhD, an executive coach within the Hogan Coaching Network. "Treating people in a way that leaves them feeling heard and respected, collaborating well with others, recognising the value of the people around us: these are dimensions that come up in a great many coaching engagements."
Inclusion means creating an environment in which everyone can develop a genuine sense of belonging.
In organisations, virtually all the work that really creates value is done in teams. One of the ways leaders build and sustain high-performing teams, then, is by fostering inclusion.
Leadership behaviours that support inclusion include listening to others, building trusting relationships, resolving conflict, showing openness and curiosity towards other cultures, and drawing on diversity.
It is worth being clear that, in this context, diversity is not limited to demographic differences. It also covers individual differences in skill, experience and even in ways of solving problems.
Beyond the fact that practically everyone aspires to work in an inclusive culture, inclusion brings benefits that are both measurable and harder to quantify.
Alongside better team performance, the list of potential benefits is impressive: more innovation, more effective problem-solving, a stronger employer reputation and a richer set of cultural and international perspectives.²
Diversity on its own does not produce these outcomes.
Even in companies with highly diverse workforces, how people perceive inclusion can remain very negative where the level of trust is low.³
When leaders have no real wish to draw on diversity, employees are liable to see inclusion initiatives as hollow.
Inclusive leaders, by contrast, help create something that, when it works well, is often hard to measure: a shared feeling among employees, tied to belonging, openness, psychological safety and trust. It may show up, for example, as a sense of fairness or a sense of being respected.
Any talent management strategy seeking to promote inclusion effectively therefore has to rest on data. Let us look at how personality data can anticipate how likely a leader is to behave inclusively.
On Hogan's view, personality data makes it possible to estimate how likely a person is to display certain competencies, including those associated with inclusion.
In its research, Hogan reviews the scientific literature to identify the relevant competencies, then maps those competencies onto different personality scales.
This methodology allows personality assessment to anticipate certain behaviours associated with inclusive leadership.
Within an HR strategy or an assessment and development programme, this information can help make better sense of a person's leadership potential and steer skills development efforts.
Hogan's researchers have identified two particularly important behaviours associated with inclusion: drawing on diversity and caring about people.
Drawing on diversity means respecting and valuing individual differences in order to achieve the intended effect or result.
Caring about people means showing sensitivity to other people's attitudes, emotions or circumstances.
But what does that look like in practice?
Hogan's research shows that people likely to behave inclusively tend to be "emotionally stable, agreeable, conscientious, tolerant, open-minded, trusting of others, humble, honest, empathetic and attentive to others".⁴
A leader with these characteristics will generally seek to understand people, will be able to build relationships with very different profiles, and will be capable of taking in the world through other people's eyes.
"Showing curiosity and seeking to understand is one of the most important behaviours leaders can adopt," Green points out.
Cultural competence is another characteristic commonly found in leaders who foster inclusion.
It goes by other names too, cultural intelligence or intercultural competence, and means the ability to understand, appreciate and manage cultural difference.
Like other social and emotional skills, cultural competence is never finally acquired. It is a process of continuous learning and development.
Hogan's research on cultural competence shows that effective international leaders are able to draw on diversity, manage stress, deploy their relational skills, process information effectively and negotiate well.
If identifying and then developing a leader with all these characteristics sounds difficult, it is. But the investment required is worth making.
When an organisation assesses its leaders, whether for executive selection, leadership development or high-potential programmes, inclusion should be among the dimensions taken into account.
Think of the butterfly effect.
On that famous metaphor, the beating of a butterfly's wings might set off a typhoon on the other side of the world.
In the same way, the better an organisation selects and supports inclusive leaders, the more widely and deeply their positive influence can potentially spread through the organisation.
To stay with metaphors drawn from nature, one of the best ways to grasp the value of inclusion is to separate weather from climate.
Weather describes the temperature of a place at a given moment. Climate is the average temperature observed in that place over time.
Weather can be likened to short-term actions or initiatives, capable of producing temporary results.
Climate, by contrast, corresponds to systematic inclusion efforts sustained over time. Embedded in the company's strategy, those efforts can gradually shape the organisational culture.⁵
Which is precisely what 99% of employees want.
Assessing leaders through the lens of inclusion can therefore help shift an organisation's climate positively and durably.
More inclusive behaviours can be developed. That said, inclusive leadership is not a skill anyone can regard as finally "mastered".
Whatever the context, a climate of inclusion can always be improved, adjusted and refined.
Developing inclusive leadership nonetheless involves three fundamental principles: measuring progress, acting with intent and taking a strategic approach.
As with a fitness goal, any development objective means establishing a starting point, setting SMART objectives and then tracking the progress made.
Genuinely effective leadership development uses assessment as its initial reference point. It also informs how objectives are set and gives direction to a process of continuous improvement.
Green recounts the experience of a leader she coached. He had just joined a new organisation and was under heavy pressure to deliver results quickly.
He was running a team of around 35 people in a particularly aggressive and demanding style. He also relied almost systematically on a small group of trusted colleagues, giving the impression that the team was split between insiders and everyone else.
A 360-degree assessment revealed that the leader genuinely had no awareness of the impact his leadership style was having on the members of his team.
After shifting his mindset and putting several specific, concrete and visible behavioural strategies in place, he profoundly changed the team's dynamic.
"At the end of the six months, I interviewed the team members and they felt an immense sense of relief," Green explains. "The leader was genuinely making the effort to lead differently and to recognise each person's value."
This example illustrates all the value that assessment, coaching and the measurement of progress can bring when they form part of a structured approach to team transformation.
In some situations, intent can go further than a general inclusion policy, because every situation is unique.
Take the complexity of workplace adjustments for people with disabilities, which may concern physical as well as non-physical dimensions.
Two people with the same disability may need very different adjustments at work. It then becomes practically impossible to write policies specific enough to be relevant in every situation.
As Larry Martinez, PhD, pointed out in episode 52 of Hogan's podcast The Science of Personality, "knowing your people well, at a level that lets you help them do their work as well as possible, is quite simply good management practice".
Developing inclusive behaviours therefore means knowing which actions to take, then making the conscious and deliberate choice to take them.
"For people who want to, it is entirely possible to learn to be more inclusive," Green states.
Caring about people, for instance, can run through a wide variety of intentional practices.
Encouraging teamwork and mutual support may mean recognising and celebrating collective wins, but also giving people opportunities for professional development.
Likewise, preserving a trustworthy and supportive environment may involve making decisions that are consistent, transparent and fair.
Creating a genuine climate of inclusion is impossible without an overall inclusion strategy.
Based on interviews with 40 particularly high-performing leaders, where inclusion really works it is everyone's responsibility, not solely that of human resources.⁶
The researchers observed that the most effective DEIB initiatives, covering diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, are represented in the organisation's values, embedded across the whole employee life cycle and written directly into the company's strategy.
In the same way, it is impossible to develop a genuinely more inclusive culture without the involvement of leaders themselves.
When an organisation selects people who genuinely value inclusion for its leadership roles, development work with them and with everyone else stands a better chance of succeeding at every level.
Remember the butterfly effect: selection and development are both indispensable components of an effective inclusion strategy.
Inclusive leadership does not boil down to a series of good relational practices. It shapes how far people feel heard, respected and safe enough to contribute fully to the collective effort.
For organisations, the challenge is therefore to move past one-off initiatives and write inclusion into a genuine HR and talent management strategy.
Personality assessment can supply valuable data for understanding the behaviours likely to foster inclusion, identifying leadership potential and steering assessment and development work. Combined with coaching, skills development and a coherent strategy for selecting leaders, it can support lasting change in organisational culture.
Ultimately, developing more inclusive leaders comes down to creating the conditions in which teams can draw fully on their differences, their skills and their perspectives. That capability is an essential lever for team transformation, sustainable management and long-term performance.
Arlene Pace Green, PhD, CEO of Enelra Talent Solutions and executive coach within the Hogan Coaching Network (HCN).
Larry Martinez, PhD, holder of the A. Dale Thompson Endowed Chair of Leadership, University of Texas at Arlington.
At Authentic Talent, we believe that objective assessment of talent and potential within organisations is a decisive factor in their future success. If you would like to discuss it with us, let's talk!
This article draws on an article published on the Hogan Assessments website: Do You Have Inclusive Leaders?
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