6 Tips to Serve As An Inclusive Leader During A Crisis
Before COVID-19, leading brands worldwide invested significant resources to cultivate inclusive leaders. Leaders who have the abilities and confidence to build a sense of psychological safety, trust, and belonging for all stakeholders in the workplace.
Today, in response to the global pandemic, a greater number of businesses are realizing the importance of having inclusive leaders on their teams. When empowered to do so, inclusive leaders can help to empathetically respond to this crisis that has forever changed how we work.
What’s clear is that inclusive leadership matters now more than ever before.
Why?
In uncertain times, we may feel a lack of control, confusion on where to find accurate information, and heightened fear – all of which increases the risk of bias.
Follow the news cycle and you’ll see plenty of stark examples:
· Increased anti-Asian racism and xenophobia.
· Increased racial profiling disproportionately targeting Black & Latinx people.
· Increased homophobia & transphobia impacting LGBTQ+ communities seeking medical services.
· Increased ableism making it harder for people with disabilities to participate in remote work.
In Chapter 7 of my best-selling book, Belonging at Work, I write about the ways we can serve as inclusive leaders to address these feelings, that left unchecked can increase bias at work.
The book features research from Deloitte University Press, which highlights six signature all traits inclusive leaders share. You may reference these traits in the graphic featured below:
On this past Monday’s Belonging Community Call, participants from a variety of professions and roles identified how they have demonstrated these traits over the course of their careers.
Many offered their ideas of how these leadership traits can be applied to respond to the fears, worries, and concerns they are witnessing among their colleagues.
Below offers a summary of this discussion at it relates to these six leadership traits:
1. Make the Commitment. Participants shared a few ideas as to how they are keeping their DEI commitments alive during & after COVID-19. Ideas offered on the call included:
Advocate for company resources to provide hazard pay for essential workers keeping the daily functions of an organization operational.
Facilitate virtual town halls to connect with staff working remotely, making technology accessible for people with disabilities.
Continue to self-educate about how privilege and disparities impact fellow colleagues in different roles throughout the organization.
2. Be Courageous. In the spirit “making the commitment,” some participants pledged to courageously hold themselves accountable and challenge the status quo. Participants offered the following ideas:
Share your personal story about how the pandemic is impacting your life to make human connections and build empathy with others in different circumstances.
Acknowledge harm you (or your organization) may have caused related to past responses to COVID-19, take responsibility, and share the changes you will make to reduce future harm.
Name problematic language at work when others talk about where COVID-19 originated from, and who is more likely to have it, then redirect by sharing known facts that dispel myths and stigma.
3. Recognize Your Biases. Understand that you, just like me, and all of us, have conscious & unconscious biases. Own them and manage them by taking the following actions offered by participants:
Invest in resources to better understand your personal biases by taking the Implicit Association Test, and consider how the results may challenge your assumptions.
Consider investing in inclusion coaching to be held accountable to these biases, and get the support you need to manage them appropriately.
Take ownership in doing the work to learn what may be unknown to you, and take the time and effort to work around them in the long-run.
4. Build Cultural Responsiveness. Self-educate about social identities and communities that are different from your own. Participants offered the following ideas that have accelerated their own personal learning journeys:
Build cross-cultural relationships to get to know actual people from different cultures & communities. By doing so, you get to know an individual, one-on-one.
Embrace allyship as a verb and something that must be demonstrated time-and-time again through meaningful actions. Consider your allyship as a contract that must be renewed on a daily basis.
Join an employee resource group as an ally, and work to build personal relationships with colleagues in the group to learn more about social identifies, cultures, and customs different from your own.
5. Embrace Your Curiosity. Continue to ask questions and remain curious throughout this crisis. Ideas shared on the Belonging Community Call included:
The COVID-19 crisis is ever-evolving, which forces organizations to test and change. Be sure to question conventional thinking and be curious to ask, “can we try something new?”
Ask how your organization can prioritize workforce safety and fairness over the bottom line. Take a “yes, and” approach to get business results while looking out for your workers and saving lives.
Rethink the virtual workforce and find ways to make it more accessible. Consider ways workers with different abilities and needs can access remote work.
6. Collaborate in Coalition. We understand that work will forever change during and after this pandemic. As such, participants shared the following ways we can collaborate:
Give workers what they need by continuing to adapt what’s working now. The future of work can and should include flexible and alternative work schedules.
Take note of other promising work practices that may help make it easier for workers to show up as authentically as they wish, so they can do their best work.
At times, many of us display these leadership traits on the job, but how do we strengthen them?
If you’re curious about how to respond to this question, consider reflecting and responding to these five questions, featured in the image below, about how you can lead inclusively during COVID-19.
After reflecting on these questions, consider joining our next Belonging Community Call on Monday at 4 pm ET/1 pm PT. Our next call will focus on how we can reimagine the “next normal” for our workplaces.
