Insights: A Collection of Unique Perspectives

Joel Farar, Farar Law Group. 3 - Earn the These ten unique perspectives provide great insight while also validating certain commonalities.
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Say those numbers slightly differently—, , or —and your imagination takes you somewhere else entirely. To the realm of science fiction in which books and films paint vivid pictures of a future that looks vastly different from that which we know today. There is the devastated world and its dystopian societies, the artificial world with synthetic humans, and myriads of other worlds scattered throughout foreign galaxies. Smart and strong, they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. They have a sidekick, if lucky, but rarely are the leader and the sidekick equals, and they almost never operate as a team.

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The decisions these leaders make—the actions they take—culminate in the restoration of humanity. It seems we can easily imagine different future contexts, but when it comes to thinking about leadership differently, we are on a repeating loop. It makes for great entertainment, but it is not the stuff of reality.

Yes, the context will change—it is changing already—and this will demand adaptation by those playing a leading role. So what is this different context? In a volatile and complex world, predicting the future with precision is a risky business. We can be sure, however, about four global mega-trends that are reshaping the environment and influencing business priorities: First, diversity of markets: Demand is shifting to emerging markets. With their growing middle class, these new markets represent the single biggest growth opportunity in the portfolio of many companies around the world.

Second, diversity of customers: Customer demographics and attitudes are changing.

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Empowered through technology and with greater choice, an increasingly diverse customer base expects better personalization of products and services. Third, diversity of ideas: Digital technology, hyper-connectivity, and deregulation are disrupting business value chains and the nature of consumption and competition. Few would argue against the need for rapid innovation. Fourth, diversity of talent: Diversity of markets, customers, ideas, and talent: These simultaneous shifts are the new context. For leaders who have perfected their craft in a more homogenous environment, rapid adjustment is in order.

Of course, the core aspects of leadership, such as setting direction and influencing others, are timeless, but we see a new capability that is vital to the way leadership is executed. We call this inclusive leadership , and our research has identified six traits that characterize an inclusive mind-set and inclusive behavior. This report is intended to help leaders think about how traditional notions of leadership must change.

Elements of inclusive leadership are echoed in transformational, servant, and authentic leadership, for example, and these concepts are carried forward. However, we have amplified and built on these known attributes to define a powerful new capability uniquely adapted to a diverse environment. Understanding and being adept at inclusive leadership will help leaders thrive in their increasingly diverse environment. This report is structured in three parts. In the second part, we have identified the six signature traits of an inclusive leader figure 1.

In doing so, we have mined our experiences with more than 1, global leaders, deep-diving into the views of 15 leaders and subject matter experts, and surveying over 1, employees on their perceptions of inclusion. We have also built on existing thought leadership and applied research and drawn on work with our inclusive leadership assessment tool—on which our six-part framework is based—which has proved both reliable and valid in pilot testing. We conclude with some suggested strategies to help organizations cultivate inclusive capabilities across their leadership population.

Four global mega-trends are creating a business context that is far less homogenous and much more diverse than has historically been the case.

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These interrelated shifts are influencing business priorities, and reshaping the capabilities required of leaders to succeed in the future. The growth in emerging market economies may have slowed—and big challenges abound—but the long-term potential remains significant. This growing population now represents the single biggest growth opportunity in the portfolio of many companies around the world.

Reaching these consumers profitably, however, is anything but straightforward. Tension exists between local adaptation and international scale. Home-grown players can provide stiff competition and strong local talent is scarce. Indeed, in a survey of executives, just 10 percent believed that they have the full suite of capabilities needed to win offshore.

So what does this mean for those with global ambitions? While there is no single formula for success, research shows that having people with a more global mindset and capability is critical. How we win in these markets is as much a matter of how we embed ourselves in these cultures [as any other factor]. The question I put to our business leaders is: Customers have always been able to vote with their feet.

Today, this power is even greater. Empowered through their digital devices and with more choice, customers expect greater personalization and a voice in shaping the products and services they consume. To remain competitive in this environment, organizations have realized, customer centricity is paramount. But more than just changing systems and structures, organizations are increasingly focusing on cultivating more customer-centric mindsets and capabilities.

And while development programs of the past may have focused on traditional customer-facing roles, a leader-led approach is increasingly being adopted. Telstra has embarked on a journey to orient the entire organization around the customer, including the way leaders are developed. Seemingly overnight, digital disruption has reshaped whole industries and iconic brands and brought forth new players. So what sets apart breakthrough innovators from the rest? However, while many agree intellectually that collective intelligence enhances group performance, few understand how to consistently achieve it with any degree of specificity.

I think it brings far greater confidence to the decision making when you know you are being supported by people who have far more diverse points of view. Diversity of talent is at risk of being overshadowed by other shifts. This is because demographic change has a slow-burn effect on workplace profiles. And, of course, diversity of talent is not a new topic. Leaders underplay this shift at their peril.

In , those aged 65 and over are predicted to reach 22 percent of the global population, up from 10 percent today, 18 with implications for workforce participation. Against that backdrop, the expansion of higher education is creating a group of highly mobile, educated workers.

This generation will comprise 50 percent of the global workforce by To date, however, data suggest that many companies have struggled to include diverse employees. For example, while their number in the workforce is increasing, women hold just 12 percent of corporate board seats worldwide. And that is anybody. If inclusive leadership reflects a new way of leading teams, then we need to look beyond traditional leadership assessment tools and frameworks.

More specifically, our research revealed that when people feel that they are treated fairly, that their uniqueness is appreciated and they have a sense of belonging, and that they have a voice in decision making, then they will feel included. To achieve these aims, highly inclusive leaders demonstrate six signature traits—in terms of what they think about and what they do—that are reinforcing and interrelated.

Collectively, these six traits represent a powerful capability highly adapted to diversity. Embodiment of these traits enables leaders to operate more effectively within diverse markets, better connect with diverse customers, access a more diverse spectrum of ideas, and enable diverse individuals in the workforce to reach their full potential. These six traits and fifteen elements are not a meaningless or aspirational laundry list.

Highly inclusive leaders are committed to diversity and inclusion because these objectives align with their personal values and because they believe in the business case. Being inclusive of diversity is a big challenge. So what motivates a leader to expend these resources in the pursuit of diversity? Clearly, an understanding of the commercial imperative is critical, as discussed in the previous section. Intriguingly, however, many of the leaders interviewed in our research cited the extrinsic reward of enhanced performance as a secondary motivator.

Their primary motivation for pursuing diversity and inclusion was alignment with their own personal values and a deep-seated sense of fairness. It relates to race, religion, sexual preference—whatever else it may be. And I have always had sensitivity to any form of exclusion that comes from a person. But for this to work, you need to connect to the minds and the hearts. Founded in , Catalyst is a leading nonprofit organization that seeks to expand opportunities for women and business.

A study by Catalyst identified four leadership behaviors that predicted feelings of uniqueness and belongingness—key elements of inclusion—across employees in Australia, China, Germany, Mexico, and the United States. The current research has identified similar leadership behaviors that is, personal risk-taking, humility, and empowerment as important to inclusive leadership. However, our framework expands on these ideas in the broader context of diversity of markets, ideas, customers, and talent. Most importantly, it identifies the 15 specific elements inclusive leaders think about and do.

We suspect it is this blend that enables leaders to speak about diversity and inclusion in a compelling way. It is in their communications. Rohini Anand, senior vice president and global chief diversity officer at Sodexo, this contrasts with those who are not committed: Therefore it is shallow and not sustainable. More than just talking, when leaders prioritize time, energy, and resources to address inclusion, it signals that a verbal commitment is a true priority. As Mike Henry, president of operations for Minerals for Australia at BHP Billiton explains, prioritization includes treating diversity and inclusion as a business imperative: The leader needs to invest in people, building shared aspiration and building an aligned understanding of the business case.

Highly inclusive leaders speak up and challenge the status quo, and they are humble about their strengths and weaknesses.


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    • For leaders, they need to make a decision as to whether they dig in and entrench as they are, or recognize the world as it will become, and be part of the change. Challenging others is perhaps the most expected focus for leaders. For one leader interviewed, courage includes gently challenging followers to see their behaviors and the impact they have on others.

    Courage also comes into play in a willingness to challenge entrenched organizational attitudes and practices that promote homogeneity. In the s, for example, McKinsey changed its recruiting practices to promote divergent thinking and meet a demand for consultants.


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      • Being an agent for change can also be met with cynicism and challenges from others. You may try this, or that, and it may not work, but if you keep driving towards the end goal, then you will get there. So it is about courage and commitment to stay the course.

      Inclusive leaders have the courage to speak out about themselves and to reveal, in a very personal way, their own limitations. Instead of shying away from the challenge of imperfection, highly inclusive leaders adopt an attitude of humility. Courage and humility therefore go hand in hand.

      And they acknowledge that their organizations, despite best intentions, have unconscious bias, and they put in place policies, processes, and structures in order to mitigate the unconscious bias that exists. Inclusive leaders are deeply aware that biases can narrow their field of vision and prevent them from making objective decisions. In particular, inclusive leaders are highly sensitized to two fundamental phenomena: Inclusive leaders also exert considerable effort to learn about their own biases, self-regulate, and develop corrective strategies.

      They understand that their natural state, without these interventions, tends to lean toward self-cloning and self-interest, and that success in a diverse world requires a different approach. Consciously, I put all sorts of checks and balances in place with respect to the thinkers I gravitate to. In thinking about process, inclusive leaders seek to pinpoint processes that create subtle advantages for some and subtle disadvantages for others, perpetuating homogeneity and undermining inclusion.

      This understanding led Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas, to put strategies in place to mitigate the impact of bias in performance conversations. Gleaned from our interviews, these guidelines can help IT organizations turn aspirations for a diverse and inclusive IT culture into reality.

      The goal is to plug the leaks in the C-suite pipeline by creating a more diverse and inclusive organization, while simultaneously increasing the percentages of women technologists in the pipeline. Create more gender-diverse IT organizations. Companies can attract, hire, and retain female technology talent by removing gender biases from the hiring process through steps such as instituting blind resume reviews, eliminating gender-based wage gaps, creating gender-based hiring goals, and updating IT and HR policies that exclude or alienate women.

      Examples include more family leave for both genders, childcare options, and more flexible work arrangements. A common practice for many IT organizations is to partner externally to engage the next generation of female technologists to study STEM in schools, improve their access to technologies and tools, create safe spaces where they can experiment with technologies and connect with others, and provide them with women role models and mentors. For example, Girls Who Code conducts intensive coding courses and many other programs for middle- and high-school girls. The CIOs we interviewed also emphasized that commitment to a diverse IT organization extended beyond gender to race, ethnicity, disability, and other protected statuses.

      Build more inclusive IT cultures. In inclusive cultures, all employees are able to be authentic and thrive, regardless of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, disability, or other characteristics. CIOs can create more hospitable environments by establishing ground rules that support equality and having zero tolerance for rule-breakers. This requires IT and HR leaders to commit to taking bias or harassment complaints seriously and fairly investigating and mitigating them.

      Managers and leaders may need to be retrained to evaluate staff that communicate, collaborate, and work in different ways. Shivanandan remembers observing talent reviews where women and men were treated differently for how they express emotion. Lagacy is proud of the steps that Caterpillar is taking at the corporate level to create a more inclusive culture. The company has recently introduced a course to educate male leaders, promote a more gender-inclusive culture, and specifically discuss the actions and behaviors that disadvantage and disengage a minority population of the workforce.

      Caterpillar also instituted a flexible work environment that has received positive employee feedback. Authentic leadership is the hardest thing to do, but being an authentic leader is also the best thing you can be. Fill the management and leadership pipeline with high-performing women. A clear path for advancing and developing female talent can increase the opportunities for female representation in management, and eventually, in leadership. According to one study, women are promoted based on performance; men are promoted based on potential. Mentoring can be critical.

      Recent research indicates that women can benefit from both mentors, whose role is to listen and advise, and sponsors, who have direct management experience and are willing to advocate for development and growth. Sponsors and mentors can help inspire, protect, and advance women technologists, giving them access to networks that many women lack. As more women rise to leadership levels, they can in turn serve the next generation as mentors and sponsors.

      She is located in Chicago. She is located in Denver. She is located in Costa Mesa. She is located in San Francisco. For a more detailed analysis, see figure 4. For full sources, see endnote Caliper Corporation, The qualities that distinguish women leaders , , pp. Lecia Barker, Cynthia Mancha, and Catherine Ashcraft, What is the impact of gender diversity on technology business performance?

      All information from Fumbi Chima taken from phone interview, February 2, Breaking gender barriers , Davis-Ali, Advancing women technologists into positions of leadership , p. Anthony Butterfield, and Jane D. Have the times changed?

      Pew Research Center, Women and leadership: Public says women are equally qualified, but barriers persist , January 14, Caliper Corporation, The qualities that distinguish women leaders , pp. All information from Suma Nallapati taken from phone interview, January 22, All information from Julie Lagacy taken from phone interview, January 25, All information from Monique Shivanandan taken from phone interview, January 23, Simply select text and choose how to share it:.

      Related The diversity and inclusion revolution Read. Article Sections Building the business case: Perspectives from leading women CIOs Scoping the challenge: Alone in a crowded room Who runs the world? Essential leadership traits of women CIOs Looking forward: The journey to gender parity in IT.

      Scoping the challenge: Alone in a crowded room

      Build an authentic personal brand Well-known business executives reap many benefits from clearly defining and cultivating their personal brands through networking, social media, speaking engagements, and media opportunities. View in article Caliper Corporation, The qualities that distinguish women leaders , , pp. View in article Lecia Barker, Cynthia Mancha, and Catherine Ashcraft, What is the impact of gender diversity on technology business performance? View in article All information from Fumbi Chima taken from phone interview, February 2, View in article Gary N.

      View in article C. View in article S. View in article Pew Research Center, Women and leadership: View in article Caliper Corporation, The qualities that distinguish women leaders , pp.