Inclusive Leadership & business impact: An enei feature on the nature of Inclusive Leadership in Organisations

Transcription

1 Inclusive Leadership & business impact: An enei feature on the nature of Inclusive Leadership in Organisations By Dan Robertson, diversity and inclusion director at enei The nature of human bias Psychologists refer to unconscious biases as our unintentional people preferences that result from the processes of socialisation and social categorisation. Research has demonstrated that when the unconscious brain sees two things occurring together (for example, women and child caring roles) it begins to wire these associations together neurally. Constant exposure to images and stories of women in child caring roles via the media, home situations, personal encounters and work environments re-enforce these neuro connections resulting in what is often referred to as soft-wired bias. A useful analogy is that of 'software' whereby our biases are created and written down during our lifetime. Like software there is capability within the brain to change (plasticity), which means we may also be able to re-wire our implicit people preferences. appearance and sexual orientation indicate high levels of unconscious biases and the extent to which our unintentional people preferences play out in recruitment and people management decisions. Previous research tells us that we need to be mindful of certain types of biases: A common form of unconscious bias is affinity bias. This type of bias impacts talent processes in organisational decision-making including in the following ways: How we recruit: Managers are more likely to hire people who look similar or with sounding names to them. Work allocation: Managers are more likely to assign key client projects to individuals within their teams who they have an unconscious affinity with. Our unconscious biases are likely to be activated whenever we encounter people who are similar to us and people who are different to us. Importantly we know that our biases affect our perceptions of competence and thus our hiring and talent management decisions within a workplace context. A 2012 study by the Policy Exchange i found ingrained levels of age based bias in the UK labour market, whilst a 2009 Department for Work and Pensions study found significant levels of ethnic bias amongst UK employers. ii These studies and others into areas such as Performance: Managers are more likely spend time informally discussing contributions to the team and will focus on development and future work plans. For these where there is little affinity managers are more likely to question past performance. The conversation will be less friendly and even hostile at times. Unconscious bias and business impact by Dan Robertson /dan.robertson@enei.org.uk page 1

2 The need for a new (inclusive) style of leadership For many businesses the way to address some of the impact of unconscious bias on talent management process is too work with leaders to consider their own thinking processes and behaviour patterns. Inclusive leadership works within this new approach. The principles of Inclusive Leadership As stressed in a 2012 paper on Inclusive Leadership by the professional services company Deloitte, there is an urgent need to develop business leaders who can let go of the iconic image of leader as hero, and to embrace the principles of inclusive leadership. Catalyst, the global not-for-profit organisation, provides a use framework for leader by identifying four key qualities of an inclusive leader: 1. Empowerment: Inclusive leaders enable diverse talent and teams to grow by encouraging them to solve problems. Moving away from the leader as hero figure. 2. Courage: Inclusive leaders stand up for what they believe is right. Thus they challenge existing norms and call out both conscious and unconscious biases when they see or experience them. 3. Humility: An inclusive leader is someone who creates an organisational environment where it s OK for them and others to admit their mistakes. They are curious about difference and actively seek out different points of view to increase innovation and leverage diverse skills to meet wider business goals. 4. Accountability: A key aspect of inclusive leadership is holding oneself and others to account. This involves questioning hiring managers and reviewing differences in performance management scores between different groups and questioning why. In 2015 we at enei commissioned a significant piece of research with the following four aims: 1. Can we come up with a robust model and definition of Inclusive Leadership? 2. To what is Inclusive Leadership prevalent in organisations? 3. What is the perceived impact of Inclusive Leadership? 4. To what extent does an organisations strategic impact Inclusive Leadership in Organisations? So what did we find? The key findings were: Key finding 1: A new model of inclusive leadership has emerged which is supported by a distinct set of 15 core competencies. These are: 1. Individual consideration: Showing individual interest and offering oneto-one support for people 2. Ideal influence: Providing an appealing vision that inspires others 3. Inspirational motivation: Encouraging others to develop ideas and to be challenging 4. Intellectual stimulation: Encouraging creative thinking 5. Unqualified acceptance: Showing acceptance of everyone without bias 6. Empathy: Being able to appreciate the perspectives of others and Unconscious bias and business impact by Dan Robertson /dan.robertson@enei.org.uk page 2

3 endeavouring to understand how others feel 7. Listening: Truly listening to the opinions of others 8. Persuasion: Having an influence on people s actions without force or coercion 9. Confidence building: Providing positive feedback to boost people s self-efficacy 10. Growth: Providing opportunities for all employees to realise potential, make autonomous and unique contributions and progress with the organisation 11. Foresight: Being able to consider the views of others about possible outcomes 12. Conceptualisation: Being able to focus on how employees contribute to long-term objectives 13. Awareness: Having self-awareness of how preconceived views can influence behaviour towards others 14. Stewardship: Showing a commitment to leading by serving others for the good of everyone rather than for selfgain 15. Healing: Showing a respect for the wellbeing of all employees Our research concluded that inclusive leadership depends on all 15 competencies being present as they are all equally important in their own right. Key finding #2: Organisations whose employees perceive high levels of inclusive leadership are more likely to regard their leaders as having a positive influence on: Productivity, Motivation and Employee Engagement. Key finding #3: People at all levels believe that the adoption of the 15 core competencies will have a positive impact on, for instance: Employee loyalty and retention Advancing of under-represented groups Enhanced creativity through better team work Better services to clients, customers and service users Key finding #4: Inclusive Leadership must be rolled modelled from the top to have the greatest impact. Key finding #5: Having an organisational strategy based in explore rather than exploit factors will help in the achievement of inclusive leadership: Explore aspects of organisational strategy focus on developing new products, services and markets. Exploit aspects focus on the control of costs and organisational procedures. Through our research a new definition inclusive leadership has also emerged: Leaders who are aware of their own biases and preferences, actively seek out and consider different views and perspectives to inform better decision-making. They see diverse talent as a source of competitive advantage and inspire diverse people to drive organisational and individual performance towards a shared Vision. Unconscious bias and business impact by Dan Robertson /dan.robertson@enei.org.uk page 3

4 To support these new inclusive leadership competencies, in our work at enei we stress the need for both individual and system level actions. From a practical perspective the 5 things that leaders can do to promote inclusivity include: 1. Schedule meeting at times to ensure maximum participation. 2. When on a conference call or in a meeting, ensure you invite everyone to contribute to the discussion. Listen for who is dominating. 3. Watch who attends team social events and look for individuals or groups of individuals who simply don't attend or make excuses. Ask why. 4. Take a few risks by allocating a challenging piece of work to someone whose potential you haven't previously recognised. 5. Have a coffee with someone who is very different from you (age, seniority, gender, background etc). Ask for their ideas or view on a subject without giving yours first! At the system or organizational level we would recommend: 1. Create opportunities for team reflection: it helps to prevent Groupthink and challenges existing biases. 2. Introduce Blind decision-making: In recruitment, remove information such as names and universities from application processes. 3. Find some good role models in the business. E.g. those working flexible hours. Use these stories as challenges to traditional viewpoints. 4. Talk to key stakeholders: Challenge your recruitment agencies and headhunters when they say, the (diverse) talent is just not out there. 5. Develop sponsorship programmes and hold individuals to account on their inclusion targets: Holding individuals to account increases vigilance. Overall organisations should now begin to embed these 15 core competencies in: 1. Recruitment and promotion criteria 2. Management development and reward programmes to ensure inclusive leadership behaviours are promoted and rewarded 3. Cultures change programmes A new tool for change To support organisations to move the agenda forward enei has developed a new organisational assessment tool. Containing 45 behavioural indicators under the 15 inclusive leadership competencies this tool is designed to help organisational leader to move the agenda forward through individual and team assessment. Implementing these actions begins to create new thinking processes, leadership behaviour patterns and decision-making processes. As the global village continues to integrate inclusive leadership will become the new norm. In this context we move away from the why? to the how and now. Dan Robertson is the Diversity & Inclusion Director at the Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion, ( He is highly respected as a subject matter expert on workplace diversity & inclusion management, unconscious bias and inclusive leadership. Connect on LinkedIn: Dan Robertson or or Dan.robertson@enei.org.uk Unconscious bias and business impact by Dan Robertson /dan.robertson@enei.org.uk page 4

5 i ations/too%20much%20to%20lose.pdf ii Unconscious bias and business impact by Dan Robertson page 5