Learn Inclusive Leadership Basics
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the relationship between equality and performance.
- Define inclusive leadership.
Connecting Equality and Performance
A performance-driven culture is one in which leaders set clear and measurable targets for all employees and are responsible for prioritizing work, delivering results, tackling underperformance, and rewarding top performers. The focus of a performance-driven culture is to promote efficiency without sacrificing accountability or trust. Of course, leaders must keep in mind that even a results-driven work environment is composed of people. People who have diverse beliefs, perspectives, lived experiences, cultural needs, and communication styles.
There are many ways in which our sense of belonging—how we feel seen, heard, and respected in the workplace—can impact our performance. If we face a workplace in which we don’t feel valued, where a commitment to equality is not at the heart of everything we do, we feel less motivated to engage. That’s why it’s vitally important to create inclusive work environments to empower employees to perform their best work. In an inclusive work environment, people feel safe to be their full, authentic selves without fear that they’ll be negatively impacted because of their identity.
Leaders are accountable not just for driving results, but for ensuring their teams operate within an inclusive environment. This is accomplished through inclusive leadership. Whether you’re currently a leader, an aspiring leader, or looking to see how you can champion inclusive leadership practices, the following units explore what inclusive leadership means and how it can boost performance.
Defining Inclusive Leadership
The job of inclusive leaders is to create an environment where everyone can do their best work—regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender identity, age, religion, disability, or sexual orientation. A successful inclusive leader understands and elevates their team member’s unique strengths. These leaders advocate for their employees and foster an environment where everyone can be their full, authentic selves.
Inclusive leaders are active allies who lead with a value of equality and build a culture of belonging and empowerment for all. They do so not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because inclusive environments help team members perform at higher levels. Here at Salesforce, we have data that supports this. Our 2022 company survey revealed that more inclusive sales teams performed 12% better and enabled 27% better use of employees skills and abilities.
Leaders who center equality in their pursuit of results and productivity understand that equality and performance go hand in hand. They lead their teams through the how of day-to-day operations and protocols while exhibiting why equality is important. For example, they:
- Mitigate bias in performance management and evaluation.
- Identify and address equality concerns before they impact performance.
- Promote psychological safety.
- Practice cultural humility.
- Encourage courageous conversations about equality topics.
- Speak up for someone who was interrupted in a meeting.
- Being globally minded when leading an international team (for example, by accommodating time zones, mitigating geography bias, and so forth).
Each seemingly small act of inclusion creates a ripple effect that can, over time, transform the culture of the team and company.
Everyone has a role to play in creating a more inclusive workplace—inclusion begins with you! In the next unit, we look at the business impact of intentionally engaging in inclusive leadership.