Recognize Inclusive Leadership Traits

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

List the six traits of inclusive leadership.
Summarize ways to demonstrate each trait.

The Six Traits of Inclusive Leadership

Inclusive leadership requires constant practice, bravery, and reflection. We have to make room for mistakes, create learning opportunities, and move forward with positive intentions to reach equality. There are six research-based traits, adapted from the work of Juliet Bourke, PhD (School of Business Management and Governance, UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia) that define inclusive leadership. Let’s explore each trait and the actions you can take to bring them to life in your day-to-day work.

A people leader guiding their team members to the top of a mountain.

Trait #1: A Visible Commitment to Equality

At Salesforce, we often say that equality is at the heart of everything we do. It’s one of our core values for a reason. Whether it’s the decisions we make, the strategies we employ, or the way we lead, equality is a starting place, not a goal. Equality is not an add-on; it’s a foundation on which to build all other practices.

Inclusive leaders embrace this notion and strive to always apply an equality lens to their work. Expressing a visible commitment to equality goes a long way to informing your decisions and practices. It also signals to all employees, especially those from marginalized or underrepresented communities, that you’re actively attempting to create and sustain an inclusive environment. Here are a few ways you can demonstrate a visible commitment to equality.

Create and document annual equality goals. Prioritize equality by formally adding it to your annual goals and vision statement for yourself and your team. Be sure to establish goals that speak directly to how you will promote an inclusive environment with your team.
Practice inclusive hiring. Diversity and inclusion go hand in hand. To ensure your work reflects the diverse communities you serve, try implementing inclusive hiring practices into your recruiting strategy.
Promote conversations about equality. Conversations about equality should not only occur in times of crisis or as a response to a world event. Creating spaces for people to have safe, authentic conversations around equality topics is a critical way to allow team members to share their unique perspectives and lived experiences, and to highlight any social barriers that might be impacting their performance. Note, these conversations should never devolve into debates. Rather, they should be respectful dialogue designed to help team members learn from each other.

Trait #2: Humility

One of the key aspects of becoming an inclusive leader is realizing, and accepting, that we never “arrive.” Having the humility to understand that we do not know everything and that we make mistakes is a crucial step to building inclusive and psychologically safe environments. Learn more about psychological safety in Fearless Teaming.

Inclusive leaders are not afraid to admit when they’re wrong and hold themselves accountable to changed behavior. Accepting that they’re not the singular source of truth and that different perspectives have value allows them to create space for others to feel heard and valued. One example of practicing humility could simply be asking for multiple perspectives before making a decision.

Trait #3: Awareness of Bias

We all have blind spots that cause us to engage in exclusionary practices. Many of the biases we have are implicit (meaning we don’t realize we have them) and are based on stereotypes that we’ve been conditioned to accept all of our lives. When left unchecked, these biases can impact our behavior and dictate how we engage with others, especially those whose identities and lived experiences are different from ours.

Inclusive leaders reflect on and challenge their own biases. Doing so is a critical step in ensuring that their decisions are based on facts and reality and not how they subconsciously feel. Inclusive leaders accept the fact that we all have biases, even the nicest, most well-intentioned people. To learn how to identify and check your own biases, try making time to sit down and ask yourself several questions.

Why do I feel this way about this team member, this practice, or this decision?
Are my feelings based on facts, or are they based on something subjective?
What data do I have to support this feeling/decision/practice?
What other perspective can I try viewing this situation from?

Trait #4: A Genuine Curiosity About Others

An inclusive leader exhibits an open mindset and seeks to understand others. Not out of some need to be able to explain why people are the way they are, but out of a genuine desire to understand. Inclusive leaders listen to those around them and encourage others to center empathy in their interactions with each other. Here are a few practices inclusive leaders use to seek understanding.

Listen with empathy. Listening is a key practice of allyship and inclusive leadership. Going a step further to listen with empathy is the difference between listening to respond and listening to understand. As a leader, if you take the time to listen with an open mind, it can dramatically shift the way you engage with employees as they become increasingly confident in using their voices and sharing their experiences.
Create a culture of transparency. Create an environment where others feel empowered to speak up for themselves and for one another, and raise issues without fear.
Encourage healthy discourse. Be open to hearing differing views, and encourage others to express their opinions. Remember, discourse is healthy and helps drive innovation. Research continues to show that diverse groups outperform more homogeneous groups because diversity triggers more careful information processing that’s absent in homogeneous groups. Help drive innovation by ensuring that everybody is heard and all perspectives are valued.

Trait #5: Cultural Intelligence

Inclusive leaders are eager to learn as much as they can about those who differ from them on some level. This knowledge can be insightful, and allow the leader to make more equitable decisions. For example, knowing that a team member belongs to a culture or faith that observes a particular holiday or festival equips the leader to know not to schedule work-related events during said observance so that the employee does not feel compelled to sacrifice a part of their culture or identity for work.

However, it’s important to understand the difference between cultural intelligence and cultural humility. Just learning about other cultures is not enough. It does not free us from cultural bias and stereotypes alone. Rather, inclusive leaders understand that knowledge must be paired with a holistic commitment to consistent introspection and self-evaluation so that they can evaluate how they apply this knowledge to create inclusive environments.

It’s not about showing everyone how much you know about them and their way of life. It’s about using that knowledge to encourage everyone to be their full, authentic self, and to show them that it’s safe to do so. Inclusive leaders who practice cultural humility are lifelong learners who challenge power imbalance and promote institutional accountability.

Trait #6: Effective Collaboration

Inclusive leaders who promote effective collaboration empower others, especially those whose voices are often marginalized or silenced. They encourage diversity of thought and psychological safety in all interactions and strategically build meetings and activities to reflect these principles. Inclusive leaders know it’s not just about everyone being on the same page, but making the most out of the pages everyone brings to the table.

Some practices inclusive leaders can implement to encourage effective collaboration are:

Make sure everyone is heard. Do your best to ensure that everyone speaks in a meeting. If needed, prompt those who are quieter with questions such as, “What are your thoughts?” or “How would you approach this problem?” If someone is interrupted, make sure to address it at the moment. You can do this by saying, “I don’t think the current speaker is finished with their statement.”
Don’t just invite people to the table, invite them to help design the table. In our pursuit of diverse thought, we often say that we want to invite all people to the table. But what happens if the table is built to better serve some and not others? Don’t just bring in new voices from other groups to ensure diverse perspectives and ideas are being shared. Invite those individuals to inform meeting practices, norms, and expectations that will help them feel safe in contributing valuable insight without the fear of being silenced or ignored.
Give credit and recognition. It can be frustrating when someone proposes a great idea only to have someone else state the same idea and receive credit for it. Similarly, it’s disheartening to work hard on a project only for the credit to be given to someone else. As a leader, you can remedy this simply by visibly acknowledging the person who came up with the original idea.

Coming up in the final unit of this module, we explore how to take these traits and put them into practice.