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Best Practices in Diversity: Leveraging Differences to Drive Success
Chapter Six: The Work of Inclusive Leadership
Objectives of this Lesson
- Learn to recognize structural inequities and fix them.
- Explain the role of leaders in fostering inclusive cultures.
- Identifying individual, relational and organizational level of systems.
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FDA Diversity Module
FDA Diversity Module
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Inclusive Leadership
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Soft skills such as empathy and emotional intelligence are important but inclusion that creates change requires the courage to make tough decisions.
Calling out incidents of structural inequity and making change to long-standing traditions and organizational practices must be a part of a leader’s toolkit if real and sustainable change is to occur.
FDA Diversity Module
FDA Diversity Module
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Generally speaking, EEO and affirmative action programs are considered legislated employment equity risk management programs.
EEO and Affirmative Action programs generally cover those groups protected by title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights act, whereas Diversity is a more inclusive concept. AA programs contain goals and timetables designed to bring the level of representation for minority groups and women into parity with relevant labor force statistics.
Diversity is a voluntary approach that does not utilize artificial programs, standards, or barriers.
Structural Inequalities
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- Oppression, like discrimination, involves structural limitations—imbalances and inequities across groups causing constraints not only in the physical environment, but also in social relations, economic status, and political situation.
- When discrimination against a group of people is encouraged and consistently exercised by those in power, it causes unequal access to opportunities, thus leading to oppression.
- As power structures in society and the workplace become more established, oppression becomes the norm.
- Thus, oppression can occur today not because society actively seeks to disempower some groups of people, “but rather because of the effects of societal norms, laws, and unchallenged assumptions.
Structural Inequalities: What to do about them?
- Banking—female tellers, male managers.
- Education—women teachers, men principals.
- Corporations—women assistants, men leaders.
- Since the beginning of the colonies in America, family farms created two different spheres of work for women and men. Men, worked on crops and did the hard field labor, while women stayed home, preparing food and clothes for the family.
- Janitorial—people of color, higher positions non people of color.
- Tech jobs toward men or directed toward Asian Americans.
- School curriculums that focus on male Eurocentric history and achievements despite the diversity of the classroom. Yet, providing a “special” month for everyone else i.e. black history month, women’s history month.
- Workplace and schools that have holidays centered on Christianity.
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Individual Level of System with Inclusive Leadership
- Individual inclusive leadership requires cultural humility, courage, and tolerance for imperfection and ambiguity.
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Tokenism
Does it help or hurt diversity?
Does it help or hurt inclusion?
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Relational Level of System
- Maximizing the potential of relationships in diverse settings.
- Leaders need to invite, consider and incorporate other perspectives and new ways of making meaning in relation to those perspectives.
- They are simple in that similar behaviors are required to operate across any difference: listening well, practicing empathy, and being curious will serve to build relationships in most any situation.
- How does this occur when there is just a token representative of a group?
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Practices of Relational Leaders:
Acting “with communal intent fostering a collective identity,”
A co-created and compelling vision aligns work activities with higher purpose and to the greater good.
Dialogue is a process of discovery that promotes mutually responsive perspective sharing. Micro-aggressions can hurt this.
Responding “with flexibility and a resilient spirit to the myriad changes.
Learning to think in new ways.”6. “Acting ethically” (pp. 189–190).
Acting ethically. What is ethics?
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Organizational Level of System
Creating and maintain an inclusive culture requires self-examination continuously and thoughtful reflection by leaders and members of the organization. See pages 194-5.
Four things leaders can do to foster cultures of inclusion:
Explicitly define and redefine the boundaries and rules for acceptable behavior.
Create the conditions for conversations to explore differences.
Model and communicate an understanding of and valuing of (and comfort with) diversity.
Be authentic and use personal experiences strategically acting with a collective identity, being flexible to change, thinking in new ways and acting ethically.
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Quiz: State which is individual, relational or organizational system
Micro-aggressions
Empathy
Telling the entire staff the rules for acceptable behavior
Cultural humility
Modeling and communicating an understanding of and valuing of (and comfort with) diversity.
Courage and tolerance
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Last Words To Ponder
“I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.”
Maya Angelou
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FDA Diversity Module
FDA Diversity Module
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