A DEI Strategy That Gives Employees The Wheel
"Workplace culture is the synergy of shared values, belief systems, attitudes, and sensibilities among co-workers."
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To reap the benefits of a truly impactful DEI strategy, you’re going all in. You’re diving deep to discover more about your hidden biases, inner resistance, and any counterproductive tendencies that are sneakily undermining your progress. This inward work undoubtedly drives personal development, a fundamental aspect of your inclusive leadership journey. But you can’t stop there!
At the very same time, self-awareness empowers you to lead outwardly. Through your personal transformation, you’ll find yourself more graciously seeking and recognizing the easily overlooked yet always instructive guideposts that are just as essential for facilitating inclusion–directions from your employees.
Getting Started: Avenues to Transformation
You may be thinking, it’s hard enough to find my way through these challenging and sensitive issues within myself, so where do I even start to figure out what my staff is thinking and experiencing? The good news is that no one expects you to read minds or be as seemingly omniscient as a GPS–and the questions to put you on the best course are more direct than you may think.
Take your Organization’s DEI Pulse.
If you want to take the DEI pulse at your organization, you must figure out whether your staff feels included. Invite the right kind of feedback from them, and you’ll soon discover if your employees are truly engaged and invested in your organization! Whether their answers are surprising, favorable–or not–you’ll have what you need to create the most effective DEI strategy to move your organization forward.
Let your employees be the guides as you navigate the journey to an inclusive future workplace that everyone will want to be! The answers to the following questions will tell you a lot about whether individual employees feel prized for who they are and also genuinely connected with their colleagues:
- Do your employees feel that their voices are heard and taken into consideration?
- Are they comfortable bringing their whole selves to work–including their imperfections, challenges, and any personal histories of grief, stress, or trauma, etc.?
- Do they find their work environment to be conducive to emotional well-being and good mental health?
- Does the work environment drive up or lessen their burden of “Emotional Tax”?
Uncover more critical questions to take your organizations DEI pulse in this blog, Inclusion Starts From Within.
Prioritize Inclusive Leadership.
Workplace culture is the synergy of shared values, belief systems, attitudes, and sensibilities among co-workers. And the key to a positive workplace culture, very simply, is leadership that prioritizes inclusion.
In this moment of unprecedented collective social consciousness, no leader can ignore the increasingly pervasive call for organizations to establish inclusive cultures that realize broader imperatives around equity and provide a supportive environment for individual employees to work and thrive.
But where do you even begin? What if such efforts make you personally uncomfortable and/or trigger reluctance? What if things feel confusing, awkward, overwhelming, or stressful along the way? And what if you stumble as you strive toward your ideal culture? Resistance is the best starting point.
Certain aspects of your organization’s culture may be readily apparent, identifiable, and easy to articulate. And others, subtle undercurrents are difficult to discern. Inclusive leadership development involves taking a closer look at what unspoken cultural norms are operating behind the scenes and below the surface. Some of these can become entrenched unless identified and lifted from the shadows of assumptions.
If all this sounds intriguing yet unnerving, you are ready to start! The idea is to be open, alert, and poised to address those unspoken norms, including perfectionism, that stand in the way of you moving forward. Your journey in inclusive leadership begins–and continues to unfold–as you embrace uncertainty and imperfections.
Avoid Letting Resistance Take The Wheel And Drive Your Strategy
The above concerns are all perfectly natural, and the fact that you’re worried about them indicates enormous potential. As Beyond Inclusion Group has discovered during our years of research, change is impossible without resistance! As an organizational leader, figuring out how to transform your culture into an inclusive one feels tricky because cultures aren’t static, and we can’t always predict what will happen when we introduce a significant change.
We also know DEI initiatives are not always popular; some employees will likely be unhappy and criticize you. Some will say that you are going too slow, while others think you are moving too fast. Also, you may not consider yourself an expert in the field of inclusion, so it might feel challenging to know where to begin. All this might spark internal resistance and cause delays or avoidance of moving ahead.
Embrace Working With A DEI Partner.
The good news is that with expert guidance, you can build self-awareness and identify your personal blind spots to inclusion. This internal growth will also allow you to notice and address the inequitable dynamics at play more broadly in your organization. Together we will Increase your capacity to build a fully inclusive culture where everyone is engaged and contributing to their full potential.
Learn more about our Inclusive Leader Coaching Intensive and how it can help you increase your capacity to build a fully inclusive culture where everyone is engaged and contributing at their full potential.
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Signs Your Organization May Be Stalled by Resistance
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