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Building Inclusive Teams: A Leader's Guide to Embracing Differences

Subscriber Episode • • Graham Elliott • Season 2 • Episode 11

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Effective leadership means creating an inclusive culture where diversity becomes your team's greatest strength.

• Building a culture where all members feel safe to express ideas without fear of judgment
• Promoting belonging by recognizing and celebrating different backgrounds
• Leading by example and challenging biases in all interactions
• Implementing fair policies for hiring, promotion, and compensation
• Understanding personality differences using tools like DISC behavioral profiling
• Measuring diversity progress through specific metrics and regular feedback
• Creating opportunities for team members to build understanding through informal interactions
• Leveraging diverse perspectives for increased innovation and better decision-making
• Encouraging all team members to take ownership rather than victim mindsets
• Considering external expertise when needed to optimize diversity management

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Graham Elliott

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Speaker 1:

What does diversity mean to you as a leader and how does it shape the way that you approach building and managing your teams? That's what I want to think about in this podcast and talk about. So there are a few suggestions here if it's one of those areas that maybe you're struggling with. But I'm also very interested in hearing from you if you are having issues with diversity and you would like some help or maybe associated or have podcasts on associated issues covered. So, as always, I'd love to hear from you Any thoughts, you have questions.

Speaker 1:

All of that is really good and while I remember, please remember to subscribe and to like and all of those good things. So the key thing with diversity is, first of all, to really make sure that the culture and as leaders, we to a very large extent determine what the culture of our group is and it really needs to be inclusive, and I believe that's true of any team. And diversity. However, people are diverse, whether it's race beliefs, it might be personalities. We all have different approaches to things or there are certainly distinctive groups within the types of people. If you listen to me talk about DISC, if you jump on the sales course, then I talk about that in some detail, and that goes a long way to determining not only the ways in which we're different as personalities, but also how we tend to rub each other out the wrong way, often without any real knowledge that we're doing it. But we can say and do things that immediately put somebody's back up and suddenly we have a problem and we really are genuinely surprised about it and have no idea where it came from. So having that inclusive culture is really important. So how do you do that? Well, open communication is a really important part of that, and by that I mean having an environment where all members of the group feel it's a safe place to express their ideas and their concerns without fear of either judgment or discrimination against them, and I know certainly there are plenty of organizations out there where people just daren't speak up because they fear the consequences of either making their own lives very difficult or perhaps losing their livelihood entirely. So that is completely under the control of the leader.

Speaker 1:

And also to promote belonging is an important step to take and recognize and celebrate that backgrounds are different, they're unique, and to me, one of the joys of having a group that is varied is that we can all learn from one another. We can all celebrate different things through the year Christian type culture but equally there are plenty of others out there, so it's really good to share the cultural aspects, not in an in-your-face way. But as leaders we have to have a sense for what people can handle, what they can't handle, and just keep things at a level where we can all continue to function together and actually enjoy the diversity and the differences that we all bring. So a lot of that comes about by leading by example, and so it's up to us as leaders to demonstrate that inclusivity in everything we do and also to challenge any biases and stereotypes that may be kind of hanging around in the background there. So that comes down to just operating in a way that is fair and treats everybody equally, and so, again, that's completely under our control how we handle that, and to be approachable and open to feedback, to demonstrate by example how you handle issues that come up, how you listen to people, how you respond to their concerns. So that again is completely in our control, and it can make a huge difference what it's like to work in an environment, but also the effectiveness of that group, and, in my experience, if you are running an inclusive environment where people aren't afraid to speak up, you tend to get much more from those people as a direct result of it.

Speaker 1:

There's then the issue of education and training. So there may be a need for DEI diversity, equality and inclusion training. It depends on the level you want to go to. It could be formal, it could be informal. Obviously, that will really depend upon the organisation that you're in To do it. Informally could be social events, things like that. They're great ways to do that kind of thing. So it needs to be practical. Any training needs to be practical, it needs to be ongoing, and to me, that question of training is really how you celebrate those differences. It's training through continuously doing. Obviously, when it comes to fairness and I've spoken about being fair in the way that you deal with people that goes to policies in the organization. So, again, depending on the kind of environment that you're in, you might need more formal or more formally documented processes. So that could include hiring, it could be promotion, it could be compensation policies and just making sure that there is nothing biased about them, nothing discriminatory about them, and obviously these days that's quite a big thing for most companies anyway.

Speaker 1:

But it's about walking the talk. It's about living it. It's really important to provide equal opportunities for growth and development, regardless of anything that could be used as a point of difference between people that doesn't relate to ability. Now, another thing we can do as leaders is to encourage collaboration, so teams can be built to just leverage off the strengths of each team member. Now, part of this can be cultural, part of it will definitely be personality. So, in the work that I share about DISC and behavioral profiling because I've gone through behavioral profiling training and the important thing is that we need every aspect so, using DISC as an example and it's a favorite one of mine, because there are only four types of people, so it's quite easy to stay on top of, but we need all of the elements of all four people within the team itself. You're not likely to get them in one person, but you are likely to get them in a group of people.

Speaker 1:

So, where every aspect is needed to some degree or another, it's also important to train and to make people aware of those differences, of those aspects, so that there is more awareness of how, within the team, we can do things that totally annoy other people, and that's not what we're coming, that's not our intention at all and that one I can speak from experience is one that I've definitely had experience of that and have really annoyed people, complete with no intention at all of doing that and I couldn't actually understand what I had done wrong or to provoke that kind of reaction. So this comes down to some perhaps basic education and awareness of different personality types and just the kind of things to look for within members of the group. So how you do that within your organization is obviously up to you. There might be some organizations already use these kind of things. Myers-briggs is a popular one which to some extent is a good one. I personally prefer this, but having those kind of understandings, I believe, can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of teams.

Speaker 1:

Collaboration is important and also communication. So we're going to communicate in different ways. Some people tend to be quite direct. Some people like to have a lot of I don't call it fluffiness, but it's like the how are you all of that kind of thing. I'm naturally a kind of just get to the point sort of person, and so I get quite irritated when people start to tell the story and they go all around the houses. I just want to get to the point and get on, get on to the next thing. So just understanding how we're different and how, perhaps recognizing how each person within the group is what their preferences tend to be, maybe we can each meet each other halfway to make sure that we collaborate or communicate in a way that's as effective as possible when it comes to any incidents, anything about that.

Speaker 1:

It's really important to reinforce a zero tolerance, in my opinion, for unfair treatment and make sure people are accountable. This is about taking ownership, so everybody within the team taking ownership for themselves and responsibility for themselves. It's basically being an adult about it. Now, not everybody is very good at taking responsibility for themselves. They'll blame everybody else and it's very difficult to hold those kind of people accountable. But if there are clear rules and clear directives and, as the leader of the group, it's important to make those clear, to provide guidance and to make sure they're enforced that will encourage people to take responsibility for themselves, and I'm certainly a believer that to have an effective team, you really do need to have every team member taking responsibility for themselves. If nothing else, it's empowering. If you think about it, the person who's always claiming to be the victim is actually making themselves powerless. They're always at the effect of what other people do. If you own a situation, even if it's not a very pleasant one or not a very comfortable one, if you own it, you can then do something about it, you can implement. So taking responsibility is important, not only as the leader of the group, but making sure everybody else takes responsibility for themselves. They're accountable, they're aware of what their responsibilities are and what's acceptable and what isn't.

Speaker 1:

Measuring progress is, I think, one of those really key things. Is, I think, one of those really key things. It's kind of like trying to watch a game of sport and I'm going to take rugby union because it's one of my favourite sports, but also it's a game that can have quite high scores and it's like sitting there watching a game going on, but you've no idea what the score is. It's not the same Whereas if you know you've got a two-point game or a 50-point game or whatever it is that the difference is, you're much more involved in that and it's easier to then understand what's going on, perhaps, or to cheer people on all those kind of things. So measuring progress is important.

Speaker 1:

Measuring progress is important and it's really good to track the metrics that relate directly to diversity and to inclusion, so that might include things like representation in leadership roles. It could be some sort of employee engagement score among different groups. So this could be maybe get together for a coffee kind of thing, which isn't probably a bad thing to do with a team and, I guess, to share from networking days. It's a BNI, the big networking group, one of the things that you are measured on as a group member and it's something that you actually have a minimum number of meetings to do every week and that was to meet with other members of the group and you would sit down and you could split it so that it was primarily one person describing what they did and the kind of clients they were looking for and then just talking to the other person. Then you could split it the next week, so the person who was listening became talker and the person who was speaking became the listener and then you did the reverse. But that kind of interaction is actually very useful because it helps people to understand what you do.

Speaker 1:

And going back to the group dynamic, the group environment, it isn't always clear, depending on the kind of group that you're in and the size of group and how much the roles overlap. So perhaps encouraging that, maybe even it's just one coffee a week or something like that, or go to know, go to the nearest coffee shop, for you know whatever it is they want, but to just have 20 minutes just having a chat about different aspects of their life. Maybe it could be work related, maybe it's something different. But I think having and perhaps introducing that as more of a semi-formal thing, there's bound to be a bit of pushback there always is but on the other hand, I believe it can be a very positive way of increasing the group dynamic, increasing its familiarity, its building trust, all that kind of thing. So being able to introduce metrics that are measurable is certainly one good way to actually drive that move towards creating a very effective, diverse team.

Speaker 1:

And, as a leader, meeting regularly with members of the team, I think, on an individual basis, is also really important. It's a great way to get feedback, get a sense of where they're at, something I would do as a sales manager. I would always spend time I'd make a point of once a month going out with the people in Australia with each of the members of the sales team, the guy in New Zealand. I would normally go over there for a week every three months because it was a bit more of a hike. But the point is you do customer visits together. You get a sense of who their clients are, what the client's problems are, how effective our solutions are. Speaking about it from that perspective, but also after the meetings, you could debrief, you could observe the team member in action and get a feel for where the strengths are, where the witnesses are, what you'd need to do to help them improve, but get their feedback, most importantly, what they felt they could use help with. That was always very useful and I always used to find the best way to do that. The best time to do that was when I was away with people, because often it would involve at least one night in a hotel. So usually get back to the hotel, get a quick change, go to the bar for a drink first before going for the meal and having a chat and they were great times or breakfast meetings, those kinds of things. So having your own metrics to make sure that you are in regular contact with each team member and in a way where you are kind of off the record a little bit and you can get really good feedback. It's a great way to keep things moving forward in the right direction.

Speaker 1:

Another opportunity, and I guess one of the last ones I want to finish with, is to think about external expertise, because it may well be that if you do have a group that is very diverse and you're feeling a little bit out of your depth with it, it's just to look for other organizations or consultants who might be able to provide some help, and there could also be industry groups that focus on diversity. So it depends what's available where you are and how you want to do that. You might want to join something that you can get involved with in person. So if you're in a big city, that may be a possibility. There's lots of things available online, so there is resource out there. So if none of what I've suggested particularly suits, you can always go for an external consultant or do it anyway do it in conjunction. So really, the benefits that you have with effective diversity management is, first of all, an increase in innovation, because different people, different backgrounds, different experiences people do have different perspectives and in a group environment.

Speaker 1:

So now focusing this down to sales having regular sales meetings, maybe a monthly meeting if possible, where everyone can get together. One aspect of that could be to just have a discussion about sales situations that somebody's struggling with. And again, if you've got a good team dynamic, if your team is set up in such a way that they trust one another, they can open up to one another. There's a brilliant resource that you have within the team that can crack problems that maybe a team member on their own is struggling with. It can also give you a much better decision-making process.

Speaker 1:

So, if there's space for people to openly discuss issues and possible solutions, it's brainstorming. Basically, you can brainstorm ideas and come up with alternative solutions. And I think, finally, the employee part of it employee engagement, the engagement of your team members can be much, much higher. And, as I said before, when you've got a high level of engagement within the team, you tend to have a very effective team, and that, after all, is what you want, because that will drive the business and that's where we're going. That's the purpose of leadership. So I hope you found that useful. Maybe some points to ponder there, and I will speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.