The practice of inclusion

JM: Diversity is demographics – the composition of your workforce. A conversation about diversity is, by definition, focused on different populations, the majority versus under-represented groups. Inclusion is about whether everybody on the team – regardless of race, gender, religion and sexual orientation – feels they belong, and whether employees are being given equal and fair treatment, their ideas are being solicited.

DS: Another point that underscores this difference is that you cannot truly unlock the benefits of diversity without fostering inclusion.

JM: Right. If you have rote, repetitive tasks, research suggests that homogeneous teams are actually going to outproduce diverse teams. There’s less debate and friction. They agree faster, get along better. But even in a homogeneous team, you still need to be inclusive, or else you won’t get everyone’s input.

But when you have complex questions, especially in a context that’s always changing, research shows that a diverse team is going to outperform. To solve difficult problems, you want a lot of debate, you want people to ask unconventional questions.  

So inclusion is linked to diversity, but not the same. The notion of inclusion is softer, you could say, an indicator that you’re heading in the right direction. But inclusion itself isn’t the end result.

DS: One obstacle is that a lot of people have invested a lot of time, money and energy – their reputations, even – into diversity initiatives. While well-intentioned, these haven’t had the positive effects they envisioned and they’re kind of afraid to acknowledge failure.

JM: Absolutely. Change is hard – but it is possible. We believe a firm can become inclusive and that a manager can practice the skill of being inclusive. And that’s a really important point: Inclusion is a skill, even though you often hear it chalked up to an innate trait.

But it’s a hard skill to practice or improve. You’re talking about individuals acting differently from how they have all their lives, differently from how most people around them behave. It is not human nature to want to say, “Wait a minute, I’ve got to change myself.” We’re a bundle of habits and biases; absent some intervention or disruption, we’re going to play those out over and over again.

If a manager is working to make her team more inclusive and diverse, deliberations are going to be harder, people are going to challenge them more, and they’re going to have to adjust how they manage. That’s not exactly an exciting proposition.

JM: I don’t know how you could approach this in a meaningful way without dedicating the energy and resources that you do to your other biggest business problems. You are talking about layers of complex human and organizational change – which only get more so with each person you add to the equation.

DS: There seems to be an important storytelling aspect in all of this as well; an ability for leaders to connect with others, for managers to figure out how people’s experiences can both inform their perspective and can be brought to bear in the context of work.

How much of this do you believe, Jonathan, is actually about internal communications and equipping leaders to become better, more authentic communicators around this issue, which, as you say, only gets more complicated as you bring more people into the debate and the dialogue?

JM: We’re talking about an internal culture, so words matter, and communications has a crucial role to play in it. But this is an area you’ve also got to think about horizontally. If you said, “We should really use the internet in our XYZ Division,” it would seem absurd. It’s a platform – everything sits on top of it. The same with inclusion. HR or communications may take the lead, but it’s got to be integrated into all dimensions of the business.

JM: It’s difficult to measure inclusion in the way you can diversity, but there are still some important questions to consider. First, are we stretching the boundaries in the types of diversity we have around the table? And do those perspectives and skill sets match up with the complexity and the challenges we have in front of us? Two: Have we built out a system of rewards and incentives, a management pool, and a culture around inclusion? And lastly: Is it working? Are people feeling like they belong more?

DS: Some people feel that the discussion about belonging or inclusion in and of itself is excluding them, or they feel that somehow they are the problem. How do you grapple with that: talking about these issues without making certain people, in particular white men, feel like they are the problem, rather than part of the solution?

JM: It starts by recognizing we all have these habits and biases – a discussion about inclusion isn’t a judgment against any one person. Creating change is going to mean some discomfort and friction at first. If you have an organization that isn’t inclusive, chances are you don’t know a lot of the things that are going on in it. And when you create the conditions for conversation, you’re going to hear more negative stories than you heard before, because that’s the problem – you haven’t been hearing them.

But difficult or not, some people have to go first. If you want to have a conversation about race in the workplace, somebody has to get people talking, and they’re taking a risk by doing it.

In many parts of the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are facing a fresh wave of hostility. Businesses are taking a stand: Open For Business is a global coalition of companies promoting LGBT rights – including Accenture, Brunswick, Barclays, Google, MasterCard and Virgin.  

The coalition has been making the economic case for LGBT inclusion – and making an impact. The subject has even been on the agenda of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.   

Rubbing shoulders with the Davos elite this year was Bisi Alimi, a Nigerian gay rights activist. Alimi was among a group of LGBT activists from around the world speaking at a roundtable organized by Open For Business.

The journey to Davos was symbolic for many activists, who had spoken out for years, often at great personal risk, in the hope of having their voice heard by key decision makers.

At Davos, activists gave speeches and participated in a wide-ranging conversation. An area of focus was the gap between the rhetoric of many global businesses and their actions – and what leaders can do to help.

“It’s good for me as a kid from a slum to actually have opportunities of engaging with the people who have influence on how to make the world a better place,” Alimi said, “so that the next gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans person from where I come from can live in a world that they can be proud of.”

Open For Business is a coalition of international corporations making the business and economic case for LGBT inclusion