What does an inclusive leader look like?

(Extract from Korn Ferry's The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Leaders: Unleashing the power of all of us)

Designing and building the equitable organizations of the future will require inclusive leaders at every level and in every nook and cranny of the organization. What do those inclusive leaders look like? 

There is plenty of opinion in the public square about this as well as many inspiring stories, but we wanted to start with the science and engaged our statisticians and I/O psychologists from the Korn Ferry Institute to help identify inclusive leader traits and competencies. The foundational and conformational research was based on a thorough analysis of Korn Ferry’s database of over 3 million leadership assessments from which we mapped out a clear inclusive leader profile looking at competencies and traits that facilitate inclusive leadership. We then used a variety of qualitative testing that included a survey of talent leaders, in-depth interviews with inclusive leaders, and focus groups across the world.

The elements of inclusive leadership, which we have empirically and experientially defined, align with Korn Ferry’s holistic model of broad-based leadership that looks at individual, team and organizational performance in an integrated way: the traits (who someone is), the competencies (what one does), and their biography (their formative and adult experiences). On the next pages, we examine these key elements that define inclusive leadership. We will see that the inclusive traits alone, as admirable as they are, cannot be enough to make inclusive leadership a reality. 

Traits: Who Leaders Are

Traits are generally hardwired. They include an individual’s personality, sense of purpose, and values. They also indicate preferences. For inclusive leaders, they are the inner enablers that make inclusive leadership possible and, when taken as a whole, they tell us the leader’s disposition toward differences. The core enabling trait clusters of an inclusive leader are:

1. Authenticity requires humility, setting aside ego and establishing trust in the face of opposing beliefs, values, or perspectives.
2. Emotional Resilience requires the ability to remain composed in the face of adversity and difficulty around differences.
3. Inquisitiveness requires openness to differences, curiosity, and empathy.
4. Self-assurance requires a stance of confidence and optimism.
5. Flexibility requires the ability to tolerate ambiguity and to be adaptable to diverse needs. 

Competencies: What Leaders Do

While the traits outlined above are foundational for inclusive leadership, they are not enough on their own. An inclusive leader must also possess the skills to lead inclusively. Korn Ferry research has identified the competencies that are essential for inclusive leadership. We have also used empirical analysis to organize these competencies into clusters. We call these The Five Disciplines of the inclusive leader. They are:

1. Builds Interpersonal Trust is honest and follows through; establishes rapport by finding common ground while simultaneously able to value perspectives that differ from own.
2. Integrates Diverse Perspectives considers all points of view and needs of others; skillfully navigates conflict situations.
3. Applies an Adaptive Mindset takes a broad worldview; adapts approach to suit situation; innovates by leveraging differences.
4. Optimizes Talent motivates others and supports their growth; joins forces for collective success across differences.
5. Achieves Transformation willing to confront difficult topics; brings people of all backgrounds along to achieve results. 

Biography Matters: Formative Experiences

One more vital element becomes the wrapper around The Five Disciplines model: the experiences of each leader’s biography. As organizations become increasingly diverse, there will be a greater spread of work-style preferences within any given team. To excel at inclusive leadership, individuals therefore need to be able identify other people’s culturally driven preferences, as well as their own, to compare their likes and dislikes with team members from different cultures, and to gauge how helpful and productive their preferred style is likely to be. Experiences that expose leaders to a broad range of geographies, people, and contexts can increase their understanding of culturally driven preferences by challenging their assumptions and ways of doing things. Diverse experiences can also open their eyes to the fact that client and employee needs are not all the same and cannot be effectively addressed the same way across the board, which in turn helps them realize that solutions can be varied and counterintuitive, and that, sometimes, they are best reached along unconventional paths. Personal and professional experiences that may enhance an individual’s capacity for inclusive leadership include:

• Growing up in a different country or region from the one they live and work in today.
• Having parents who have done an overseas stint in business, not-for-profit, government, military, or missionary organizations.
• Experiencing being in the minority or majority or in a fully racially or ethnically mixed environment.
• Studying abroad or participating in a service program while in school.
• Undertaking an extended stay in a different culture, inside or outside their native country.
• Taking on expatriate work assignments or cross-functional, cross-divisional, or cross-market work assignments that push them outside their comfort zone.

If leaders have had these formative experiences it gives them an edge in this journey but it’s not automatic that they are leveraging these experiences as much as they could. Inclusive leaders learn to more savvily and profoundly leverage their biographies to lead others inclusively. And for those who did not have these early-life exposures to more diverse experiences, it’s not too late to gain that type of exposure through short- or longterm immersion experiences and even lifestyle changes. 

In Conclusion

Moving organizations beyond diversity metrics to embrace inclusion requires 21stcentury inclusive leadership. By taking on the challenges inherent in leading heterogeneous inclusive teams, these leaders bring their organizations to the next level in a highly competitive and increasingly diverse global marketplace. But as this discussion has shown, inclusive leadership requires commitment and a strategy. It takes a comprehensive plan, grounded in the assessment and development of key leadership traits and competencies, to foster inclusive leadership at the top of the organization. This then can in turn inspire an inclusive mindset shift and capability development throughout the organization to attain a more diverse workforce and realize its full potential.