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Inclusive Leadership

Inclusive leadership can be a sensitive subject.

On one hand we can appreciate the concept intellectually, but emotionally, when someone says we’re not being inclusive it feels like a personal attack because we’re often unaware of how our behavior impacts what others see and hear AND more importantly, how our own culture, experiences, and biases shape what we do and say.

How do we get out of this Catch-22 and bridge these cultural gaps that rob us of credibility and influence? Today’s guest has some proven tips and strategies for you.

What You’ll Discover About Inclusive Leadership:

* What inclusive leadership really means

* The seven traits of inclusive leadership

* The inclusive leadership trait that can’t be taught and you need to hire for

* The trait that is the most challenging for leaders to master

* And much more.

Guest: Colette Phillips 

Colette Phillips is President and CEO of Colette Phillips Communications, and Founder and President of Get Konnected! and The GK Fund.

She is a strategic advisor for C-level executives and corporate teams and develops public relations branding and internal/external communications strategies. She is frequently consulted by corporations and nonprofits on how to establish healthy, inclusive working environments and engage and serve culturally diverse consumers.

An active civic leader and board member, she’s listed on Boston Business Journal’s Power 50 List. Her new book is The Includers: The 7 Traits of Culturally Savvy, Anti-Racist Leaders.

Related Resources:

If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Corporate Goverance and Culture episodes.

Contact Colette and connect with her on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

And be sure to check out her website and book, The Includers: The 7 Traits of Culturally Savvy, Anti-Racist Leaders

_____

What Inclusive Leadership Really Requires 

Inclusive leadership can be a sensitive subject. On one hand, we can appreciate the concept intellectually, but emotionally, when someone says we’re not being inclusive, it feels like a personal attack because we’re often unaware of how our behavior impacts what others see and hear, and more importantly, how our own culture, experiences, and biases shape what we do and say.

How do we get out of this Catch-22 and bridge these cultural gaps that rob us of credibility and influence? Well, today’s guest has some tips and strategies for you. Stay tuned.

This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.

Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line.

I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I’ve got another great guest for you today. She’s Colette Phillips. Colette helps corporations and non-profits establish healthier, more inclusive working environments that lets them not only engage more with their own employees, but also helps them serve culturally diverse consumers. She does it as the president and CEO of Colette Phillips Communications and founder and president of Get Connected and the GK fund.

As a strategic advisor for C-level executives and corporate teams, she develops public relations, branding, and internal external communications strategies. She’s also an active civic leader and board member, has been featured in The Boston Globe and Fast Company, and is the author of the book The Includers The Seven Traits of Culturally Savvy Anti-Racist Leaders.

It is a pleasure to have her join us. Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Colette.

Thank you Hanna, it is delightful to be here with you.

It’s a pleasure to speak with you. You know, the title of your book, the includes the seven traits of culturally savvy anti-racist leaders is intriguing. I feel like it throws down the gantlet a bit because very few people would admit to being racist, or for that matter, believe that they are. And many leaders in business owners probably believe they are being inclusive.

But from the title of your book, it sounds like they could be missing the boat and not even realize it. Please help us out. Let’s start with what inclusive leadership really means. And in your experience, what is inclusive leadership?

Inclusive leadership is. For me, it’s about taking conscious, deliberate, and intentional intentionality and deliberateness is key. You know, if you are living in a community or an environment where you have people who are culturally diverse, who are religiously diverse within your community, and let’s say you have a business or you live in a neighborhood.

And we all like being friendly. We like to invite and sort of reach out to our neighbors. So if you live in a community and you have neighbors who have moved in who may not necessarily look like you, they may be of a different ethnicity, a different religion, different culture.

They may be an immigrant moving here, and you have an opportunity to bridge that divide, to reach out to that neighbor, welcoming them to the community. It’s the same thing in a corporate environment, but more so if you are doing business in an environment where more than almost 40% of your marketplace are culturally diverse and you are not reaching out to engage with them, you are leaving serious money, significant money on the table.

So it’s not just a moral thing, it is also a business imperative. And also it enriches our individual lives when we are able to bring others to the table. Look at everything with what I call an inclusive lens. We live boring lives. It’s like I’m a Black woman. I don’t want to be always in the presence of only people who look like me. I’m curious. So get culture curious. That’s what I call it. Get out of your comfort zone. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Well, that should be on a bumper sticker. I tell you that life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Yes, the unknowns here. That’s great. I definitely understand how it can enrich us and how it’s smart business. That’s an excellent point that you made about how if we’re not reaching out properly and bridging these gaps, we’re missing opportunities to serve these communities with our goods and services. So that makes a lot of sense.

But what does it take to bridge these gaps? What are some of these inclusive leadership traits?

Well, there are seven traits that are in my book. And the first is character. Character I think becomes integrity. And integrity is doing the right thing even when nobody is looking. The second trait that is really important to be an includer is cultural intelligence. What does that mean? It means a willingness to step into somebody else’s shoes. Do you remember Anthony Bourdain, the late chef who did that wonderful show Parts Unknown on CNN?

Yes.

Where he would go to all these countries and he would sit with people and ask them really important curious questions about their culture, their food, their music. He was just like a kid in a candy store. And sometimes we have to be willing to step out and be curious about other people’s culture. We can learn a lot from other people through their food, through their music, just through asking them questions. So that’s where the cultural intelligence is really important.

And the third trait is connection. You know, making connections in your workplace with people who are different than you are. Making connections to people in your neighborhood. People in your social circle that you may not know well and may be a little shy to reach out, but think about somebody who might be an immigrant, a new to America, or new to your circle and reach out to them. So that is connections are important.

The other is in a workplace collaboration. You know when we collaborate, as they say, teamwork is dream work. So collaboration is really important. The other character is communication.

How do we communicate with people, you know, recognizing that sometimes if we give a joke that may be well received by an American audience or somebody who is familiar with American humor, that same joke, if you will, or that same sort of analogy may go over like a lead balloon with a group of people who are not familiar with American, you know, humor. So be careful. Be mindful of how our words, how our language can affect other people.

The other character is courage. You know, it takes great courage to go and do things that maybe no one else has done. You know, leadership means that sometimes you have to be willing to have courageous conversations with your employees, with your colleagues, with the people you supervise. And you might get feedback and you may get pushback and you may hear things that you don’t want to hear but need to hear. So it takes courage to do that.

And the last trait is commitment. I think the two things that the bookends character and commitment. If you don’t have commitment, nothing happens without individual making a commitment to change, to learn more, to become more engaged.

You make that commitment to say, I want to increase my interest in other people’s culture. I want to look around in my community and see what activities are going on that are culturally different from what I’m used to, that I would like to go and explore. So it takes courage and commitment to do those things. So those are the traits.

Those are an impressive list. Character, cultural intelligence, connection. Communication, collaboration, courage and then commitment. Yes. I’m wondering in your opinion which of these traits is most foundational? I mean, we can learn how to communicate better. We can learn, you know, networking techniques and how to ask questions. And, you know, we could even increase our commitment depending on how we’re incentivized.

But what can’t be taught, in your opinion, that maybe needs to be recruited for in the hiring process?

Well, I personally think that character matters. Character is what molds us, how we were brought up, how we were taught, the things that we know, some of it instinctively, and some of it that we get instilled by our family dynamics, by our parents. You know, like a child. As a child, my parents instilled in my siblings and I that we have a responsibility to always step out and make a difference to.

My father used to say to him who much is given, much is expected. So if you happen to be in a position of privilege and a lot of people in this country who are white, when you say white privilege, we’re not talking about how much money you have or how much money you had. And white privilege doesn’t mean you may not have had a very hard life growing up. It just means that your skin color was not one of those things that was a barrier to your success or your ability to get ahead. So that’s what privilege means.

It just means, yes, you have an advantage that in a culture where people look at people based on skin color as opposed to content of character, which is what we really should be doing, but it’s just human nature. We look at people and physically, you know, we make judgments. You know, we see somebody and they might be a little overweight.

And that is not that could be a turnoff or a trigger and unconscious bias that we have. And we all have unconscious biases. And it’s not necessarily about just racism. We may have unconscious biases about people who are shot, people who are bald, people who are a little obese, people who worship differently, people who might be in same sex marriages or relationships. So we all have biases.

And it’s so important in order to be more inclusive, to be able to hold a mirror up to ourselves and check our own bias, do our own self-reflection and self-introspection to say, oh, I had an icky feeling and I don’t like that. That says you are absolutely somebody who is willing to be consciously aware of your own personal biases, your own unconscious bias. And that’s how change comes about.

Because once you are aware of your own unconscious biases, then you can make a courageous commitment to say, “I really want to work on this. I am going to take and make an effort to really make sure that I embrace people who I may feel I have a certain bias toward. Let me get to know them, let me cross that divide, and let me make that courageous commitment to step out of my comfort zone.

Well, thank you for connecting the dots between these different traits. I think that’s very important how they interconnect. But I’m wondering, of these seven puzzle pieces that you’ve identified to have and become a more, more inclusive leader and have inclusive leadership in your experience, which is the most challenging for people in supervisory positions to get their arms around and actually practice in day to day management?

I would say that one of the challenges is CQ, Cultural Intelligence. You know, because let’s think of you work in a global company and people from different parts of the world interact differently. There is an example. I grew up in the Caribbean and part of my family is Spanish. And so in the Caribbean and in, in the Latino, the Hispanic culture, people get to know you first, get to form a relationship with you before they step out and want to do business with you.

In America, we want to get the agreement signed. We want to close the deal. We want to move forward. We want to get it done. Well, if you’re doing business in South America or you’re doing business in the Caribbean or in China? Spending time getting to know your host, getting to understand them is where commonality and common ground tends to intersect. And once you begin to break those barriers down, the getting to know you ask about somebody’s family, you know. Those are the kinds of things that are really important.

And if you are supervising people who are of different cultural backgrounds, it behooves you to understand that certain cultural environments or certain people from certain cultural backgrounds might be a little shy and a little reserved, but that doesn’t mean that they’re somehow not excited about the work they’re doing, or it’s just culturally, that’s how they are, and it’s important for you to be able to navigate.

So I would say cultural intelligence can be both challenging. And it can be easy too, because if you make that effort and be willing to ask questions, I always say to my friends who are not Black, I’m Black.

There are no questions you can ask me that I am going to assume that you’re trying to be ignorant or you. I am going to assume best intentions. I’m going to assume as a friend that the reason or a colleague, the reason why you’re asking me certain questions is because you do not want to embarrass yourself. You don’t want to make a gaffe or say something that’s inappropriate. And so you’re asking my input.

And so I take it as a badge of honor, that you are willing to ask curious questions because you’re trying to be more knowledgeable, more sensitive, more culturally savvy. That’s how I think people should. And we have to give each other grace. You know, often we sometimes get a little short, angered, and short tempered with other people because we make assumptions that maybe what they were saying was not appropriate.

I’m a firm believer when you are in a workplace or you’re in a work environment, I believe it’s better to call people in than to call them out, especially if they’re people you have to work with. So if you said something, Hanna, that I found could be bordering on offensive. Rather than calling you out with all the colleagues around and embarrassing you.

A better way to do that, and I have that in my book, is to choose to say, Hanna, can I have a conversation with you and take you aside and said, you know, you made a comment today and I just want you to know that that comment had a tinge of a racial overtone or a gender inappropriate overtone that was not nice.

Like somebody referred to me once as a flavor of the month, and I had to basically call them in on it and said, that’s an offensive trope, because you are basically saying that as a human being, I’m a flavor, and I don’t think that’s what you really want to be saying about another human being. So I would invite you to not use terms like that to describe anybody. And the person one said to me, I am so sorry. It wasn’t my intention at all, and I’m embarrassed.

And I said, well, I understand you’re embarrassed because I am basically correcting you, but if your intentions were not to be offensive, then I am thrilled that I am giving you some opportunity to really understand how that term could be considered a racial trope or disrespectful to someone humanity. You’re not seeing them as a human being, but you are seeing them as a flavor. And so those are the kinds of things that I tend to believe in.

And I’m not saying that there isn’t opportunities where you should call people out like public figures who you know should know better and are using misogynistic terms or homophobic terms, or anti-Semitic or Islamophobia things to call them out publicly. But in a workplace, in a work environment, we our goal is to create an environment that is warm, welcoming, where people feel like, okay, I may make a mistake, but let me at least say something and you can call your colleague in rather than calling them out.

That’s great advice, Colette. Thank you for that. I would imagine that for some people listening, they want to engage in inclusive leadership. And you’ve certainly given us a road map with the seven traits that you’ve identified and also amplified here in the discussion. But I would imagine that getting better at inclusive leadership can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. How do you recommend they get comfortable with being uncomfortable?

Well, we have to learn that issues of race, gender equality, religion, even politics, although I try to stay away from that, make people very uncomfortable. But I think it is where growth and learning takes place. Being able to ask questions.

One of the things I say to people, as you are trying to work through your own sort of unconscious biases or learning more, becoming more comfortable in your discomfort is to ask questions, to be curious, to say. When somebody makes a statement, they may say, well, I don’t believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion. I tend rather than going off on them or, you know, trying to argue with them. I say, well, tell me more. Help me understand diversity, equity and inclusion makes you uncomfortable.

You see, when you give people permission to be open and you are not doing it in a confrontational manner, you are allowing them to share with you their thoughts. And then you could say, well, let me give you my perspective and you can tell me whether any of that resonates with you.

So I say to people when I think of diversity, equity, and inclusion, I don’t think of it as somehow you are providing or giving an unfair advantage to women or people of color, or you are excluding white males. I don’t see it as replacement. It’s not musical chairs, so when the music stops, if you’re not in front of a chair, boom, you’re out of the game. It’s more like a Thanksgiving table.

And what do we do at a Thanksgiving table? We tend to add more chairs. We tend to cook more food. We tend to invite more people. So everybody has a seat, everybody has a meal, and everybody has an opportunity to participate. That’s what diversity, equity and inclusion is about. It’s about leveling the playing field and allowing people to be able on merit, on talent and abilities having equal access to be successful.

I love the example and the comparison to a Thanksgiving dinner. That’s very well said. So thank you so much Colette. This has been informative on a number of levels and I appreciate your time and sharing your thoughts about inclusive leadership.

If you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Colette Phillips, her firm Colette Phillips Communications, and especially her new book, The Includers The Seven Traits of Culturally Savvy Anti-Racist Leaders. That information, along with a transcript of this interview, can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.

Thanks so much for listening. Please be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next week with another information packed episode of Business Confidential Now. So until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.

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