In this guide for higher education leaders, we explore the concept of inclusive leadership and its importance in fostering employees' sense of uniqueness and belonging, promoting respect and supporting organisational change. As key catalysts for organisational development, leaders play a critical role in creating an inclusive environment where employees feel valued and supported. Not only do employees benefit from an inclusive leadership style, but leaders also benefit from increased employee productivity and engagement.
The aim of this guide is to provide practical strategies and best practices to help higher education leaders implement inclusive leadership in their teams and organisations.
Of course, we recognise that learning and applying a new leadership style is a different task, and that developing one's own style is particularly challenging. That's why this guide is embedded in a series of other organisational actions to help you make the change. You can usually find these on our website. With this support, we hope you will find it easy to integrate inclusive leadership into your daily management. Below you will find further information and practical examples.
Inclusive leadership: what is it?
The new policy defines inclusive leadership as "an often reciprocal process of influence aimed at achieving common goals while considering and promoting the inclusion of all employees".
Inclusion here specifically means considering the different needs of employees. Therefore, as a leader, you should remember that employees have a need to belong. They want to feel a full part of the group. In addition, you should consider that employees also have a need for uniqueness, i.e. they want to be seen as unique individuals. These two needs may seem at odds with each other, and in fact a balance is needed. Employees want to be a contributing, valued member of their respective groups, but they also want to be recognised for their own achievements. In addition, as a leader, you should demonstrate an appreciative attitude towards your staff, as well as openness and support for organisational change towards an inclusive university.
Below you will find concrete recommendations for action, with practical examples to give you an insight into how inclusive leadership can be implemented. We have organised these behavioural suggestions so that the needs of employees (uniqueness and belonging) are addressed first, followed by several recommendations on how you can contribute to a positive climate of diversity, and finally how you can act as a catalyst to drive change in the organisation. The approaches presented here were derived from the scientific literature, including the works of Nishii and Leroy (2020) and Randel et al. (2018).
Nishii, L. H., & Leroy, L. H. (2020). Inclusive Leadership: Leaders as architects of inclusive workgroup climates. In B. M. Ferdman, J. Prime, & R. E. Riggio (Hrsg.), Inclusive Leadership. Routledge.
Randel, A. E., Galvin, B. M., Shore, L. M., Ehrhart, K. H., Chung, B. G., Dean, M. A., & Kedharnath, U. (2018). Inclusive leadership: Realizing positive outcomes through belongingness and being valued for uniqueness. Human Resource Management Review, 28(2), 190–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2017.07.002
Promoting the sense of belonging
Support employees in expressing their needs and opinions. As a manager, this will set an example for others and show acceptance and support.
Examples: Regular morning chats between you and your staff, sharing during meetings what is going particularly well in the group and how individual members are valued. As a manager, you should first listen to the team members' assessments and opinions before offering your own.
Promote fairness and equality of opportunity. Ensure that all members are treated fairly and that meeting individual needs does not create unfair relationships with other employees.
Examples: Joint events (outings, team events) are not planned on the spur of the moment to ensure that members with (e.g. family) commitments can attend.
Find ways to involve employees with disabilities more fully to reduce potential stereotypes about them, while reinforcing the commonalities of all team members.
Involve others in decision making. Active participation creates a stronger sense of belonging for all employees. This can be achieved by holding discussions in advance of important decisions.
Examples: By holding regular team meetings where important decisions are discussed together, all employees can be involved. To ensure that all opinions are heard, you can give each member of the group a fixed amount of time to speak, which should be used. If you also announce the main points of the meeting in advance, people can prepare short statements and present them in turn.
Promoting the feeling of uniqueness
Encourage people to contribute. You can specifically solicit the opinions and expertise of individual members and bring them into group discussions to showcase the uniqueness of the individual and their contribution to the team.
Examples: Older members of the team can be asked to describe how similar problems have been solved in the past, making their wealth of experience available to all.
By having a good personal relationship with all members, you can also create a safe space so that everyone is willing to share their assessment. Conflicts of opinion can be very useful in discussing new perspectives and ideas, as long as personal relationships are not damaged in the process.
Give credit for people's ideas, especially when they are implemented.
Encourage the full contribution of all group members. To prevent certain contributions from being lost in the discussion, you can use methods to ensure that all points of view are heard and that everyone in the group can contribute.
Examples include Ideas, suggestions and criticisms can be prepared in writing and presented in order. This will prevent certain positions from not being heard, or certain people from influencing the discussion too much by speaking first.
It can also ensure that different approaches are taken into account (e.g. because someone has a disability that requires them to approach problems in a different way). Finally, make sure that all members feel safe to contribute their ideas without fear of being punished for doing so.
Promoting the diversity climate through communication
Communicate what inclusion means and why it is important.
Examples: Communicate shared goals and a vision in a way that is easy to understand and allows employees to align their own goals with it.
Translate the organisation's intentions about inclusion into concrete behavioural guidelines that employees can use in their work. Where possible, use examples of where a lack of inclusion has led to poor results, as well as examples where inclusion has been helpful.
Communicate the value of diversity in an understandable, clear and visible way, including how inclusion improves work processes and therefore benefits all employees.
Help employees see how a greater diversity of perspectives, skills and strengths helps achieve common goals. Share examples of good decisions or developments that were made possible by integrating diverse ideas. Examples of how groupthink has led to poor results can also be helpful.
Articulate rules of engagement that promote inclusion (show 'how' it can be done).
Examples: Explain not only what behaviour is expected - e.g. how to be inclusive in meetings - but also why it is important.
Use a team charter as a tool to establish collaborative team processes (e.g. about sharing information, active listening, decision making, shared roles and responsibilities).
Promoting the diversity climate through your role model function
Invest time and create the space necessary for all individuals to build positive relationships across differences.
Examples: Invest sufficient time for team members to get to know each other as individuals, e.g. through face-to-face meetings and rotating assignments to different people.
Be a role model by developing good, trusting relationships with others.
Value every interaction with members of your team for the future of your relationship - don't take interactions lightly.
Be consistent in treating inclusion as a priority, especially with different people and in different situations. If you need to deviate from the principle of inclusion, be sure to clearly justify it.
Communicate openly, honestly and often, including sharing information about yourself.
Keep track of how the group's shared sense of purpose is developing.
Demonstrate what it means to value different perspectives; encourage actions that integrate different perspectives.
Examples: Acknowledge and own your own mistakes so that group members do not focus too much on not making mistakes themselves, but rather on learning from them. In this way you create a positive culture of failure.
Rather than avoiding conflict altogether, try to understand the conflict and the factors driving it, so that you and the participants can learn from the differences. Help group members to reflect on the conflict, learn from it and adjust future interactions accordingly.
Use the diversity of your team to gather ideas (crowdsourcing) before making decisions.
Try to avoid groupthink by gathering information from individual group members before starting a group discussion.
Encourage new group members or those with less experience to share their perspective first in discussions.
Conduct debriefings to collectively identify the factors that prevented your group from using diverse perspectives effectively. After a project, ask yourself: What was our goal? What did we actually achieve? Was there a difference between the goal and the result? What was the reason for this difference? What worked, what didn't? What should we do differently next time?
Also use this debriefing to legitimise doubts and encourage thorough discussion with better ideas. Before making a decision, ask the group: "Imagine we do this and in a year it turns out to be a total failure. Why did it turn out that way?
Identify and stop patterns of behaviour that undermine the goal of inclusion.
Establish and demonstrate fair treatment as a basis for inclusion.
Examples: Make competence visible, especially for group members who are members of marginalised minorities or who are not role congruent in their function (e.g. women in technical roles).
Always respond to employee mistakes or underperformance with the same level of feedback and supportive coaching.
Rotate informal leadership opportunities (e.g. in small groups) so that there aren't fixed hierarchies about who can and cannot influence the team.
Mix roles in your work unit with the identities of your group members; avoid heterogeneous subgroups.
Challenge assumptions about competence and make sure that observations and conclusions are based on facts, not assumptions or stereotypes.
Avoid treating your employees differently by making exceptions or special arrangements.
Invest your time and energy in maintaining high quality, trusting relationships with all members of your working group, team or research team, rather than with just a few (who may be most like you or most familiar to you).
Leaders as catalysts
Reinforce behaviour that promotes inclusion and intervene against exclusionary behaviour.
Examples include Reward learning behaviour, encourage it through constructive feedback to motivate members of your working group to learn from each other. Be open to such feedback yourself.
Praise and reward inclusive behaviour among your staff.
Avoid the temptation to ignore unwanted or problematic behaviour; be upfront about your disapproval so that people can see a clear link between their behaviour and your response.
Be consistent about what you reward and what you disapprove of. Making exceptions, especially for some group members, undermines the climate of diversity.
Be aware of common status dynamics. Interrupt dominant members of the group (especially if they have higher status) if they take up too much space or frequently interrupt others.
Examine how inclusion and exclusion occur in your learning space.
Examples: Notice how group dynamics shape the work. For example, hierarchies and status can lead to stereotypical assumptions being made without a solid basis.
Ask your staff what works and what doesn't. Maintain a dialogue with employees to learn about their experiences and underlying attitudes, and to identify what more needs to be done to improve the climate.
Where possible, use survey data to start a dialogue with your employees about what is still needed and useful.