How can leaders create a culture of belonging?
Leaders play a crucial role in creating an inclusive environment that acknowledges and celebrates employees’ unique differences. By intentionally working to understand their team members’ backgrounds, skills, and needs and then establishing policies, systems, and structures that enable team members to thrive in their roles, leaders can help organizations sustain a more engaged, fulfilled, and high-performing workforce.
The experts in this EXLEARN Talks episode discuss practical steps leaders can take to implement inclusive practices that foster a culture of belonging. They provide insight on the following questions:
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- 3:05: How do you define belonging and where do you feel it?
- 16:49: Is fostering belonging a responsibility of organizations or individuals?
- 20:15: How can leaders develop their skills to create a sense of belonging for team members?
- 27:03: As leaders, we often challenge team members to lean into practicing love, trust, and vulnerability in the workplace. What should we do when individuals want to show up and express themselves differently?
- 31:57: How can leaders shift from tolerating to celebrating their team members’ differences?
- 41:12: What should organizations do when productivity is high but how is the work getting done is destructive to the culture?
- 53:03: It can feel easy to create inclusion when everything is going right. How do we further this work when performance is suffering?
Highlights from the Panelists:
“We’ve doubled down in practicing the golden rule of Treat others the way that we want to be treated. [It’s time for] evolving to the platinum rule and really leaning in and treating others the way that they want to be treated. If we are to be good leaders of people, it’s not about us… As we think about what it means to respect someone, is it that you tolerate them, or that you acknowledge their diversity and differences and you still treat them in ways that align or resonate [with how they want to be treated]?”
– Jen Ingram, Founder and CEO at Calibrated Lens
“It’s [through] the day-to-day interactions with team members [that belonging is created], because it’s in those small moments over time that trust is built. I think it’s those small moments that sometimes we take for granted and we don’t realize the impact that we have as leaders in how we show up every day and communicate with our words and body language.”
– Elise Margol, Principal at TiER1 Performance
“If you have team members [who are] struggling to perform, the attachment with their leaders and teams is probably at play… Your brain doesn’t know the difference between whether you’re at home or work, and so our need for attachment and a close bond doesn’t go away… The thing that leaders [need to remember] is that you are such an important relationship in your team members’ lives.”
– Dustin Shell, Principal at TiER1 Performance
A Visual Capture of the Discussion:
Designed by Ramsey Ford
