New Linkage Intensive takes the confusion out of inclusion

We here at Linkage think about inclusive leadership A LOT! And as you can see from our recent blog posts, our consultants have lots of ideas on how to help organizations be more inclusive. Lonney Gregory writes in his post What is the inclusion solution?:

“Inclusion means different things to different people, but for me inclusive leadership always boils down to mission and performance. Inclusion by definition means ‘involve as a factor’ and ‘being part of the whole.’ Inclusive leaders recognize that diverse input is critical to meeting mission objectives; when inclusive practices are combined with a focus on diversity—that is, including more underrepresented people—organizations increase the likelihood of significant performance gains because they now include insights from a multiplicity of perspectives, achieving a ‘whole’ solution.”

Lauren Rodriguez draws necessary attention to the diversity gap in Silicon Valley in her recent post titled: Intel commits $300 million to diversity: “It’s about time.”

“It’s easy to highlight the diversity gap at most tech firms,” she writes. “But just because shockingly low diversity numbers are ubiquitous throughout the tech industry doesn’t mean that the problem is only a “‘tech problem.’”

“In fact, our research on inclusive leadership shows painfully similar themes and statistics have emerged from organizations across almost every industry. Tech is not the only sector struggling with a lack of diversity in leadership.

“We’ve also found that diverse populations exist at lower levels of all organizations. The problem is (with few exceptions) that generally speaking, leadership consistently gets whiter and male-r as you move up the org chart.

“And that’s why I say ‘It’s about time!’ to Intel’s commitment to diversity. Building an inclusive culture requires developing inclusive leadership. Inclusive leaders are courageous and curious and look for new perspectives; they are adaptive to new ways of doing things and build relationships easily. These leaders create trust by sharing credit and decision-making authority.”

And Charley Morrow uses the NFL to explain what inclusion means when he writes: “I’ve come to realize that a successful football team is a perfect illustration of the positive impact a diverse workforce and an inclusive leader can have on an organization,” in his post titled Diversity and Inclusion in the NFL?

So, the question is: Are you satisfied with your employee engagement scores? Do your managers and leaders know what it takes to engage employees? Are you satisfied with the diversity of your current leadership pipeline and the speed of advancement for diverse talent?

If not, Linkage can help. We’ve taken the complexity out of engagement and created a clear, practical, and behavioral approach to leading inclusively. And we’ve created Linkage’s Intensive^™ on Leading Inclusively. It’s a 3-day experiential workshop specifically designed to help leaders acquire new insights, behaviors, and skills that will lead to being more inclusive and more successful. It takes place May 6-8, in Atlanta and September 15-17 in Chicago.

Learn more here.