Building a Leadership Culture with DE&I: A Formula for Success
April 26, 2023
Great leaders don’t follow a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) strategy, they drive DE&I strategy and hold themselves accountable for its success. Without great leaders, your DE&I initiatives will likely flounder with lackluster and insignificant outcomes. That’s why it’s important to build a leadership culture that embeds a deep appreciation for diversity, equity, and inclusion as an organizational priority.
Leadership development is extremely important to many organizations these days and for good reason. It’s now widely accepted across industries and sectors that diverse organizations outperform those that lack degrees of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And that means building a strong bench of highly qualified and capable candidates who can step into leadership positions whether it be in the C-Suite or the Boardroom.
Building a strong, diverse, pipeline of promising talent by casting a much wider net pays off vast dividends in the long run. The question we have to ask ourselves is why and to what end? Does the investment in leadership development pay off? Can it deliver ROI? And how does DE&I strategy intersect with leadership development and building a truly inclusive leadership culture?
Inclusive Competencies for Leaders
Three Kaleidoscope Group experts recently hosted a webcast, Building a Leadership Culture with DE&I: A Formula for Success. Mitch Brown, Senior Consultant and Engagement Leader joined colleagues Lindsay Ciardelli, and Reggie Ponder for an in-depth discussion on the “cause and effect relationship between leadership and DE&I,” in addition to a range of related topics, including the difference between managers and leaders (they’re not necessarily the same, according to the hosts).
Brown suggests that there are critical competencies that should be considered in leadership development initiatives that foster “conscious inclusion” in leaders, specifically:
- The willingness to embrace difference
- A bias for “courageous action”
- An authentic communications-style
- The ability to demonstrate empathy
- Recognition, and management, of biases based on real or perceived “privilege.”
During this interactive, fast-paced webcast, they polled participants on several relevant topics, including asking them if their organizations evaluated leaders based on their competencies in their organizations. Of the respondents, 24% said their organizations were evaluating such competencies among leaders, 43% said they weren’t, and 33% were unsure; reflecting the interest in the topic of leadership and DE&I among attendees.
As a global DE&I consultancy, The Kaleidoscope Group helps companies and organizations develop data-driven, sustainable, DE&I strategies including inclusive leadership development. They work with a worldwide network of consultants with deep and diverse expertise in helping drive DEI relying on an innovative framework that is customizable to any business or organization in any region of the world.
Want to Learn More?
To view a free recording of the webcast, Building a Leadership Culture with DE&I: A Formula for Success, click here. Share with colleagues, forward to a friend, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. For even more great DE&I videos, check out all our content on YouTube.
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