Hello everyone,
I truly understood and embraced diversity and inclusion when I started working overseas in 1995. The whole experience of working across 8 countries, and managing multi-cultural teams, made me realise that having a diverse and inclusive mindset is great for building high-performing teams.
Diversity refers to different political beliefs, race, culture, sexual orientation, religion, class, and gender differences. Inclusion means that everyone in the diverse mix feels involved, valued, respected, treated fairly, and made to feel like part of the team.
As a leader, you must champion a diverse and inclusive workplace environment because it will make your team more connected at work, and motivated to achieve success.
Here are some quick thoughts on the subject.
As a leader, building trust is the key to leading a successful team. Trust happens when you treat all team members fairly, no matter who or what they are.
Our perspective can be our biggest enemy. If we don’t understand another person's perspective, what is very meaningful and sensible to them may look absurd to us.
You are unique and, so is everyone else. Play to your strengths and let others play to theirs.
As a leader, you must lead the way in having a diverse and inclusive mindset. When you openly display this mindset, you will see that each member of your team will bring their best self to the workplace and a sense of belonging will be established. This is not an HR-driven initiative at the workplace. You must take ownership and let everyone know why you care and why it matters.
Act
How will you challenge your personal bias and adopt a diverse and inclusive mindset at the workplace today?
If you found this useful, please share this with your family, friends, and colleagues to give them a little boost too.
That’s all from me today. I wish you all the best in the week ahead.
Jayaraj
(Follow me on Linkedin and Twitter for more advice on career growth and success)
Great read Jayaraj. Thank you for sharing.