Lead at Any Level®
Essential Skills for Inclusive Leaders
Amy Waninger · ·
Trav Walkowski (he/him) is the Board Chair of Employmetrics. Employmetrics is a global People Operations Consultancy offering embedded and project-based services. They design strategies informed by people analytics and Put Data to Work. Employmetrics employs 300+ globally.
Amy Waninger · ·
If your fiscal year starts on January 1st, you’re probably in the middle of some goal-setting conversations with your team members. You’re probably also looking at professional development planning goals and activities for the year. Being an inclusive leader means co-creating customized development goals for each team member. It’s your job to help them find and access the resources they need to grow, on their own terms. (Article continues below video.)
Professional development conversations are make-or-break moments for building trust with your team members. That means coming prepared, listening attentively, and thinking creatively.
Leaders must show up to development conversations prepared to lead the discussion. First, consider all the technical and leadership competencies your team members need to thrive in your organization. Then, think about the inherent strengths and natural talents each person contributes to your team. Finally, be sure you know all the policies, approvals, processes, resources, and budgets you’ll have to navigate on behalf of your employees.
Start development conversations by asking good questions about where the employee would like more challenge and opportunity, their aspirations, and their confidence in reaching their goals. In their next role, do they want to deepen their technical focus, manage projects, or lead people? Or would they prefer to stay in their current role and invest their development efforts in a personal passion? Start with the basics, listen without judgment, and offer genuine support for whatever ambitions they share with you. Just remember not to make any promises you can’t keep.
Think Creatively
If you have an employee who seems overwhelmed by the development planning process, try asking if there’s anyone whose job they’d like to learn more about. Use your own network connections to set up informational interviews about other jobs and departments. These can be formal, but they don’t have to be. A simple coffee meeting can help you reconnect with a colleague while also providing a warm introduction for your employee. Remember, networking itself is a valuable skill for leadership and career development. Don’t forget to lead by example!
How will you help your team members thrive in their current role, make progress toward a career goal, or position themselves for a promotion?
Amy Waninger · ·
Being an inclusive leader means recognizing that some of your team members may be too humble for their own good. They want their work to speak for itself. But you know that employees need to self-promote effectively if they want their work to be noticed. It’s your job to coach them to tout their own accomplishments, appropriately and consistently.
As a leader, you probably have somebody on your team who consistently works hard and does great work. And if that employee is a woman, a member of a racialized group, or from a working-class background, they likely won’t tell anyone. But they secretly expect all their hard work to lead to recognition and a promotion someday. They need to know that their hard work is not the only thing required for them to get ahead. They must find a way to self-promote!
Many of us were raised to be humble. This means that self-promoting can seem to conflict with our values. Your employees may say, “I want my work to speak for itself,” or “I don’t want people to think I’m bragging.” They’re really asking for the quality and quantity of their work to compete with the quality and quantity of somebody else’s work. In that case, they might have a fair shot at the recognition, promotion, or rewards that they deserve.
It’s unrealistic to think that any person’s work will be fairly weighed against somebody else’s work. Other factors are always at play. Another candidate for the next promotion may have social capital and all the right connections. Maybe their dad plays golf with your CEO. They may have industry buzz because they’re speaking on conference stages or being published in trade journals. For their entire career, they may have been working the system behind the scenes to land a coveted role.
If you are competing with just your work against all of what someone else brings to the table, the odds are against you. As my son put it, “It’s not just my work against his work, it’s my work against all of him.” Exactly! You can’t just outwork someone. You have to do good work and self-promote.
Inclusive leaders create opportunities for their employees to self-promote, consistently, appropriately, and effectively. Here are a few examples:
You should be holding one-on-one meetings with your direct reports every week (monthly is the minimum). Start these meetings by asking your team members what they’re celebrating since your last meeting. If they’ve had a personal or professional victory, you want to be the first to congratulate them!
If your direct reports meet with your manager regularly, encourage them to share their celebrations as a regular part of their skip-level conversations. You can also ask your manager to make space for self-promotion.
If you manage a large department, schedule monthly (quarterly at a minimum) one-on-one meetings with your second-level reports. Open these conversations with a chance for employees to share their wins.
Start every team meeting with an opportunity for team members to share what they’re celebrating. This gives everyone a chance to offer praise for a job well done and to appreciate the successes of others on the team. It’s also a chance for you, the leader, to encourage those who may be shy about sharing with the group. After the most eager volunteers have spoken up, you might say, “Angelo, I know you had a big win last week. Would you share it with the group?”
Hopefully, you’re connected with all your colleagues—especially your team members—on LinkedIn. When they share a professional milestone with you, ask them to post it on LinkedIn and tag you in the post. This gives you a chance to offer public recognition, tag an executive, or repost with a message about how your employee’s accomplishment fits into the corporate or industry context.
Sometimes you want to ensure that your team member gets broader recognition. If they’ve received a major industry award or have been named to a prominent role in a professional association, for example, that’s big news! Coach your employee to send an email to the appropriate executive or whoever manages the company newsletter. Offer to help with the wording of the email, or even send it yourself.
As an inclusive leader, it’s your job to help your employees navigate their careers and the corporate culture. When you find ways to help them self-promote authentically and effectively, everyone wins!
Amy Waninger · ·
As an executive, how much time do you spend cultivating the culture of your organization? Company culture often seems amorphous, and you may be tempted to write it off as “someone else’s job.” But, when your remote team is growing rapidly, ignoring culture can impede progress and create stress for your managers and employees. That’s just what happened to one of our clients.
As a fast-growing, global software company with approximately 5,000 employees, it was not uncommon for the company to have around 40 percent of its staff as “new hires” each year. However, this rapid growth can also lead to issues with company culture and the connection between executives and their teams.
My team and I conducted over one hundred interviews with employees across various departments, countries, and management levels. We determined that culture was inconsistent within the company. Specifically, the executive team had lost touch with the various cultures that were forming in different departments and offices. Because executives weren’t building culture intentionally, they couldn’t manage it.
In addition, we reviewed public reports and internal documents. It was quickly apparent the company lacked clearly defined processes, procedures, expectations, roles, and responsibilities, which made it difficult for both leaders and employees to make decisions.
While many of the leadership team and employees were supportive of the findings and recommendations, some executives were hesitant to let go of the “startup” culture that had originally attracted them to the company.
The biggest takeaway for the executives, in this case, was the realization that good culture doesn’t happen by chance. It cannot be managed or maintained organically as a company grows from a startup to a global enterprise. Executive leaders should not only set business goals, but also set the culture they hope to nurture, with clarity, specificity, and intention.
One of the biggest challenges for the team was identifying their success measurements. Without clear definitions and ongoing socialization of culture-related terms, teams had no basis for enforcing policies, procedures, and behavioral expectations. This lack of consensus and accountability made it difficult for managers and employees to work together effectively.
We provided several short-term recommendations to improve performance. These included clarifying roles, responsibilities, and policies; strategically integrating the diversity and inclusion function; and operationalizing human connection within and across teams. We also advised leaders at every level of the organization, from executives to front-line managers, to be accountable for scheduling and conducting regular one-on-ones with their direct reports.
Leaders should hold one-on-ones monthly, if not weekly, with both their direct and second-level reports. They can maximize these conversations through the use of training, templates, and third-party software solutions like AIM Insights. AIM Insights can provide data and coaching to the leaders of this organization on how to drive their team’s performance, empathize with their team’s concerns, and ensure consistency across the culture. (Disclaimer: Lead at Any Level is an authorized distributor of AIM Insights. Learn how to get your first month free by booking an exploratory call.)
The work you do in your organization matters. Focusing on how you get the work done—your culture—is critical to your success. Use every communication channel available, from the employee handbook to hallway conversations, to set clear and consistent expectations.
If you need help understanding and improving your culture, Lead at Any Level® can help with assessment, advisory, and training services. We’ve helped clients and audiences on all seven continents—including Antarctica—and we can help you, too. To get started, book an exploratory call with us today.
Amy Waninger · ·
Eric Thomas (he/him) is the Global Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of Genesys. Every year, Genesys orchestrates billions of remarkable customer experiences for organizations in more than 100 countries. Genesys employs more than 6,000 people globally.
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