How All Managers Can Become Inclusive Leaders

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | June 21, 2022

The number of executives with diversity and inclusion titles more than doubled between 2015 and 2020, and companies continue to add diversity leaders and entire teams to make their workplaces welcome, safe, and productive for all employees.

But before you tick the inclusion box and move on, consider that one department, one that’s often set apart from the rest, cannot make this happen for an entire company, no matter its size. It takes every single person in an organization, people managers especially.

At From Day One’s June virtual conference on bringing more inclusive approaches to diversity, five experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and employee experience spoke in a panel discussion, which I moderated, on how companies can successfully develop people managers who understand the values of equity and embrace the habits of inclusion.

Charisse Fizer said one of her first actions as chief DEI officer at AtlantiCare health system in New Jersey was adding a new core value: inclusion. This established its importance and set a standard against which people can be evaluated.

The panelists agreed that training is a necessary part of creating managers who prioritize DEI, but if you’re going to train managers, you need to train everyone.

McKendree Hickory, who leads facilitator performance and development at digital training platform LifeLabs Learning, said managers as well as all staff should receive similar training, “so that there is a really org-wide transformation,” and employees can know that their managers will be held to the same standards they are.

Consider the potential of every person in your company, because all of them will affect the DEI culture. “Everybody is a leader. A leader is somebody that is influencing somebody else,” said professional coach Nick Ferraiolo, founder of Elm City Coaching.

From Day One’s panel on inclusive leadership, top row from left: moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Yuri Ramirez of Intel, and Nick Ferraiolo of Elm City Coaching. Bottom row: McKendree Hickory of LifeLabs Learning, Charisse Fizer of AtlantiCare, and Keturah Hallmosley of Seattle Children’s Hospital (Image by From Day One)

Training managers on awareness, but without action, can freeze progress. Hickory said LifeLabs has been most successful when focusing on behavior. “There’s a lot of research that shows that the awareness training, just the bias training, typically either leads to a reaction from people, or just doesn’t lead to change, because ‘Cool, I’m aware that I’m really biased now. But I don’t know what to do about that.’”

New managers may need a little more help than most. Ferraiolo said he has seen newly minted managers struggle, particularly if their direct reports are former coworkers. They’re not sure what kind of leader they should be, or even can be.

“It’s tough when you’re growing from a line worker, to a supervisor, to a manager, and all of a sudden your coworker is now working for you. What tools do you give your staff when you promote them? Do you help them with boundaries? How do you talk to that coworker who’s now a person that’s working for you?”

Don’t just tell people to be DEI leaders, show them how. Intel’s director of the global employee engagement program, Yuri Ramirez, described it this way: “We have to be solution-providers instead of just goal-setters.”

Once they’re trained, managers must be held accountable for the way they lead. Fizer said that at AtlantiCare, inclusion values are a part of manager evaluations. “We have added an accountability area for their performance appraisal. They get rated by the employees about how they’re actually creating this inclusive environment for the staff.”

Still, Hickory noted that, as with any area of accountability, you must make sure expectations are clear. “Before we even get to the ‘Have they failed?’ I think the organization has to do a really thorough diagnostic to actually understand, what did we ask of them in the first place?”

If you’re having trouble getting your managers to take up the DEI cause, it may be a problem of skill rather than will. “My experience is, a lot of times, it’s not a resistance to the idea, it’s either ‘I don’t know how to do this,’ or ‘I’m too scared. I’m really scared to engage in the conversation, or to do this in the wrong way,’” said Hickory.

Fizer said it’s not uncommon for managers to feel like they’re just “going through the motions” to check a box on their performance review. “We are looking to understand exactly what’s getting in the way of you being able to do what we would like you to do.”

It may help to train managers on the idea that inclusion and equity are practiced in small moments and actions. Keturah Hallmosley, who leads people experience at Seattle Children’s Hospital, reminded the audience that “a lot of times we think it’s a grandiose action,” but that turning points for good or ill can be much smaller moments like, for example, when an employee dismisses someone else’s opinion in a meeting or doesn’t give credit when it’s deserved. “It’s in those-day to-day experiences that we all really have the responsibility to demonstrate inclusion,” Hallmosley said.

If the work of DEI is to be shouldered across the organization, how can employers make sure they’re not asking too much of their managers and abdicating the responsibility? Think of it this way: Even though you’re asking managers to change the way they lead, “it’s not delegation, it’s teamwork,” Ramirez said. “It does need to start from the top, getting commitment from leaders, getting a good direction and a strategy.”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.

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With a Bumper Crop of New Options, Benefits Leaders Need to Make Smart Choices

It’s no secret that employees expect more from employers than they did five years ago. Companies have offered innovative solutions from pet care to travel-as-a-benefit to meet the demand. But companies only have so many resources, especially nowadays, as the economy begins to decline. “Many of us are thinking about coming out of this couple of years of such an intensive talent and labor market, where a lot of companies have been under pressure to offer more and more,” said Joanna Daly, vice president of total rewards at IBM. “So I do think we're at an inflection point.”As a result, employers have to make choices about what benefits are the most valuable to employees and prospective hires.Daly spoke with moderator Bryan Walsh, editor for Future Project at Vox Media, at From Day One’s virtual April conference, “Creative Total Rewards to Set Employers Apart,” during a fireside chat session.
“Total rewards” refers to the combination of compensation and benefits that the company provides. At IBM, Daly said, total rewards exist within a broader value proposition and must align with the company’s goals, values, and culture.Keeping Total Rewards SustainableOne challenge employers face is maintaining sustainable benefits, especially in a changing economic landscape. Daly approaches important decisions regarding sustainability by working through a few key questions.First, she considers scale. While it’s important to consider how a new benefit will fit into your company now, it’s also critical to consider how it will work down the line. What are your company’s growth plans? Will this benefit still work as you scale your headcount?“Is that seemingly small investment going to start to become potentially a pretty large expenditure?” Daly asked.Secondly, Daly considers choice. Every dollar spent on one benefit is a dollar the company is choosing not to spend somewhere else. 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People actually perceive more value out of [the sum] than than its individual parts,” Daly said. “And I think one of the most effective ways to do that is really try to align to your culture and your values.”One way to align total rewards with company culture is to take a “design thinking” approach to benefits. Daly considers all of the personas that play a role in benefits–including the employees, their families, business leaders, and prospective hires–to find the areas where their needs align rather than looking at all their differences.“It's where you can find that alignment, that I think that you can find offerings that have that mutually reinforcing impact,” Daly said.For example, IBM used a design thinking approach to create its recognition programs. 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Trying to envision that future person who will be sitting in this seat is something that guides that long-term decision making,” Daly said.Total Rewards ChallengesHuman resources teams face a number of challenges when it comes to building a total rewards package, deciding what benefits to include, and rolling those benefits out to employees.One of those challenges is competing with peer companies’ offerings. Employees are bound to hear about other benefits in their industry and might wonder why their company doesn’t offer the same.But Daly reminded attendees that benefits are a long-term space, and introducing things just to take them away later or simply introducing them to respond to demand, might not play well into long-term planning.Daly said that it’s fine to learn about your competitors and take inspiration from other companies—as long as you’re not too reactive to them. 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Erika Riley | June 06, 2023

Unlocking Our Full Potential: Breaking Free From Limiting Habits, Jobs, and Business Models

Would you believe that even the most accomplished individuals in their field deal with the feeling of being stuck?Adam Alter, the author of Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most relays that Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest living soccer player, is famously quite anxious. When he was starting out his coaches noted that while physically and athletically accomplished, he lacked temperament.Messi subsequently had to learn to quell his anxiety, and his solution might seem paradoxical. “He learned to start the game by not playing for the first few minutes,” Alter told journalist Lila Seidman of the Los Angeles Times during From Day One’s May virtual conference. “He spends the first 2-3 minutes just ambling around. If you plot the path, everybody is darting around. Messi is barely moving: it quells his anxiety, but he’s also tactically beneficial, he’s surveying the territory. 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Angelica Frey | June 05, 2023

Providing Learning & Growth Opportunities for Employees, Even in Austere Times

Finding low-cost learning opportunities can be the difference between keeping an employee and losing them. According to an international poll by McKinsey, 41% of workers who quit their jobs in recent years did so because of a lack of career development opportunities, the most commonly cited reason for voluntary departure.“It’s important that we’re retaining our employees because we need that knowledge internally,” said Nicole Underwood, VP of HR business partners at visual media company Getty Images. The company’s workers are highly specialized, and it can be tough to find replacements. If they’re not able to backfill a vacated position, Getty offers others the chance to volunteer for the responsibilities on the table, opening up reach projects and promotable work. 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Sales teams have learning and development budgets, and so do employee resource groups, said Govindaraju. “We have had very good success working with companies that have ERGs that are already chartered to drive engagement because now we’re bringing learning and engagement into one bucket.”If budget isn’t the problem, then it’s time, Govindaraju added. The HR department is overloaded, as are people managers, and there’s often little time left for running skill development programs. “Managers [are] already burdened with various things. Now you’re adding an element of learning how to code, and now suddenly you are responsible for the development of your team members,” he said. Teneo’s Larsen argued that austerity doesn’t require sacrificing ambition. When time is a luxury, she chooses fewer but bigger projects. Teneo recently flew in 25 senior leaders from around the world with the remit to collaborate and grow the business plan. 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Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | May 30, 2023