People’s ability to make good decisions in a group setting becomes diminished due to the pressures felt by the group.  

Groupthink origins 

Coined by social psychologist Irving Janis in 1972, groupthink was a label Janis used to describe what happens in a group setting when people strive for consensus by minimising conflict, nor sufficiently testing, analysing or evaluating their ideas. 

Through his research, Janis surmised that pressures for conformity restrict the thinking of the group, bias its analysis, promote simplistic and stereotyped thinking, and stifle creative and independent thinking. 

Characteristics of groupthink 

Through his research, Janis identified 8 things that occur within groups suffering from groupthink.

Let’s look at what the characteristics of groupthink are in more detail:

1. Direct pressure on dissenters

An in-group and an out-group are formed when groupthink occurs. The in-group agrees with the decisions and directions, while the out-group does not. When this happens the in-group often puts direct pressure on the out-group to conform or they are viewed as dissenters or disloyal. 

2. Illusion of invulnerability

In-group members often feel overconfident as a result of lack of questioning, which leads them to take greater risks around decision making. 

3. Illusion of unanimity

When there is a lack of questions or alternate opinions, group members view this as a sign that everyone is unanimous in their agreement. This can make it harder for others to offer dissenting viewpoints or opinions. 

4. Mindguards

Group leaders are shielded by self-appointed gatekeepers who keep out different opinions or outside influences that could negatively impact the group identity. 

5. Collective rationalisation

When a group is in the throes of groupthink they dismiss outside information, warnings, or criticisms because this would result in the need to dive deeper or reconsider their opinions. 

6. Self-censorship

When members start to repress their own ideas or opinions that put them at adds with the group, or even doubt their own thoughts and beliefs, they are experiencing self-censorship 

7. Stereotyped views of out-group

In-group members have been known to argue with, verbally abuse, or attack out-group members for their dissent. Negative biases occur. 

8. Belief in inherent morality

Defective decision making occurs when the in-groups unwavering belief in their own inherent morality and ethical correctness takes over. The group often disregards any consequences of their actions. 

Why is groupthink limiting? 

A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when:

• Its members are similar in background;
• The group is insulated from outside opinions; and
• There are no clear rules for decision making. 

When pressures for unanimity seem overwhelming, members are less motivated to realistically appraise the alternative courses of action available to them. 

Groupthink ensures you are getting the most popular, low-quality ideas implemented as a standard practice in your organisation.  

The best idea isn’t always the most popular, and the quick decisions aren’t always the best solutions that address the need or solve the problem. 

In fact, decisions shaped by groupthink have low probability of achieving successful outcomes. 

What does groupthink look like in a workplace setting? 

Here is what we often see in a workplace that suffers from groupthink: 

• Low innovation and creativity 
• People do not feel safe to speak up or share their ideas or opinions 
• Conforming is valued more than making good decisions or problem solving 
• The bigger voices are always the ones who are heard, shutting down those who aren’t given a voice 
• Maintaining the status quo simply to achieve group cohesion and avoid confrontation 

If there is groupthink around you in your workplace you might hear people say “this is the way we do things around here” when you raise a new idea to pressure you to conform. 

People have been known to actively defend and justify why your individual idea or opinion won’t work and you keep getting shut down. Position power or influence is used to keep things as they are. 

You might see or experience managers and leaders inviting the same people to key meetings in order to keep things running the same way they always have been. 

When “the same” is valued, we often don’t hear about or seek our new and innovative ways of growing, solving problems, or making decisions. 

It’s clear that this could have detrimental impacts on an organisation. So how do we eliminate groupthink when we see it happening? 

The solution to groupthink 

Inclusion is the key to solving the problem of groupthink. 

This lies in leaders overtly indicating their willingness and desire to hear unique ideas, thoughts, and opinions. 

Leaders need to get courageously curious about their teams and the processes followed to reach decisions. If they are inquisitive, they are more likely to learn. 

Group leaders can encourage disclosure and sharing of information – even if it doesn’t align with the group’s thinking or direction – in order to significantly reduce the characteristics of groupthink. 

If groupthink is happening right now in your organisation then reducing it will take effort and time, however the size of the prize will be big. 

There isn’t a quick band-aid solution but there is a change to the ways of working and leading that will help to reduce groupthink. 

Inclusive leadership reduces groupthink 

When leaders learn the ‘how’ of increasing inclusivity, they will see that changing their human interactions with their work colleagues can have massive implications for groupthink. 

Being inclusive of all, means valuing the difference we bring to the table and recognising that we all deserve to have a voice and feel safe and secure in raising our ideas. And consciously acting on this in our micro-actions. 

It means we support our colleagues to be courageous in their thinking and we actively listen and take on and implement suggestions. 

We can’t just tell our teams to “be innovative”, we need to create a culture that supports wild ideas and encourages outside of the box thinking. 

We all deserve to work for an organisation that values our uniqueness and encourages our participation. It can start by: 

1. Building diverse teams 

2. Intentionally structuring meetings 

3. Engaging outsiders 

4. Seeking unfiltered input 

5. Encouraging constructive conflict 

Embed habits to support your leaders to be more inclusive with our inclusion habits program for leaders. 

Apply here. 

However, what I see and what I know – and I know you know too – is that the business critical, urgent jobs always seem to come first. 

Where then does diversity and inclusion go on the agenda? 

It’s gets pushed further and further down the to-do list, until all of a sudden, the organisation gets to next year and nothing’s been done in the D&I space. 

The strategy is sitting there but the implementation is no longer a priority. 

In this article I want to talk to leaders about how to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace by linking your efforts to other things you are doing every day. 

It’s about simplifying things for busy leaders so that they can embed inclusion practices into their everyday interactions with their colleagues and staff. 

Before we begin, you can watch a recap of this article in this video:

Let’s jump into the bulk of the article with a look at what diversity and inclusion are in the workplace. 

What is diversity and inclusion in the workplace 

Diversity in the workplace is when your workforce is comprised of difference.  

It’s more to do with filling quota boxes and ensuring that difference is visible. You might see that the folks you work with come from different backgrounds, cultures, races, or religions. They might be different genders, ages, sexual orientations. They may have different skills and experiences and bring with them a host of different opinions and much, much more. 

Look around your workplace – do you see diversity and difference? Are your people acting differently from each other – are they solving problems differently, falling back on their different ideologies and ways of working?  

If yes, you’ve got one side of the equation working in your favour. 

Diversity in the workplace is one side of the equation 

So, you can see difference around you – that is excellent and is one half of the D&I equation. 

What we need to look for now is inclusion in the workplace. Because when leaders are inclusive of the difference – and promote being inclusive of the difference – that’s where organisations can experience the benefits. 

It’s where the impact on the bottom line can be felt and the ripple effect is experienced far and wide across the organisation.  

And it begins with leaders firstly knowing and then practicing inclusive behaviours. 

Inclusiveness in the workplace 

Inclusivity in the workplace is where diverse people feel valued and respected, are treated fairly, and have the same opportunities to progress – on their own terms – and can contribute their perspectives and talents without fear of judgement.  

Inclusion in the workplace is closely linked with a sense of belonging, where, as an employee, I feel safe showing up as my true authentic self and I feel respected for my uniqueness. I feel supported when I bring conversations to the table, and I am not shut down when my ideas don’t align to the majority. 

A lot of different elements come into play in order to create an inclusive workplace. 

How then can we support leaders as they work towards promoting inclusive practices within diverse workplaces? 

You’ve got to help leaders understand the bottom-line implications – what they’re missing out on when they aren’t inclusive. 

The mindset still when we talk about diversity and inclusion is very much to say well it’s the right thing to do. We know we must do it, but how do we go about doing it? Organisations aren’t sure, so they end up being stuck, doing nothing. 

Or an organisation says, well it’s all about diversity groups. And we’ve got all those boxes ticked and flicked, so we are good to go. We’re done. 

You can see that organisations are only focusing on the diversity side of the equation. They need to move to the inclusion side. 

Because when the focus is on the inclusion side of the equation the size of the prize is big.  

What are the benefits of inclusion? 

The first indicator of an increase in inclusion should be an increase in engagement.  

We all know that hits the bottom line. But inclusion is also going to increase productivity, it’s going to increase collaboration, it’s going to increase customer service. 

Furthermore, an organisation that is inclusive of its diverse peoples is going to experience: 

• Improved creativity 
• Increased profits 
• Reduced employee turnover 
• Improved company reputation 
• Wider range of skills 
• Improves cultural insights 
• Improved compassion 
• Increased talent pipeline 
• More agile workforce 

It’s clear to see that we need to get leaders to experience the business case for inclusion – and fast – because time is of the essence. 

Leaders want to promote diversity and inclusion 

Inclusive leaders:  

• Acknowledge the uneasiness of difference  
• Communicate as one team  
• Constantly challenge the status quo while being comfortable with being wrong  
• Get vulnerable with their teammates  
• Are courageously curious and   
• Remain fair at an individual level  

These virtues enable them to leverage diversity for the benefit of the whole organisation. 

It takes practice, mindfulness, an awareness of your unconscious biases, and thoughtful coaching to become a great inclusive leader.  

Just like any skill or new habit, inclusive leadership needs to be learned methodically over time, and practised day in and day out. 

When leaders participate in our Inclusion Habits for Leaders program, they experience the power of inclusiveness, and they want more! 

When they really dedicate themselves to the diversity and inclusion agenda, they start to see and feel the benefits of being inclusive in their every day. 

Why should you invest and prioritise D&I within your organisation? 

What are the benefits of a prioritised diversity and inclusion agenda? 

Here are a few: 

It stimulates innovation: Diversity builds your organisation’s knowledge base by bringing together people of different backgrounds. This can spark off innovative solutions to business problems, helping you grow your market share.  

It increases employee productivity: By bringing together people of different skills, knowledge, and lived experiences, your organisation can accomplish more work.  

It helps you attract top talent: More and more job seekers consider workplace diversity to be an important factor when evaluating job offers. Inclusive leadership can help shape your organisation’s workforce by attracting diverse, talented employees.   

It enables you to serve diverse customers and enter new markets: Inclusive leaders can leverage diverse employees to serve diverse customers. They can also expand into new markets, without letting language and cultural barriers hold them back.  

Inclusive leadership leads to personal growth for both leaders and employees, as they’re compelled to break the ice with people of different backgrounds, skills and experiences.  

Quite essentially, inclusive leadership helps you build the workforce of the future. 

Leaders have so many urgent things on their agenda – diversity and inclusion needs to make a much louder noise to get the attention it deserves. 

Taking the first step to support your leaders to become more inclusive 

When you’re ready to take the next step to support your leaders as they promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace, tell us your goals here. 

We will let you know if our inclusive leadership program matches your goals so that you can experience a true return on your investment to prioritising D&I within your organisation. 

Malcolm Forbes says, “Diversity is the art of thinking independently together”.  

Every individual is unique, and the coming together of different perspectives, cultural backgrounds and races is what makes diversity special. 

But when we think specifically with a business lens on, what is it that makes diversity so important? 

Contrary to widespread belief, we need to decouple diversity and inclusion to truly understand the why. I speak about this in this article on the dimensions of diversity. 

Once we understand the fundamentals inclusion, we then bring the diversity back into the picture. I outline more in this article on diversity management.

Here are 7 reasons why this is critically important to your company’s success: 

1. Diversity stimulates creativity and innovation 

When you have people from different backgrounds and experiences working at the same company, it brings together different perspectives, and different ways of solving problems.  

When different perspectives come together, there’s a higher chance of sparking off innovative ideas that make a difference to the bottom line. Basically, diversity builds your company’s knowledge!  

According to research by Deloitte, companies with more inclusive cultures are six times more innovative, eight times more likely to achieve better business results, and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets than organisations with less diversity. Another study shows that diverse companies were 45% more likely to report annual market share growth.  

2. Diversity increases employee productivity 

Diversity brings together a variety of skills.  

For instance, someone may be lacking in numerical skills, while another employee may be an expert at it. And when we pull together all of these skills, more work gets done, boosting the overall productivity of the workplace.  

Research shows that companies benefit the most when all levels of management are racially diverse. In fact, a 1% increase in racial diversity increases firm productivity by between $729 and $1590 per employee per year, which is a massive shift.  

3. A diverse company attracts top talent 

People want to work for companies that are diverse, and progressive in their thinking.  

If your company culture and job descriptions are more inclusive, you’re more likely to attract top talent, irrespective of their age, sex, background or race.  

The more talented your workforce is, the higher the chances of your company being more efficient, and profitable. In fact, 67% of new job seekers consider workplace diversity to be an important factor when evaluating job offers.  

If the hiring patterns and recruitment strategies at your workplace are geared towards fostering diversity, your company’s talent pipeline will always be robust.  

4. A diverse company attracts diverse customers 

Think about it, if your employees are diverse, they can serve diverse customers.  

Being able to serve customers from multiple backgrounds will also play an important role in boosting your firm’s profitability, since you’ll have the ability to serve new customer segments.  

In fact, having a diverse workforce could also enable your company to launch into a new market, in a new country, which has the potential of increasing revenue and market share.  

5. Reduces costs by hiring internationally 

Being a diverse company means you can hire internationally. For instance, if you’re looking to hire technical staff, you could turn to hiring technical employees in India at half the wages.  

By broadening your horizons, you open up new territories to onboard diverse employees, which can offer a huge cost advantage to your company. You no longer need to restrict yourself to hiring diverse employees from within your territory and can look to other countries and locations.  

6. A diverse workforce is future focused 

Taking a long-term view on how the overall population and workforce will shape up into the future is important for any company.  

When your company reflects the workforce of the future, it can serve the population composition of tomorrow. Not just that, diversity also helps in boosting employee engagement, and reducing employee turnover, because if employees feel included, they’re more likely to feel engaged, and less likely to leave the company in the long run.  

7. A diverse company leads to personal growth 

Diversity in the workplace means that people are compelled to step out of their comfort zone, and embrace new cultures and ways of thinking. Through interacting with diverse employees, people expand their outlook on things, and grow at both a personal and professional level.  

Think about it, if you’re in a team with a mix of Asians, Americans, Europeans, men and women, you’ll be forced to get to know their culture, their religion, their beliefs, and their values, which would all be very different to the ones you hold.  

All of this can contribute to your own personal growth.  

So, why is diversity important? 

Even if your company does embrace diversity, this is only half the equation. 

The strength and power of diversity is harnessed when your leaders and employees are inclusive of the difference that surrounds them. 

That’s why it’s so important for your leaders to build habits that help them leverage diversity. 

A lot of leaders understand the why of inclusion, but it’s the how that can be illusive. Our Inclusion Habits for Leaders program takes away the confusion and teaches leaders how to: 

• Acknowledge the uneasiness of difference 
• Communicate as one team 
• Constantly challenge the status quo while being comfortable with being wrong 
• Get vulnerable with their teammates 
• Are courageously curious and  
• Remain fair at an individual level 

If you’re interested in seeing how the program may be rolled out as a leadership course within your organisation, your first step is to take our disruption questionnaire, here. 

Our team will reach out for your next steps. 

Clearly, diversity management is the key to unlock the potential of your diverse employees and translate it into tangible outcomes.  

But what is diversity management in the first place? 

Diversity management is the art that helps your company nurture inclusion, use policies and strategies to promote equality in the workplace, and create a work environment in which diverse employees can thrive.  

Simply put, it’s the secret sauce to leveraging diverse employees!  

And when it comes to diversity and inclusion policy it’s all about decoupling the two concepts to focus on inclusion first. Once we understand the dimensions of diversity we then return to diversity management principles. 

We’ve outlined five steps you can follow to ensure you’re ticking all the boxes while managing diversity at your company.  

Let’s dive in. 

1. Have a dedicated leadership team for managing diversity 

If you really want to manage diversity seriously, you need a dedicated team that’s got nothing on its agenda apart from creating and implementing an effective diversity and inclusion strategy.  

Many companies choose to ensure they have dedicated functional leads on an executive team, such as the CEO, CFO, and COO. 

Go one step further to make inclusion a functional reality. 

A dedicated diversity leader brings commitment and a focus to diversity management, which isn’t always possible for other functional leaders who are too busy with mainstream activity. At the very least, ensuring you have a Chief Diversity Officer on your executive team who takes a proactive role in supporting diverse employees and championing inclusion is a positive step in the right direction.  

Supporting diversity and inclusion at the highest levels of management is almost like a prerequisite for it to flourish, and take shape at your company.  

And as always, it’s the demonstrated leadership direction that will trickle down through all levels of employees, making diversity management a holistic endeavour that works.  

2. Collect and measure diversity data across your company 

What gets measured, gets managed. Diversity management is no different!  

Pick KPIs and metrics for diversity management that allow you to assess where you stand, where you need to be, and how much room for improvement there is in the context of your diversity and inclusion agenda.   

Some examples of metrics to measure include: 

• How many women are employed in your company? 
• How many women hold senior leadership roles at your company?  
• How many races make up your workforce?  
• How many people of a different sexual orientation work at your company?  
• How much money do you invest in diversity and inclusion training?  
• How much revenue is attributable to your diversity and inclusion experiments?  
• How many cross-cultural events did you conduct?  
• How many staff members do you have working on your diversity & inclusion program? 

While this may not be an exhaustive list of metrics/information to collect, you need to decide what’s right for your company to collect and measure over time. 

However, it’s not just about tokenistic ticking and flicking, it’s also about ensuring that the diversity within your company is continuously included. 

When inclusion is high you will see the outcomes flow through to: 

1. Customer engagement 

2. Diversity 

3. Safety and wellbeing 

4. Employee engagement 

5. Innovation 

6. Collaboration 

7. Productivity 

8. Agile leadership 

9. Talent pipeline 

10. Asset leverage 

11. Psychological safety 

3. Have a recruitment policy that hires diverse applicants 

Your diversity policy should clearly state what sort of diversity goals your company is working towards. Do you want more women in your company to hold leadership roles? Or are you focusing on hiring people with a different sexual orientation?  

Ideally, your diversity policy and procedures should be geared towards having a good balance between men and women in key roles at your company. Your employees should come from different cultural backgrounds and races and a conscious effort should be made to attract applicants from different diversity groups to achieve a workforce that’s diverse across all levels.  

Another thing to keep in mind while designing your diversity policy is to focus on ensuring that your recruits are inclusive in their behaviours and interactions. 

Always remember to hire for the future, because progressive companies realise how much of a difference a good team can make to their bottom line.  

4. Invest in diversity and inclusion training 

You must allocate a certain portion of your company’s budget towards diversity and inclusion training. Your leaders and employees may have several unconscious biases that they need to be made aware of, before they can start being more inclusive.  

This is where the expertise of an external leadership coaching company comes in handy.  

Make sure you link your diversity and inclusion training to your business goals. When your employees and leaders see that you’re interested in making diversity work in a business sense, they’ll start taking training more seriously, and view D&I goals and objectives as an important part of their responsibilities.  

Your goal should be to train the leaders in your organisation to become change agents and role models for diversity and inclusion. 

5. Monitor and evaluate your diversity initiatives and experiments 

Diversity management should be viewed as an ongoing process. There’s no point collecting and measuring data, if you don’t make the time to reflect on how your diversity initiatives are performing.  

At the end of the day, diversity is important and should not be about fluffy events, talks, and promises, but a real exercise to boost business results in every little way. Know when to iterate, pivot or adapt your diversity management strategies, while remaining focused on the end goal is the key!   

Take the first step today 

Start by assessing your current diversity management status by taking our questionnaire. You’ll get a sense of whether our inclusive course for leaders is perfectly placed to help you disrupt your culture with more inclusiveness!  

It can train women and minorities to feel supported as they face the challenges of working in a diverse organisation. Following the right mentorship program can result in participants feeling more confident and satisfied with their jobs.  

Moreover, a study found that 32% of minorities found their mentoring relationship to be ‘extremely important’ to them.  

Mentorship plays a big role in organisations looking to boost inclusion, develop talent, and build a progressive culture.  

A structured mentorship program is the key to success.

So, what exactly is a structured mentorship program? 

A structured mentoring program is a program that creates relationships between mentors and mentees by removing the unknowns.

These relationships are there to:

• Support to diverse employees
• Lend a listening ear
• Encourage teamwork
• Increase the visibility of issues related to diversity, and
• Develop the careers of diverse employees.  

Let’s look at some ways a structured mentoring program can operate: 

Reverse mentoring 

Mentoring is not just about a senior leader coaching a junior executive. It can be the other way round.  

A structured mentorship program makes it possible for senior managers and leaders to learn from others; often referred to as a ‘flat’ management structure when mentoring.  

In this way senior leaders benefit from the experiences, knowledge and ideas of their diverse junior employees. While giving junior employees a chance to express themselves freely and bring their unique differences to the forefront.  

Promote diverse employees 

A mentorship program provides support to diverse employees to further their careers and ideas at the workplace.  

Mentors can leverage their authority and influence to help advance the careers of diverse, underrepresented employees. This can be through both informal and formal sponsorship activities, and in both ways, diverse employees benefit. 

Build ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) 

Mentoring helps in building employee resource groups across the organisation.  

An ERG is a group of diverse employees who come together on the basis of their differences. ERGs can be formed for women, or employees with different sexual orientations. The coming together of these employees gives them a voice, and the opportunity to work on the basis of their common ground.  

Use an external coach 

When a program is facilitated by an external coach, they can help catalyse the mentoring relationships across the organisation.  

This format works well to help develop key mentoring relationships internally, as well as guide both the mentor and mentee on how to take things forward.  

The link between mentorship and workplace inclusion 

We’ve discussed the different mentoring models and benefits to those individuals involved, but what about the organisation? 

Why should an organisation invest in a mentoring program at all?  

With many different mentorship models, what are the benefits to the organisation?  

Catalyse cross functional relationships 

Mentoring relationships can be formed across the organisation. You may have a mentee working in the finance department being mentored by someone in marketing, catalysing cross functional relationships and a transfer of knowledge.  

Both the mentor and mentee get to see things from a different angle if it’s a cross functional relationship, leading to a growth of perspectives and relationship development. 

Develop leaders of the future 

A structured mentoring program plays a critically important role in developing leaders of the future. 

Although we would hope that our leaders can lead, what we want are leaders who are inclusive of difference and are comfortable with getting vulnerable with their staff. When we communicate as one team we are all working towards the same goal. 

With the right mentoring program in place, managers are supported to become leaders capable of leveraging diversity. 

Boost bottom line revenue 

An organisation with a mentorship program is more likely to leverage diversity fruitfully, than one that doesn’t.  

Research tells us time and time again that when inclusive behaviours are sustained, staff are more productive, innovative, engaged, collaborative, and psychologically safe. 

And when this occurs on an ongoing basis, an organisation sees the impact on their revenue. 

Don’t forget the data 

As with any other initiative or program, your organisation must measure the data in order to determine the return on investment. 

And when you choose a mentorship program that focuses on inclusive behaviours, and supporting mentors and mentees through a structured approach, the data becomes easier to identify and capture.  

Structured mentoring programs allow organisations to answer questions like:  

• How many women, people of colour, or other minority groups, within your organisation got promoted after the program?  
• Are your diverse employees reporting an increase in work satisfaction levels after the program?  
• What do our attrition numbers look like after rolling out the program across the organisation?  
• What anecdotes are our leaders sharing that indicate an increase in psychological safety and wellness at our organisation?  

Choose an inclusive and diversity coach 

Leverage the knowledge and experience of an inclusion and diversity coach in this field.  

For instance, at Emberin, our structured inclusive workplace mentoring program, has 35,000 participants worldwide, and has achieved significant results for our clients. We know what it takes to boost inclusion at the workplace, and so, engaging our services will help you benefit from our experience. 

We recommend you start by improving the ability of the women in your organisation to develop and advance their core personal and professional skills.  

Get in touch with us today to talk about our women’s mentorship program to start making radical changes at your organisation. 

1. What procedures should you have in place to make diverse employees feel included?  
2. How should you create a hiring policy that creates a workforce with a good mix of dimensions of diversity?  
3. Where do inclusion strategies sit within your diversity policy?

While these questions should be answered, it’s also important to create an overarching strategy for any course of action. You need to work towards having a well-designed, comprehensive diversity and inclusion policy that documents your diversity and inclusion agenda.  

In this article, we’ll talk about how you can create a diversity policy and procedures that work. You’ll learn the things you need to do to ensure your policy gets put into action.  

Let’s jump straight in. 

Invest in diversity and inclusion training 

You must allocate a certain portion of your organisation’s budget towards diversity and inclusion training.  

Your leaders and employees may have several unconscious biases that they need to be made aware of, before they can start being more inclusive. This is where the expertise of an external leadership coaching company comes in handy.  

While the objective of unconscious bias training isn’t to make your people feel ashamed of their biases, it is imperative that we are all self-aware of our beliefs so that we can demonstrate better inclusive behaviours. 

Make sure you link your training to your business goals.  

When your employees and leaders see that you’re interested in making diversity work in a business sense, they’ll start taking training more seriously, and view D&I goals and objectives as an important part of their responsibilities.  

Your goal should be to train the leaders in your organisation to become change agents and role models for diversity and inclusion. 

For example, an organisation that’s invested seriously in D&I training is Vedanta. With their focus being on creating gender diversity in their company, they’ve created a series of workshops on ‘gender intelligence’ for all employees to attend and participate in, throughout the organisation. These workshops aim to improve the diversity management capability of existing leaders in the organisation, so everyone’s contributions can be valued and channelised.  

Decide the composition of your workforce 

Your diversity policy and procedures should clearly state what sort of diversity goals your organisation is working towards. Measurements of success are also important to articulate at this stage. 

Do you want more women in your company to hold leadership roles? Or are you focusing on hiring people with a different sexual orientation?  

Ideally, your policy and procedures should be geared towards having a good balance between men and women in key roles at your organisation. Your employees should come from different cultural backgrounds and races and a conscious effort should be made to attract applicants from different diversity groups to achieve a workforce that’s diverse across all levels.  

Bear in mind though, that you need a critical mass of 30% before minority voices can begin to be heard. What this means is that you need at least 30% of a certain type of employee before they can start to have a say in the way things are done. For instance, if your company has 90% men, and 10% women, women may not be able to get their voices heard, but if you have 70% men, and 30% women, then women may collectively be able to get their point across and prevent themselves from being under-represented.  

Another thing to keep in mind is the local and national laws in place in your territory. 

You want to make sure you have a robust policy that complies with the relevant legislation of your territory in order to provide equal opportunities to all your employees, while minimising racism of any kind.  

Have specific diversity policy and procedures for inclusion  

It’s no longer not enough to simply say you’re inclusive! You must put your words into action by having specific procedures to ensure inclusion actually happens in your organisation. Ensure you consider social inclusion strategies as well. For example you can:  

• Have strict anti-discrimation rules in place for protecting human rights. Anti-discrimation rules should be in place for age, sex, race, and disability. 
• Pay close attention to dietary and cultural needs during company events. Make sure everyone is invited, and encouraged to participate in company social events.  
• Invest in psychological safety to ensure that everyone has a sense of belonging. You can do this by conducting surveys to know if people feel psychologically safe at your company, and if not, then why.  
• Have a code of ethics and business conduct that supports diversity and inclusion. Within this, you should have a statement of commitment to establish that the company is committed to maintaining a diverse and inclusive work atmosphere. You should make it clear that everyone should treat employees with respect.  
• Put some rules in place to celebrate the differences of your employees, with respect to their religion, race, colour, age, sex, gender, or nationality. You want employees to feel that their difference is what the company wants them to bring, and celebrating them is one way to encourage them to come forward with their uniqueness.  

Monitor, measure and iterate 

You don’t just create and implement a diversity policy and procedures and leave it at that. You need to constantly monitor them, measure the difference they’re making and then iterate on them, so they are perpetually refined.   

Be sure to let your employees know that they can report any conduct that conflicts with the policy. This way, everyone is constantly kept in check to ensure the policy and procedures are followed to a T. 

One way to measure the effectiveness is to conduct surveys. These can be internal surveys where you seek the opinions of your employees, or external surveys in the form of an external audit where you get a third party to come and audit your organisation’s diversity status. The number of awards your company gets for diversity and inclusion achievements can be another yardstick to investigate.  

Is it time for you to double down for better diversity and inclusion success? 

While you should absolutely always be monitoring and adjusting your diversity policy and procedures, remember to also look at D&I from the bottom line. 

Your organisation is in the business of being successful and to produce tangible outcomes you need to figure out what’s working and what’s not – from a D&I lens. 

If you think it’s time to invest in D&I training so your leaders are supported to be more inclusive and to ensure that your organisation is set up for long-term success, then consider completing our disruption questionnaire.  

It will help you to ascertain if our programs are positioned to help your specific organisational goals for D&I and, it’s completely obligation free. 

As inclusive leaders you should be constantly communicating with your diverse team about how much you value their presence and contribution in your organisation. Letting them know you care is key.  

Valuing the diversity that your team brings to the organisation helps to develop a sense of belonging. And when employees feel like they belong then you will experience a boost to the overall creativity and innovation among your employees.  

It won’t take long, believe me, until you start to notice the flow on effect to the bottom line.

But how do you show to your employees that you are in fact valuing diversity?  

In this article, I’m going to cover off on 5 ways. Let’s begin.

#1: Recognise and appreciate diversity  

It starts with learning to recognise diversity.  

Diversity in the workplace comes in all shapes and sizes and colours. The dimensions of diversity are vast and some are more obvious than others. Yes there are different cultures, skin tone, genders, styles, and preferences that many of us can recognise almost instantly.

But there are also other diverse ways of working that aren’t always so obvious.

Consider the neuro-diverse people who often mask their diversity when they interact others. Or consider introvert versus extrovert personality types and their ways of working and solving problems. And then there are LGBTQ persons who choose not to be overt in their sexual orientation.

We are surrounded by difference and uniqueness every day and yet sometimes we forget that our difference is our superpower.

So, when an employee contributes a unique perspective on a business problem, shows initiative to connect with people or a problem from a different angle, or gives you a new perspective on a work situation, consider expressing your appreciation towards them for bringing their contribution to the table.

As an inclusive leader you can begin to show that you are valuing diversity with a simple ‘thank you’. Expressing appreciation, whether publicly or privately, encourages your employees to be more open and forthcoming with their diverse opinions and initiatives. Your gratitude means a lot to your employees as it gives them a clear indication of what you value, helping promote the right types of behaviour and actions from your employees.  

#2: Invest in D&I programs with an ROI focus

When you put your money where your mouth is by investing in diversity and inclusion programs, it sends a clear signal to your employees that you are valuing diversity.  

Make sure you invest in programs that have an ROI focus, so you’re letting your employees know that you’re interested in leveraging their difference and translating it into real tangible results.  

Your employees will then view your investment in diversity and inclusion as a serious one, since it would be closely tied to your organisation’s financial performance.  

Your employees should see that you value diversity from a business context, not just as a casual way to make your employees socialise over cultural nuances.  

#3: Design and run inclusion experiments

To show you value diversity, it’s important you’re constantly designing experiments to test your hypothesis around diversity and inclusion.  

For example, you might find that two teams in your organisation are constantly in conflict, blaming each other when there’s a client problem.  

To address this problem, you could design an experiment to have a compulsory ‘Friday morning coffee’ session which both teams have to attend.  

You could set a rule for this catchup that for the first hour in the meeting, people only talk about things that are unrelated to work, like who they are, and what they like doing.  

This informal catchup between the two teams could help break the ice, and fix the communication problems between them. It could result in a massive increase in collaboration, minimising conflict and boosting productivity.  

If you value diversity, you will constantly design experiments. Experimentation will help you refine your diversity and inclusion strategy, and build it for the long term.  

#4: Educate yourself and your leaders 

Make the time to educate yourself and the leaders in your organisation about diversity. This involves becoming aware about different cultural traditions, different approaches to work, and getting to know your colleagues on a more personal level.  

We are all different and our difference is what makes us strong and unique. 

Work to encourage your leaders to move from having a ‘local mindset’ to having a ‘global mindset’. Educate yourself about world events and international politics, be open to travel opportunities, and actively seek out new perspectives from your colleagues.  

You’ll then figure out a way to build international friendships, and leverage your diverse employees more effectively, while also finding a common ground with them to connect with them more meaningfully.  

#5: Build a workplace culture that values diversity 

In all honesty, your entire organisation’s culture should already revolve around diversity and inclusion – and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be the case. 

When it comes to disrupting the way diversity and inclusion solutions are delivered within your organisation, I strongly suggest you start by removing the dimensions of diversity. 

I know this is a bold statement given that in this article I’m promoting that we value diversity – but hear me out. 

When we remove the dimensions of diversity we allow ourselves to focus on the human interactions that can and should occur despite our difference. 

Once we understand how our interactions promote inclusion then we can bring back the diversity dimensions. 

It’s the basis of my inclusion program for leaders and it’s the basis of my newest best-selling book. It’s also how I’ve been able to successfully support thousands of leaders across the globe to become more inclusive in their every day. 

Are you ready to take the next step towards valuing diversity? 

To truly assess whether your company is ready to tackle the challenges of creating a diverse and inclusive workplace, consider doing an internal audit that tells you where you stand.  

Complete this questionnaire on our website to help us ascertain whether your organisation is ready to disrupt the delivery of inclusion and diversity solutions.  

And of course, there are many benefits to having a diverse workforce. Such as:  

• Usually, the more diversity in the workplace is, the higher the likelihood that you’ll generate creative solutions to problems. A recent study found that there’s a direct correlation between diversity and innovation. This is because a plethora of opinions and perspectives when fused together generate interesting, unique outcomes.  
• Diversity leads to increased profits. Another study by McKinsey found that companies with diverse executive boards show a 95% higher return on equity than those with homogenous boards.  
• Diverse companies attract the best talent. A study by Glassdoor found that 76% of new job seekers say that a diverse workforce is a highly important consideration when evaluating companies and job offers. This shows that the current generation of employees is looking for a diverse and progressive place to work. 

So how do you leverage diversity in the workplace to find solid solutions to real business problems?  

Here are a few strategies:  

Find out how your diverse employees would solve a problem 

While you may be accustomed to relying on your ‘usual go-to’ employees, it’s time you started giving your diverse employees a chance to solve business problems.  

Your diverse employees have been exposed to different cultures and work environments, and may come up with a different solution to your problem, which might even make more commercial sense.  

For instance, if you’re looking for a new way to motivate employees, your Australian employees may only be able to suggest a barbeque party, or an outing to a footy match. While your diverse teammates may have other ideas like going to a movie or musical night, or other non-monetary incentives which might be more inclusive in nature for all employees.  

An inclusive leader gets curious about how their team would solve problems differently to the status quo. 

Tap into the networks of your diverse workforce 

Your diverse employees have diverse networks. For instance, an American you’ve hired may have networks in the US, while a Chinese employee will have different networks around the globe. 

In the globally connected and interdependent world we live in, it’s important you’re acting locally, but thinking globally. That’s why it may pay to tap into the networks of your employees to leverage diversity in your workplace for generating tangible business outcomes.  

An American employee may be able to find you technologically advanced professionals to connect with, while a Chinese employee may be able to find you cheap manufacturers for your product in China.  

The sky’s the limit when it comes to the number of possibilities that can emerge if you leverage your employee networks in all parts of the world.  

Channelise diverse employees according to their strengths and interests 

As a leader, you must capitalise on the strengths and interests of your employees and their types of diversity. This creates a win-win situation since your employees do what they’re good at, and your business benefits from high-quality work.  

When we generalise and, as an example, only hire men for technological roles and women for design roles, we miss out on a whole host of skill and talent that comes when we broaden our biases. 

A person who has an analytical brain, probably has a keen eye for detail and they could support an organisation in a range of business areas, not just be pigeonholed based on their gender. 

Similarly, a person who has a disability may have a very different view of the world and of getting the job done in a way that is accessible for them – this means they don’t necessarily have to work a 9-5 role, nor do they necessarily need to be physically present in an office to produce their best work. 

Fuse the ideas of your diverse workforce 

The best insights come from combining two or more ideas. As a leader, you need to be the one who facilitates your diverse workforce into sharing their ideas. Once you have a pipeline full of ideas, you can strategically combine them to come up with something unique.  

When organisations support and encourage employees to bring their whole selves to work and to connect with others who are like them, then they feel empowered to be innovative, collaborative, and engaged with the organisation.

Many organisations are embracing the development of formalised ERG programs to support their diverse employees in a way that works for them. 

Change the way you think about diversity in the workplace

Diversity isn’t just about coming from a different race or having a different sexual orientation – there are many different dimensions of diversity. From a work perspective, it’s also about having a difference of opinion or a different approach to problem solving.  

Just because you have a few women, a few men, a few Latinos, a few Africans, a few Europeans, and a few Asians at your workplace doesn’t mean you have a diverse workforce. Consider the different ways of working, the different ways of problem solving, and the different styles of learning that each one of us brings to the workplace. 

Expand your view of what diversity means. Minimising racial issues is only the start of what it means to be diverse and inclusive.  

True diversity comes when you can allow completely different perspectives to co-exist, while trying to combine them to generate creative and inclusive solutions. It’s about being comfortable with confrontation, and disagreement, and yet striving to find the best solution, inclusively. 

Wrapping up diversity in the workplace 

Malcolm Forbes said “Diversity is the art of thinking independently, together.” And that couldn’t be truer in an organisational context.  

Support independent thinking and become a great inclusive leader who can bring out diverse perspectives from employees, while knowing when to combine them to produce great solutions.  

Start by finding out more when you preview the first two chapters of my newest book – The 6 Habits of Being an Inclusive Leader. 

Positive micro actions are evident in a workplace that is focused on holding leaders accountable to their daily words, behaviours and actions. It is in this repetition of their micro habits, where the whole picture comes together for inclusive leaders with an impactful D&I strategy.  

This is because when leaders focus on their inclusive habits the impact can be felt on the company’s ROI, employee retention, development of the talent pipeline, and ultimately business revenue.

Let’s explore more about micro actions to identify the impact on your D&I strategy for greater results. 

Why create a D&I workplace?

As would be expected, diversity and inclusion as individual concepts are actually closely intertwined and often interchangeable.  

It is this decoupling of diversity and inclusion that will have the most impact on a workplace where repetitive micro inequalities go unchecked. This is because, as I’ve discovered, leaders are often unaware of the impact their unconscious bias can have on diverse hires. 

Now, I’m not saying that we should all go out and undertake unconscious bias training in order to ‘fix’ our leaders.

What I’m proposing here is that we support our leaders to better understand how to be more inclusive of difference first. Then we support them to better understand dimensions of diversity. 

Consider tokenism for a moment.  

Both D&I are equally important in creating an authentic workplace that steers away from being a token hire-centric workplace. Tokenism is “the practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly.”  

What organisations need to really focus on is the intent of their diversity hire. Are leaders purposefully hiring because they genuinely want to increase the diversity of their staff – but their recruitment process hasn’t been successful? Or is the intent of the hire one where the organisation is giving an external appearance of prioritising diversity? 

In this example, the intent is important, and when there is an absence of pragmatic and checked micro aggressions, tokenism occurs. 

Supporting leaders instil inclusive micro behaviours will ensure greater inclusion in the workplace so that macro business impact is achieved.

What are micro aggressions and what impact do they have on diversity and inclusion?

Micro aggressions or behaviours sometimes go unnoticed, largely because those who are not affected don’t consider their impact. These actions are so small, however their constant repetition can add up and leave a mark on an individual.  

Such behaviours include gestures, actions, words or tone of voice that leave those who are different, feeling left out, overlooked, or ignored. It can look like ignoring junior staff members, never thanking people, or mispronouncing people’s names.  

The impact of unconscious bias through these actions can negatively affect performance, talent calibrations, and promotional structures. Correcting our human interactions through conscious habitual change and a willingness to be more inclusive leaders helps workplaces to better reap the rewards of their D&I strategy. 

Micro aggressions can be overcome 

A recent study by the American Psychology Association found that micro aggressions are easily overcome through micro interventions.  

The study outlines two key universal strategies that apply to pragmatism when evaluating micro habits –  

1. Highlight the unacceptable – In order to see a D&I shift in micro actions and unconscious bias, we must highlight these wrong doings as they arise. 

2. Educate to create change – This is about learning and growing. It is about educating on the unacceptable and building future relationships that have a basis of respect. 

Are you ready to reap the rewards of an impactful D&I strategy? 

A truly diverse and inclusive workplace is one where staff feel a sense of belonging and commitment to their workplace. It is through employing a diverse group of people and then developing and empowering them within the organisation. This is at the heart of every successful D&I story. 

Rewiring our brains that are conditioned for bias takes conscious and repetitive effort. It requires reflection and self-awareness.  

D&I strategies that are centred around embedding inclusion habits deliver successful outcomes across the board. We know this because we’ve seen it time and time again when leaders implement our training programs.  

When leaders are more inclusive the ripple effect is huge because their teams also feel:  

• Safe or psychologically well  
• Engaged  
• Innovative  
• Collaborative  
• Productive 
• Agile  
• Talented  
• Customer focussed 

It is no longer a hypothesis! Our small and intentional inclusion habits need to be practical in nature and undertaken daily. 

Make the necessary changes to your approach to D&I 

Move towards an inclusive workplace and enrol in our Inclusion Habits for Leaders program. We have worked with thousands of organisations to educate and implement strategies that work.  

Our pragmatic approach is designed to empower your workforce to achieve inclusivity and allow you to experience the ROI impact on the bottom line. 

Find out if your organisation is a good fit by completing our disruption questionnaire. It allows us to understand your specific goals for D&I. We will be in touch directly with your next steps. 

This puts men automatically on the defensive. Every time they hear the words “male dominated” they feel as if they are being blamed for something, they have no control over.  

Women’s reaction – most women have witnessed or participated in, or even initiated some anti-male sentiment at work and they know it. In a world where the power balance has traditionally favoured men, women feel justified in such behaviour. It seems normal, even acceptable these days to have a stab at men, all in good humour.  

But, a typical women’s reaction to these comments by men is that women see that comments like these don’t appear as harmless to men. They see that even if women consider that sort of behaviour harmless and acceptable, men don’t.  

Why men feel blamed for being men

Women are always surprised to find that man feel blamed for being men.

What women consider a sort of teasing, equates to men as “blaming me for breathing”. So, just as they need to step out of their shoes, women need to step out of their shoes and start to look at their own behaviour from a man’s perspective – that’s only fair, isn’t it!  

The insight for women – many men act this way without even realising it. But women hear the message. It reinforces some of their top challenges.  

Nevertheless, women should avoid making sweeping generalisations about men, avoiding saying “all men are . . .” and treat men as individuals that are at different stages of awareness. 

The insight for men – men need to speak up and challenge women when they feel they are being blamed for being men. Women do have a tendency to see patterns and speak globally about men when they feel they are victims of discrimination. Men should take a stand on this. They should tell women that they feel that they are being unfairly blamed – without blaming women in return. 

So is it true? Are men really getting the short end of the stick in the working world? Are the new rules really working against them? 

The only truth I am really interested in is men’s feelings and how these interact with the feelings of women.  

After listening to many men talk about what it feels like to work with women, I can say with absolute certainty that they really do feel this way.  

Men really are confused and they do feel that they have to be cautious when they are dealing with women. They really do feel they are being unfairly blamed for the way chauvinists have acted in the past and they really do feel that they are paying the price by becoming victims of a policy of reverse discrimination.  

Women may not like what they hear but they have to accept that it is an accurate picture of how men feel and of course, women should listen to men – because men’s challenges shed light on a lot of the behaviour that women misinterpret as dismissive and exclusionary. 

It’s not just that men feel blamed

See the other results from our challenge here:

• Men feel they have to be careful in the workplace
• Male allies feel confused in the workplace
• Men fear being accused of harassment
• Men perceive reverse discrimination

Ready to elevate D&I results?

We work with global organisations to help disrupt diversity and inclusion so that true ROI results are achieved. We can help you and your organisation as well.

Find out if our diversity and inclusion solutions are a good fit for your goals.