3 Factors to determine your Diversity & Inclusion Quotient at Core Level

Diversity & inclusion is area of critical focus in this Era where (Global, local business, organisations, clients) WE have become GLOcal. I get confused sometimes!

It's always good to go back to basic, isn't it? so what Diversity means? Diversity means understanding that everyone is unique, and recognizing our individual differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies.

Some organisation are aiming to embrace diversity & inclusion for the following benefits not limited to:

·     To come up with creative solutions.

·     To improve productivity.

·     To improve employee engagement.

·     To gain competitive advantage.

Are you the leader who is responsible for implementing diversity & inclusion in your team, department, organisation or may be in your community or at home?

I believe each one of us are the leaders.

Last article I talked about 3 factors at surface level to evaluate your personal thinking towards D & I. Today I want to take it at deeper at Core level - how can we determine Thinking and Attitude of leaders and their willingness to learn, influence and carry those diverse conversations? How much would you rank yourself on those surface and core factors out of 1 to 10 – 1 being the least progress and 10 being the best progress .

At Core level, if you want to improve your diversity & inclusion quotient, then I would invite you to assess and build your muscles in these below factors:

1.  Resilience & Perseverance

I believe both these qualities goes hand in hand.

Resilience means the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. Perseverance means persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

We understand meanings of the words differently especially when people come from non-English speaking countries. So never assume that what you are saying is understood the same way by the other person. Resilience is required when there may be resistance, you may experience toughness or difficulty through interaction / discussion to achieve an outcome. You being a leader also play a role to put forward views, ask questions, challenge status quo, listen and be willing to support your team or leaders or members. So are you ready to start push ups to build muscles?

2.  Openness to accept & experience

How open are you to accept where you are in the journey of maturity, experience the different aspects of diversity and respect others background? If you are scoring low, then one may struggle to engage and be a leader and team player equally. If you are scoring high, then this opens the door to collaborate, have more open discussions and have healthy arguments supposing there is nothing right or wrong. You will draw synergy and build solutions on each other’s inputs, strengths and stretches.

3.  Inherited vs Self Constructed Values & Beliefs

We learn what to value and believe. Our beliefs are formed based on where we are born and whom we role model among our parents. What environment we had at home, how we were in school that influences our values and beliefs too. I wonder where were you encouraged to embrace diversity? did you see the behaviours around you – for example respecting women, men, different race, helping others irrespective of who they are. so can we change our inherited thinking and achieve the results? Yes. we can with the help of the mindset strategists who guides the process to create and construct new / improvised set of values and beliefs which will take us forward to the outcome and results we want to achieve.

You may be living in global economy. If individual’s thinking is scoring low in these factors then you may not be experiencing the benefits of diversity & inclusion fully. I would say in essence you are limiting your potential to learn and experience in your work, relationship, personal growth and in life itself.

Yes, you being the leader would want to build muscles in these aspects. The good news is that thinking can be, must be changed when you want different results because same thinking will produce same results. I work with individuals and organisations to help them assess their diversity & inclusion quotient, thinking and behaviours in relation to desired outcome. I practice ‘Inside-out’ approach where the assessment becomes relevant, the solutions becomes customised and results becomes sustainable. What results are you looking to obtain?

I have developed a survey to assess where your teams, employees, and may be your thinking when it comes to diversity & inclusion.

Need support to fast track your organisational, team or business unit's diversity & inclusion quotient? Contact TODAY for a complimentary no-obligation clarity session so that we can find out if we are an awesome match. I would be delighted to share 10 key questions to ask yourself, employees or teams and assess benchmark for your objectives.

Look forward to hear your diverse & inclusive thoughts, observations and experiences.

Kshama.

About the author: Kshama Upadhyay is passionate, experienced and engaging leader where she believes in unleashing potential within individuals, teams and organisation through research based and customised approach. She was part of core Diversity & Inclusion committee within past organisation. She represented her organisation in Industry level conferences, team engagement, increasing awareness regarding unconscious bias, quality interaction and conscious movement towards promoting D & I through creative thoughts and solutions. She consults with senior leadership team to build strategies and plans to improve the performance of the teams and organisation at tangible as well as intangible level.