How to: INCLUSION at Team Events [DO THIS]

Are you an inclusive leader? Do you accidentally exclude your team without realising it? Are your team events inclusive enough?

WATCH?? OR READ??: It's the same stuff; just some of us prefer to watch or listen vs. reading.

Look, I have zero questions about your intentions. Heck, even clicking to read this article tells me you care about people and want to ensure your team is engaged and that you’re not leaving anyone out. But this week, we're tackling diversity and inclusion in team events.

What's the Difference Between Diversity vs. Inclusion

Now, for starters, let's look at the difference.

"Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance."

For the Bridgerton fans out there, inclusion is when you play the role of the proper gentleman, the best host and don’t just plan a great do, but you ask your team to join you on the dance floor.

They are not the host who put on the soiree of the season only to sit back whilst most watch on like wallflowers.

Like all noble hosts, as leaders, we’re looking to avoid pitfall #4: Unconscious Exclusion.

Recognising Exclusionary Activities

It’s obvious how some activities like cocktail making or physically demanding stuff like sports matches could be exclusionary. Imagine inadvertently forcing a recovering alcoholic to spend an afternoon making cocktails or the asthma sufferer forced to stand on the side at a company sports day. Reckon they’re not counting down the hours until they can go home?

You get that raft building is going to be someone’s idea of hell. We covered this in the last video about avoiding too much mandatory fun.

The thing is, unconscious exclusion can also occur in less obvious ways, too. Like failing to involve the team in the events themselves.

See, a common setup for a team day is a work thing in the morning, followed by an afternoon of fun.

Often the leader will use the morning to deploy their strategy for instance. The team then expected to adopt said strategy without really being invited to input into it.

The problem with this is that it all becomes more of a performance than when people feel involved, welcomed and included.

It runs the risk of people feeling they’re passengers rather than participants.

Not to mention the pressure it places on the leader to have it all prepped, perfect and ready to share.

The Benefits of Conscious Inclusion

For me, there are huge unmet opportunities for teams to include and involve their team in the development of a strategy. To create and allow more time for discussion, opinions to be shared, and voices to be heard.

This is why tip Tip #4 is all about Conscious Inclusion.

You might have heard me reference Google’s Project Aristotle before. If not, it was a study they conducted examining hundreds of teams to identify what factors distinguished the high-performing teams from the rest. The number one finding was something called psychological safety.

The findings were examined in detail in THIS article in the New York Times Magazine. The point that stood out to me was this one, and I’ll often start a workshop by sharing it with participants as a nudge to them that I want to hear from everyone.

As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well. But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.

It’s pivotal, therefore, that within your activities, you, as a leader, are actively looking to include everyone. Not just within the choice of activities but to create space for everyone to contribute, too.

Of course, it’s not always possible to be 100% inclusive. The majority might enjoy drinks and alcohol, while a minority doesn’t. But at least be conscious of it, and don’t centre your whole event around it.

Instead, create experiences that allow everyone to interact.

Don't be a Lazy Leader

I apologise if this is controversial, but relying on drinks alone to help your team connect is frankly just lazy leadership. Hoping your team will bond over beers is definitely an option, but how effective a strategy is it really? And how inclusive is it?

We never intend to leave people out. It’s never with malintent, but it can feel frustrating when we're on the other side.

A truely inclusive experience creates a sense of belonging. We feel part of something, heard and valued.

True inclusion means more than dietary preferences or ensuring non-alcoholic options are available. It's about making an effort to make every team member feel valued and part of it. And at the end of the day, as the Google study showed, we all want high-performing teams, right? Well, conscious inclusion is a path to that.

I’ll leave you with this quote:

This article is #4 of a series of 10 pitfalls and ideas to help you seriously up your team event game, but if you’re curious about which is most relevant, take 3 minutes to take this quick offsite effectiveness assessment . You’ll get a personalised report, AND it’ll direct you to the video that’s going to help you most. It's free, so I recommend you go do that now.

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