Inclusive Leadership

Leading by Example

Colin Macfarlane, Director, Stonewall Scotland

Sarah Foster, Major Partnerships Manager, Stonewall

Session Objectives

• Provide an understanding of the strategic value and importance of inclusive leadership

• Enhance your understanding of your role as leaders in building an inclusive culture

• Explore how bias can influence inclusion and exclusion

• Provide a unique opportunity to meet, network with and learn from other senior champions

Agenda • Exploring the business case for diversity and inclusion

• Group dynamics

• Diversity within teams

• Key concepts of bias

• Stepping up as an inclusive leader

How we will work together effectively

• This session offers a safe, confidential and respectful environment

• We learn from engaging with each other and sharing our perspectives

• Make the most of this opportunity – whilst this is only a taster, utilising these concepts day-to-day can make a difference

Defining

“leadership stresses using influence to bring individuals toward a common goal, while coercion involves the use of threats and punishment to induce change in followers for the sake of the

leaders”

Leadership, Theory and Practice, Peter Northhouse, ed., 6th edition, Sage

Managing diversity

“Unraveling the Diversity-Performance Link in Multicultural Teams”, by Stahl, Maznevski, Voigt and Jonsen, 2007.”

Impact of inclusion

Source: Stonewall WEI 2015

Exercise: Insider / Outsider

In pairs share your own experience of the following:

• When did you feel excluded – in the ‘out-group’?

• When did you feel included – in the ‘in-group’?

Identify the feelings associated with these experiences

On post-its, pick your top two words a write one word each on ‘out-group’ and ‘in-group’ to describe your feeling or experiences – 4 post-its per pair

Diversity within teams

Demographic Organisational Psychological

Exclusion Through Bias

• Affinity bias - people warm to others like them and have a tendency to hire and develop people in their own image. Halo effect - when you like someone and are biased to think everything about that person is good

• Perception bias - stereotypes and assumptions about certain groups can obstruct objective judgement of individuals from those groups

• Confirmation bias - when people have a certain belief about their own social identity group. You may tell yourself that members of your group will be denied or fail in leadership roles

Suzanne Price, Think Slow, How unconscious bias impacts the workplace, Diversity

Exercise: Bias in Action

• Each table discuss one bias

• Where might these biases show up? What examples can you think of?

Our goal – to match impact with our intent

Exercise: Challenging Bias

Table discussions:

What practical strategies, techniques and approaches can you as inclusive leaders take to challenge bias and build inclusive effective teams?

Critical inclusive leadership moments –

stop and think, then act

How? • Stop a judgment or decision

• Question an assumption

• Self-audit relationships

• Communicate in a different way, verbally and non-verbally

When? • Critical decisions

• Routine decisions

• In important relationship building moments

• Measuring for success

• Innovating and building teams

Stay Connected • Attend events, fundraisers and programmes

• Become a friend of Stonewall

• Follow us on social media o @stonewallscot

o facebook.com/stonewallscotland

• Sign up to our mailing list o www.stonewallscotland.org.uk

Upcoming Programmes

• Role Models: 9th December 2015 and August 2016

• Allies: 10th December 2015 and August 2016

• Leadership: November 2016

• In-house programmes

Thank you

colin.macfarlane@stonewallscotland.org.uk

sarah.foster@stonewall.org.uk

Inclusive Leadership

Leading by Example

Please proceed to the Strathblane Hall for lunch