A short spoken segment (YouTube) where the speaker (Beth Ridley) explains why she loves her work and argues that inclusive leadership must be a core leadership competency. She says workplaces are increasingly diverse, complex, and stressful, that some DEI programs are being scaled back, and therefore leaders must proactively use an inclusive lens in daily interactions and decisions to create environments where all employees can thrive.
Chapters
What I want to do is just take a moment to share with you the why behind the work that I do and why I'm so passionate about it, and why I love it so much. So I firmly believe that leaders really have to embrace inclusion as a core leadership competency in order for organizations to be successful in this day and age. And that is because our workplaces are simply too diverse, too complex, and frankly too stressful to not prioritize inclusion and belonging. Also, we sort of find ourselves in a situation now where frankly, a lot of these conventional DEI related initiatives at work, companies are kind of dialing back on them a little bit, maybe in response to backlash or budget cuts or both. It is what it is. But the necessity around diversity, equity, inclusion, the ability to engage all employees never goes away. So that just means it becomes more of a more incumbent on leaders to lead with an inclusive lens in their daily interactions, in their daily decision making, in their daily leadership, how they show up the responsibilities even more on leaders in absence of some of these initiatives that we're doing that on behalf of companies. So that's a little bit about my why I think this work is so important. For that reason. I also believe that, you know, the leader's primary responsibility is to create an environment where everyone can thrive, not just some people, but everyone can thrive by recognizing and appreciating differences, knowing that all employees are different. How can we be flexible on our approach so that we can create that sense of belonging in everyone? So if a leader really isn't able to do that, in my opinion, they're not an effective leader in this day and age. They may be a very competent subject matter expert, but not really a leader. So.
