Embracing Inclusion Already Resides in Your Core Beliefs, Here's How to Clearly Express It
Probing further into your company's principles, it's probable that integration is currently engraved into your fundamental beliefs. These beliefs serve as a blueprint for the conduct expected from your team members. Examples of such conduct include attributes such as sincerity, regard, duty, mercy, truthfulness, fairness, cooperation, adaptability, and ingenuity.
Charting Integration with Your Beliefs
If integration already exists as a fundamental belief in your organization, how do you link it to your beliefs? Generally, businesses have three to five fundamental beliefs. Assess your beliefs and pinpoint where integration might already be present. Half of the most frequently used beliefs— honesty, respect, compassion, fairness, and teamwork—strongly align with integration. If beliefs like these are not already present, it might be time to amend the beliefs or add one for integration.
The challenge with fundamental beliefs lies in ensuring employees incorporate them in their daily activities. Therefore, it's crucial for organizations to map their beliefs to specific conduct expectations. Linking fundamental beliefs to behaviors means identifying specific actions and mentalities that showcase a company or individual's declared beliefs, essentially converting abstract principles into concrete conducts that can be seen and measured in regular work. This aids in ensuring that beliefs are not merely words but are actively practiced through conducts. Consistently assessing team members' adherence to fundamental beliefs in performance reviews and recruiting candidates with these beliefs are common ways to implement them.
Once you've selected which belief integration is connected to, it's time to map that belief to expected conducts. This assists your leadership team in brainstorming: What does integration look like in action? How would I recognize if someone is demonstrating inclusivity or not? Here are some examples:
- Actively listening to diverse viewpoints.
- Utilizing inclusive language.
- Celebrating cultural variations.
- Adapting communication styles to diverse individuals.
- Opposing discriminatory or microaggressions.
- Participating in Employee Resource Group activities.
- Offering assistance to historically marginalized groups.
- Creating a safe environment for open dialogue where everyone feels valued and heard.
- Working effectively with or leading a diverse group of people.
- Educating oneself on inclusive practices.
Case Study
During my discussion with Shawn Nelson, CEO of LoveSac, he mentioned, “One of our fundamental beliefs is ‘love matters.’ Love is an integral part of our image, and we strive to reflect the meaning of ‘love.’ It holds us responsible as we cannot lead in a hypocritical manner. It is unnatural to act in a manner that goes against love’s spirit.”
To live love as a culture, LoveSac embodies integration through:
- Their Women in Business group welcomes men as allies.
- DEI hangouts that offer an open forum facilitated by the DEI leader.
- Regular reviews of values where leaders are graded on active listening, acknowledging privilege, and advocating for inclusive policies.
- Tuesday rallies— weekly gatherings for all 400 employees that commence with good news, and everyone can participate and share their professional or personal triumphs.
“DEI has gone through a swing of extremes,” Nelson said. “It swung very hard in one direction, and I feel it has reached a balanced point, focusing on fostering an inclusive culture. Inclusion is the least controversial component of the DEI acronym.”
If love, respect, or integration are your fundamental beliefs, make it clear that integration is an expectation for all team members and hold them accountable for the conducts that demonstrate integration. Toxic, exclusionary cultures typically prioritize performance at any cost, even if the conduct is problematic.
Exclusion is Expensive
Harmful workplace culture is the leading cause of high-performing employees departing from organizations. According to Donald Sull, Charles Sull, and Ben Zweig, authors of “Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation,” they discovered that “A toxic corporate culture is by far the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted attrition and is 10 times more significant than compensation in predicting turnover. Our analysis found that the leading factors contributing to toxic cultures include failure to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, workers feeling disrespected, and unethical behavior.”
- If you consider integration as a core value in your organization, you might want to examine if it aligns with your existing core values, such as honesty, respect, compassion, fairness, and teamwork.
- Making core values like integration inclusive requires fostering an inclusive culture, which can be achieved by encouraging allyship, participating in Employee Resource Group activities, and creating a safe environment where everyone feels valued and heard.
- Incorporating integration as a core value into your career development process can include consistently assessing team members' adherence to this value in performance reviews and recruiting candidates who align with your inclusive values.
- For inclusive leadership, it's essential to map core values like integration to specific conducts, such as actively listening to diverse viewpoints, utilizing inclusive language, and opposing discriminatory or microaggressions.
- To make core values like integration a way of life in your organization, consider implementing practices like regular reviews of values, where leaders are graded on active listening and advocating for inclusive policies, and weekly gatherings for all employees to share their triumphs, promoting a culture that values integration.
