In Review: Inclusify
If you’ve read any of the recent content coming from this platform you may have noticed a weekly publishing pattern. As I’ve been reflecting on topics to write about, I found myself wanting to expand the overarching scope a bit. Thus a goal came to the fore. Read a leadership book once a month and write a review. The next question was simple enough. Where to start?
There’s been a good amount of news coverage in the media focused on the culture war positions of some political candidates as well as a focus on marketing issues created by major brands committing and then decommitting from supporting social causes. Couple that with the fact that it’s the month of Pride, Juneteenth, and that I’ve been immersed in preparations to facilitate a workshop with our team on building inclusive communities…the answer seemed clear. Why not dive into a book exploring the concept of leadership initiatives around diversity, equity, and inclusion?
With that, I’m pleased to share the first book for In Review, a monthly piece dedicated to sharing thoughts and reactions on popular business and leadership literature. This first edition focuses on the book Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams written by Stefanie K. Johnson.
Brief Summary: In this book, the author presents a case for leaders to become “Inclusifyers” in their organizations and proposes a series of strategies for moving toward that goal. Along the way she builds an argument for enhancing efforts around diversity, equity & inclusion initiatives using established theories and peer-reviewed research.
Dr. Johnson defines the term inclusify as follows: “To live and lead in a way that recognizes and celebrates unique and dissenting perspectives while creating a collaborative and open-minded environment where everyone feels they truly belong.” She goes on to present a series of leadership styles, potential barriers associated with each as it pertains to inclusion, and provides roadmaps and strategies to transition to an inclusifier approach.
The reader learns about various approaches to organizational leadership pertaining to inclusion as framed by Johnson. She coins seven different styles. The Meritocracy Manager, the Culture Crusader, the Team Player, the White Knight, the Shepherd, and the Optimist. Each describes barriers to validating various populations in an organization based on a quadrant grid with axis in belonging and uniqueness.
What Works: Perhaps my favorite aspect of this book is the way in which the author leverages content from a variety of disciplines (particularly psychology) to explain resistance to DEI initiatives, individual defensiveness around the idea of exploring inclusion efforts, and the increasing call for organizations to build aspects of this work into their overarching focus. Dr. Johnson suggests that we all want to fit in, but in a way that appreciates and values us for who we are. If you’ve ever struggled with concepts associated with DEI initiatives try this simple exercise to frame your thoughts around the topic. Reflect for a moment about a time you felt included on a team or in a given environment. What was that experience like? Now flip your perspective and think about a setting in which you did not feel included. What was it like to feel like an outsider? Regardless of who you are or where you come from, we’ve all had both of these experiences in some way, shape or form (some more so than others).
This simple activity will prime you for more introductory exercises exploring concepts like unconscious bias, microaggressions, zero-sum bias, and more. Here’s another simple exercise from the book to frame your thoughts on assumptions and bias (something that we all fall privy to at times). Try this. Read the following statements and pay attention to the first images that come to mind, as well as how you interpret what you read.
“The rock star was unhappy with the amount of alcohol at the party.”
Then try another one…
“The public health administrator was unhappy with the amount of alcohol at the party.”
Simple prompts like these on page 16 in the book prompt us to explore the fact that we’re hard wired to operate on assumptions. For example, did you assume the rock star wanted more alcohol and the administrator less? Are those assumptions fair? Perhaps. Perhaps not. We really don’t know based on the statements provided, but we generate immediate assumptions based on the information we have available. Unless we create conditions to challenge simple assumptions like these, we can fall prey to problematic behaviors and potentially hurtful comments.
I particularly like how Johnson paints the concept of privilege, a term that can conjure negative reactions and assumptions from people when they are first introduced to it. She paints a metaphorical picture here using the concept of headwinds in air travel. If you take a flight from California to South Carolina for example, your flight time to the east coast will likely be shorter than your return west because you’re flying with the flow of the jetstream as opposed to pushing against it. The rest of the book focuses on fostering change in organizations that are intentional about removing barriers like these and the metaphorical “headwinds” for as many people as possible.
I was also intrigued by Johnon’s exploration of how groupthink can seep into teams that are overly homogenous. For example, a reader might begin to explore the “Culture Crusader” style and think to themselves, “wait, how is this a bad thing, isn’t culture supposed to be a really big deal?” Dr. Johnson uses the film The Wolf of Wall Street to demonstrate how a culture designed to be fun, aggressive, and competitive evolved into a toxic workplace fueled by unethical behavior, substance abuse, and sexism. Social pressure to conform in cultures like these which are overly reliant on being cool and rule adverse can quickly lead to challenges with addressing problematic and exclusionary practices in the workplace. Be aware, this concept doesn’t mean you can’t leverage a fun and modern workplace to bolster employee engagement, it’s when leaders allow those cultures to be abused and leveraged as a means to include some while excluding others. Each of the leadership types framed by Johnson explores relevant challenges such as these and she consistently leverages peer reviewed research to support her argument.
The use of data to demonstrate the benefits of building diverse teams is abundant throughout the book. For example, on pg. 93 Johnson shares the following, “When you believe that you are going to have to convince a diverse group of people, you actually work harder and prepare a more thoughtful argument than when you believe you have to convince only people who are similar to you.” In another study from Deloitte, Johnson points out that inclusive organizations are six times as likely to be innovative, six times as likely to anticipate change, and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets. That said, any leader planning DEI initiatives needs to be mindful of creating a space where people feel free to share and contribute regardless of their respective identities. Here she presents research on the brain suggesting that when we feel threatened or attacked (regardless of intention) we go into a state of fight or flight, and are therefore less likely to engage subjectively in a space where we assume we might be perceived as the enemy and subsequently be verbally attacked. In short, designing workshops and initiatives that are inclusive to all is particularly integral.
What Could Be Better: I’ll own that I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to selecting titles on leadership that are marketed to the general public. I usually check out reviews on goodreads.com and focus on books that have at least several hundred ratings and an average of somewhere close to 4 out of 5 stars. As I took a quick look at the reviews for this book, I noticed that one reviewer pointed out that there is little to no mention about transgender or non-binary people in the book. Given that discussions about gender feel relatively paramount on a national scale today, that seems like a missed opportunity. That said, Dr. Johnson doesn’t shy away from her personal narrative and experiences as a female professor and consultant and from there we see a lot of binary gender comparisons of leadership / board representation, pay disparities, board representation, etc. as it pertains to the contrast between men and women. Personal narrative is important for framing assumptions in DEI work, so this approach feels genuine and authentic, but it also seemed like an opportunity to dig deeper via the narratives of folks with different identities. There are frequent references to experiences for People of Color (POC), Women of Color (WOC), LGBTQ, etc after more immersive examples. but these references often feel fleeting and generally grouped together.
As noted, the author defines several leadership styles and subsequent challenges associated with each of the types she identifies. I struggle a little bit with a few of these, particularly in a book about inclusivity. Labels can be problematic in that they feed into our biases. That said, these heuristics also simplify problematic assumptions leaders may leverage to reinforce unchecked biases or assumptions. There is one type I struggled with in particular. The title of Chapter 13 is “Shepherd: Being Transparent with Your Flock”. Perhaps this reaction is due to the way the term sheep is thrown around on social media as a means of insulting someone whose beliefs differ from one’s own. I also wasn’t a fan of the concept of listening for “the sheep’s bleat” or the wail that sheep put out when they’re in need. That brought to mind images of people shouting or complaining to be heard and the metaphor ultimately left me feeling distracted. Granted, this is semantics, but I’m just not a big fan of framing any population as sheep.
Should You Read It? I found Inclusify to be an engaging read, which felt all the more robust based on the sheer amount of evidence Dr. Johnson presents throughout the book from the fields of social psychology, industrial psychology, human development theory, and more. In many resources focused on this subject matter, the jargon and lexicon in diversity and inclusion work can ironically feel a bit inaccessible to the introductory learner. Dr. Johnson does an excellent job of introducing DEI concepts using terms and examples that are easily understandable regardless of how familiar with these ideas you might be. If you’re a leader who is resistant to the idea of DEI initiatives, this book might naturally feel challenging or flat out unpalatable, but consistent with the suggestions of avoiding bias, I’d encourage you to at least read the first few chapters to explore whether that resistance might be ground solely in assumption.
