Aspects of Inclusive Leadership

I’m building out some work on inclusion for a programme i’m running later this month: in this i will be focussing on three aspects, ‘Power’, ‘Identity’ and ‘Voice’. The Power work will draw on the Inquiry Framework i published as ‘Power and Potential’, the Identity piece draws on ‘The Identity Project’ research work, and ‘Voice’ will use work from ‘Cultural Graffiti’ as well as current research on Social Movements. In this work i’ve been very keen to avoid any ‘taught’ and naive or dogmatic approaches: instead, i’m trying to create a landscape to explore, for leaders to consider both how these things operate and intersect, but also their individual role in observing and sometimes intervening in the situation.

For Power, we will consider the varied systems of power that we inhabit, from the formal to the layers of the social, to consider both the foundations of our power, but also how different types of power intersect (this is the work around Social Movements). Drawing on the ‘Power and Potential’ framework i will ask the group to consider the limits of their power, and where the impact lies – and to then consider the power that others hold, and whether it is visible to us or not (e.g. Power held within communities, deeply authentic, may not be visible, and is not directly controllable – but power held in a job role or system is inherently vulnerable and visible).

Impact and shadows are two aspects we will spend time on: considering the shadows of our power – in Quiet Leadership we say how good people who operate in the light, nonetheless cast a shadow – precisely because we operate in the light – the key is to be aware of, and to be connected in ways that let us see into these shadows (notions of interconnection from the ‘Socially Dynamic Organisations’ work, as well as the ‘Community Builder’ book). Finally, there is a reflective element to explore the fragility of our power: a sense of humility as to the things that lie beyond our control, and again to look outwards, into the broader system.

In general, language around inclusion can tend towards viewing it as something we ‘give’ to people, or something that ‘bad’ people don’t understand. I favour a more systemic view, that we are all ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and that our challenge is not to achieve an idealised perfect state, but rather to be in dialogue and motion within our imperfect one. If it’s just bad people who create inequality, we can find them and remove them. But if it’s also a systemic feature, a cultural one, or one of omission, then a more engaged and holistic approach is key.