Seasons Leadership Podcast
Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, co-hosts and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception. On the Seasons Leadership Podcast, we will bring you practical, actionable advice you can apply now to improve your leadership - and life. Join us on Wednesdays throughout the seasons.
Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web.
Seasons Leadership Podcast
Co-creating inclusivity for effective leadership with Sile Walsh
Join me, Susan Ireland, for my mind-shifting discussion with Sile Walsh about helping leaders enhance their inclusion practices in the workplace. Sile throws away the blame game when it comes to inclusivity and instead encourages a model of thinking that inclusivity helps everyone do their jobs better. She roots her practical advice in real-world solutions, challenging us to pursue the best thing we can do with our reality versus chasing golden solutions. She brings a new approach to inclusivity in leadership and the workplace that will change how you approach your own leadership.
Show Notes
(2:52) Sile shares, from her years of experience working with leaders, that the main challenges leaders face come down to core things including learning to be inclusive or engaging in inclusivity. The simple idea she promotes is if you include people in the solution, the solution will be more effective.
(6:00) The inclusivity gap, Sile asserts exists when leaders question, “what does inclusivity have to do with my job?” We talk about how to help people see that inclusivity helps you be a better leader and accomplish your job more effectively.
(9:39) Sile breaks down some of the 13 practices and principles for effective leadership, arguing that if a leader is not effective, it is because they are not following or practicing one of these practices or principles. She advocates for finding solutions rooted in reality – what is the best thing we can do with this reality versus chasing golden solutions.
(13:40) Inclusion is an invitation to co-create your workplace reality. Sile shares examples of how people from different experiences also have different expectations and how we most co-create spaces for everyone to feel safe to participate.
(19:38) Sile shares inspiring advice on how to shift your mindset from “people are hard to reach” to “needing to get better at having conversations that result in inclusion.” If we think about inclusion as a leadership practice, we can then work to close the gap.
(23:55) What parts of you do you reject? Sile talks through a thought exercise all leaders should face before working on inclusion – identifying what needs of their own do they first reject?
(29:07) What’s in it for me? We discuss how to motivate leaders to seek inclusion because it is good for their work (and how blame and shame don’t work to motivate this needed change).
About Sile: Sile Walsh specializes in inclusive Leadership. She is a lecturer, facilitator, coach and consultant and has worked internationally with over 22k leaders and organizations for over a decade. Sile is a PhD candidate studying inclusive leadership in the school of psychology and has a professional background in coaching psychology and organizational development.
Resources:
Website: silewalsh.com
Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, certified coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception on Wednesdays on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. (Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web!)
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Welcome everybody to the Seasons Leadership Podcast, where we are committed to leaders everywhere, at all levels, who want to make progress on their leadership journey. We will bring you actionable advice to improve your leadership and life today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us At Seasons Leadership. We share a vision to make excellent leadership the world-wide standard. Learn more at seasonsleadershipcom. Welcome, sheila. It's so good to have you here on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. Thanks for having me, susan. Yeah Well, and we're both in Ireland, which is kind of fun. I wish we were in person, but we're on the same island. Let's say that At the same time. But we're on the same island, let's say that At the same time. Yeah Well, sheila, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to here now.
Speaker 3:Well, I specialize in inclusive leadership and that's come out of working in kind of coaching psychology, focusing on leadership background in organizational development. But I think how I've got here today is that and I think a lot of listeners will have a sense of this sometimes we can join the dots up backwards but we can't always know where we're going if we kind of trust our curiosity and our sense of things. And I think, in a way, long before I had words about inclusive leadership or even kind even understood what coaching psychology was or organizational development, I had a really strong sense that some things work well in organizations and in society and some things don't, and I was really curious about why that was. And that just led me to kind of pursue different types of research and reading and different qualifications and then working in industry I think has been probably the most beneficial part of my journey because taking all that theory and looking at where there might be gaps in it and you actually apply it to people's lives and their experiences. So in a way, I think a lot of the ways that I got here yes, there's all the formal stuff and you know the bio and all of that. But actually a big part is getting to work directly with people and with organizations and learning together and that's been a really big part of how I've I've got here and I'm, you know, doing a PhD currently in inclusive leadership and my book, um, is being published soon and I get to work with really great organizations and those things haven't come just because of what I learned.
Speaker 3:They've come because of the experience with leaders and organizations and the meaningful conversations that help me adapt my thinking and my understanding and it kind of expand my way of seeing the world. So, yeah, it's been.
Speaker 2:It's hard to pin it down to one thing well, um, why do you think you focused on inclusiveness?
Speaker 3:so. So I I am dyslexic. I left school early because of my dyslexia, um, but also I was a kid in Ireland with an English accent, which made that very difficult in primary school anyone who knows what Irish primary schools are like, um. So I always knew that that you could be involved in something but not feel part of something, um, because I I knew that I was different in some ways and that those differences weren't necessarily positive. So I think, truthfully, I had the experience of being included really well in places and not feeling included. So I knew that there were places where I had positive experiences and other places where I didn't, and I was always curious about why that was when I worked with leaders and I've been working with leaders for about 12 years now, like spoke, you know, in terms of directly with leaders.
Speaker 3:I worked with leaders before that as well, but in this kind of way, and one of the things I learned was a lot of the challenges that leaders face come down to kind of a couple of core things thinking they have to have the answers to things they don't have, the information about, um, misconceptions about who they should be as a leader and therefore how they relate to other people, and a lot of the barriers were not leveraging the wisdom of those around you or the insights or kind of understanding that you're not actually alone, even though you might have to make final decisions. And that led me to kind of thinking about why do we keep um doing things that our own way, why do we keep replicating one way of doing things? And so inclusion was always there before I ever spoke the words. And it's funny because now that I say I specialize in inclusive leadership, the demographic of people who think it that's for them has changed to the demographic I've worked with over the 12 years, and the reason is that there's a perception that inclusive leadership is somehow something different to effective leadership and that when I just used like leadership, development or effective leadership as the term, people could see that it related to them. But I think, because of the work around diversity and inclusion and society, at the moment there's this idea of who inclusive leadership is for and its purpose. So I landed on it before I even used the words.
Speaker 3:I was working with it a long time and then, when I was looking at the biggest issues I think leaders are facing, um for my PhD, it became really clear that learning to be inclusive was actually part of like leadership, excellence, part of being effective. It was actually part of the. The leaders who did things really well were already engaging inclusivity without even knowing it, and so that's where I decided to actually use the term more overtly and to focus on it. Um, but it's been a part of my practice since the very beginning because it's a part of my approach to coaching, facilitation, organizational development. It's kind of an underlying principle that if you include the people involved in the solution, solution is more likely to be successful. So it's kind of been a core part of my ethos anyway well, uh, oh, I have so many questions now.
Speaker 2:um, so you said something super interesting to me and that is, when we start using the term inclusive leadership, your demographic changed on who was interested, maybe in talking more to you, and which is to me like, oh, that's like the opposite. So the people who maybe are interested in inclusive leadership leadership, terrific, and we can always get better but the people who think it doesn't speak to them is probably the people who actually need it more yeah, you know, I think so, but I I do think that some of the efforts around diversity and inclusion haven't helped.
Speaker 3:And what I mean by that is that in organisations, if the efforts towards diversity and inclusion indirectly shame people because of their identity or attempt to do social justice work within the organisation, meaning that they move away from the purpose of the organisation and the purpose of their leadership, then of course leaders who are focused on their day job and trying to achieve things are going to say, well, that's not for me, I don't have time for this extra thing learning about all these things. They don't feel connected to it because it's not part of how they do their job. So a big part for me around inclusive leadership is understanding that it is about the use of inclusion for effective leadership to lead effectively. Otherwise, you could be inclusive all day long and get no work done and then have no job. So inclusive leadership has to help you do your job well and lead well.
Speaker 3:And I think that there's been a gap in closing that gap because people have said, well, morally we should, or legally we should. Well, legally, in most countries not all that have discrimination law you you cannot discriminate and still not be inclusive, so I cannot treat you differently based on your identity and still not include you. You know, um? And then, equally, this idea of the moral position. The reality is that, even though I might deeply value the moral position, your whole workforce won't, so how is it fair to impose that on them and then wonder why they're disengaging?
Speaker 3:So you know, for me, inclusive leadership is about understanding how you use inclusivity to be more effective in your leadership work. Solve the everyday problems that you're facing and in using that, you will develop ways of creating safer environments for people to exist. You will start to rectify some of the imbalances that occur between unconscious bias and things. But we don't need to sit down and talk about that all the time, which is and I'm not saying we don't need to learn about it but leaders are sitting there saying to me what does that have to do with my job, mine's, financial, mine's, hr mine's like. What does that have to do with my job, mine's, financial, mine's, you know, hr mine's like. What does that have to?
Speaker 3:do with my job and I think we've. We have some work to do around leaders understanding the links between inclusivity and their job, but it's actually our job to help them with that. It's not for us to tell them they should be inclusive, teach them how to be and then wonder why they're not. So I do think we've. There's a little bit of a narrative come out around inclusive leadership that hasn't helped leaders feel connected to it. And even a step further, there's statements like male, pale and stale that are being used, and I'm like well, if the majority of your, your leadership team, identify that way, do you think that term is going to foster inclusivity for them as well within this new movement that's required. So I think we have a bit of a gap in how we've been communicating about inclusive leadership if we want leaders to utilize it right.
Speaker 2:Well, I loved also how you were saying that you know you've learned the theory and then working, you have been able to apply that theory and so now I'm thinking you have ways that actually works, that people can take your ideas or suggestions and actually have it's practical advice that you might be able to give people because you've you've done it yes.
Speaker 3:So I suppose I one of the things that go on in this space and you probably find this in leadership. So people are like tell me what's right, give me the check box, give me the list, you know, give me the model, give me the formula. What I found with inclusive leadership is it's actually the models and the formulas actually exist. Loads of people have them. The issue is the context isn't always addressed and so they're less effective in certain settings. So what I developed through reviewing all of the work that I've done over 12 years, reviewing the literature within inclusive leadership and then looking at the most successful cases with clients that I've worked with was 13 practices and principles for effective leadership. So they move between a practice, so it's more than a behavior, it's something that you constantly do and are aware of. But then also there are some principles, like it's very difficult to engage in inclusive leadership if you are in fixed mindset, for instance. You're going to be more effective in growth mindset, which might be partially a practice, but it's also a principle that you need to kind of have a relationship with at different points. So there are kind of 13 practices and principles that seem to be present for the most successful kind of implementation for leaders. But also whenever I work with leaders and there's a gap in them being effective, um, it's also one of these 13 is usually the reason for that. So what I offer is those practices and principles, because it's it's not about a formula or a method, it's actually about critical decision making. Is this appropriate here? What is needed here to nurture this situation rather than, oh, I'll say this and then they'll say that, and then I've done it, um, so there. So there is kind of 13 of them that I talk about. I never remember them off the top of my head, but, like, developing your emotional intelligence is really important because you can tick all the boxes and still you know not be effective with inclusive leadership because you haven't actually developed the critical decision making or sense making of it, and growth mindset is a really important one. Critical decision making or sense making of it, and growth mindset is a really important one.
Speaker 3:The other one that I think a lot of leaders miss is navigating organizational complexity, and it is in the title of the book. The reason for this is we all have fantasies about perfect organizations and perfect leaders and how everyone should be. We have fantasies about oh, if that person did it differently, I'd be OK. Or if the organization would just do this, this wouldn't be a problem.
Speaker 3:The reality is, organizations exist to some degree because on some level they're working in that way.
Speaker 3:It doesn't mean they're working well, it doesn't mean you want to leave them there, but they're working to some degree, and sometimes this purist or this fantasy of the perfect organization actually gets in the way of the things that leaders need to do in the reality of this moment.
Speaker 3:So I talk a lot about what is the best thing we can do with this reality that is more inclusive and more effective than what we've been doing previously, rather than what's the golden solution. So I guess I suppose, besides these kind of common practices and principles, what I would think is most important which most people don't like to hear is that it's important to to understand that a big part of inclusive leadership is not a set of rules. It's actually being able to make critical decisions using these 13 practices and principles in any moment, as opposed to, you know, getting everything right or just following a script. It doesn't work, because inclusion can't be done to a person. It's co-created, so it's an invitation and someone takes it or they don't take it, but you can't do it to someone, and so you can't have a formula, because the other person isn't involved wait, let's.
Speaker 2:Can we talk more about this? I haven't ever heard anybody talk about inclusion this way as an invitation, so can you just repeat that what you said?
Speaker 3:yes, so so if we think about inclusion, so the definition that from 2011 uses which I think is most appropriate for workplaces is that inclusion is the facilitating of belonging and uniqueness. So I feel like I, but I don't have to assimilate, I can be myself. So that's how they're defining it and I like that definition because we can measure it, how people are experiencing it. But what people think inclusion is is that I include you and therefore I've been inclusive. Now the thing is, I can include you and say I've done everything within my practices and principles to be inclusive and you can opt out of being included. You can say I don't want to be included here, this isn't the space I want to be included in, and at that point a lot of people say oh, does that mean I wasn't inclusive? I said no, it was the start of inclusion. You invited them in. They said no, thank you. Now we need to go and find out. Is there a reason? Is it that they've historically been harmed by you, your group or who you are? You know who you represent. Is it that you're including them like?
Speaker 3:I had this example, um from my supervisor and I really love it. She wrote the book working within diversity, myra Chan, and she really cultivates an anti-oppressive lens of this. But her position, which I think is powerful, she talks about having an event being inclusive, inviting people who are Muslim and then, at the event, serving alcohol. So you weren't including them. Or, although you'd invited them, because you didn't engage with them about what would help them to feel included, you just decided they had to opt out of that engagement and and so for me, inclusion is about the invitation and then, as people engage with the invitation, we learn to improve it. So, oh, how would that event have been better? Or oh, that time doesn't work for you, for your caring needs, whereas we talk about inclusion still from the power dynamic of I include you, but actually inclusion is co-created, because I can include you, but you have choice and autonomy and a right to reject it or to engage with it. And also, once I include someone, I can't say we invited you here, you're included. I now have to say how do we make this environment more inclusive for you? So there's still co-creation, even when the invitation is accepted.
Speaker 3:So the the way we talk about inclusion currently is still maintaining the power dynamic of I include you and we're not really talking about the co-created piece, which is I invite you or you invite me, and then I influence the invitation or the setting and then together we may come to a place where both our uniqueness is valued because we're different, and also I feel like I belong because you let me help shape what good looks like and you feel like you belong because you shaped what good looks like, whereas what we do a lot of the time is we say this is what good looks like and kind of be included. Right, we're not including the person, we're just telling them to do what we want them to do, ie assimilate. So when we think about that inclusive leadership and even that excellence idea, we've got to think about how are we utilizing inclusion to create excellence, to support leadership? And one way is to stop thinking you define that or decide that and start engaging people in, in creating that together with you, and so it's far more effective because you're less likely to make mistakes, because you're going to actually talk to people who will inform the situation. Secondly, it's it's more likely to have and the research tells us this, you're more likely to have a higher standard. So this idea of excellence is really important because, um, when you utilize inclusive leadership. We know that when you utilize inclusive leadership with differences this is really important you can be inclusive.
Speaker 3:With a homogenous group, it may not be very robust the outcomes, but when you take a diverse group and that doesn't just have to be identity, which is the preoccupation at the moment, it might also be lived experience, beliefs, values, ways of thinking there's loads of ways of being different you bring a group of different people together and you include them, we will get a higher standard of result than if we don't. We will have to do a little bit more work up front to help people feel safe to, to include and figure out ways of working, but we will save time in the long run because we'll have less like issues. We'll have more appropriate fitting solutions. We have higher standards, we found, because we know people from marginalized experiences tend to have to prove themselves more than those who aren't, and so they often bring higher standards of practice into the room. So you're also getting a better caliber, you know, of conversation, because people with lots of different experiences, um and so inclusions is still a lot of the conversation, still maintaining a power over position and and kind of utilizing an oppressive practice of I include you, but the way I want to, and I've done the research and learned and now I'm like even now I'm an ally.
Speaker 3:Well, no, actually you should be a co-creator here. You know what I mean, like our, our job and leadership, or and I don't just mean formal positions, I mean thought leadership, I mean social leadership. You, you know it's very likely that you, you have people who are influenced by you and that you influence outside of formal positions. That's that's how I define leadership, and if that's occurring, well then you're not. You don't need to be an ally, you're a co-creator.
Speaker 3:And to be a co-creator means we invite people and we work with them, and we are. We accept invitations and we work with people, but we don't, we can't do it to them, and a lot of what's being taught about diversity and inclusion is, in my experience at least, is utilizing an oppressive practice of telling people and then, you know, criticizing people. So one of the examples I have is I used to work in with children who are at high risk in society at of of harm or or negligence, and one of the things that was one of the terms I hated but was really common in the social care practice was um, hard to reach, okay, and I used to get really annoyed because they would say, oh, these kids, these families are hard to reach and I'll say, no, it's that you're talking to a 16 year old um on a saturday or on a friday and you want them to come at 9 am. That is like badly designed, not hard to reach. And and I think we've done something similar in inclusion work, where we we kind of make all these efforts up front to be the good person, the ally, you know, and then actually we're not working with people equally, we're not sharing power, we're not saying is there a design flaw in how we do this? That you know you don't feel as included or as considered, and we've kind of created almost this kind of demand and give approach in organizations are avoiding that because they're like I don't have a clue what to say, what to do. I don't know about this and my experience of it is being told I should or shouldn't say something or do something, rather than this is how it lends to the task at hand or the work we're doing, or this is how improves, you know, our performance or improves our well-being or improves the organization. We're not doing a lot of that linking, because there's a lot of social justice work and I deeply value social justice work in society and this is the difference. In society.
Speaker 3:Every one of us have a right to be included and I believe that deeply in organizations we only belong to the organization because we contribute to the task. So inclusion has to take into account that reality. But we also have to take into account that it's co-created. I can't just decide I'm inclusive or I included, you, I, because I don't even know what you need to be included, we. It's co-created and I can't stand on the sidelines and say I'm not included without telling people what I need. Now.
Speaker 3:Organizations need to create safe ways to do that and, as somebody who belongs to a number of marginalized groups, I'm not suggesting that's not hard and I'm not suggesting organizations don't have responsibility for creating ways to do that. But I'm also familiar with standing on the sidelines like groups standing on the sidelines putting demands in play but not actually helping co-create it. And I don't know if you've ever done anything in an organization. You might have an idea and then people don't's a handful that volunteer to do it and then when it's done, there's hundreds that have an opinion on it. So this is an example of what doesn't work for inclusion.
Speaker 3:So inclusive leadership is about actually figuring out how to get those voices in early for the design rather than later for the criticism, and that's that's know. I think that's a different angle on it. But if we think about inclusive leadership as a leadership practice, not as a D&I activity, if we think about it as a leadership practice, well then we will say actually we can support diversity and inclusion in this organisation by closing the gap between those efforts and the actual work that we do in the day-to-day. What I do when I go to work, what I get marked on, what my KPIs are that's that's really important, but it has to be co-created. No leader can walk around and know everything about every diversity group that's ever existed, because even within diversity groups, like within groups I don't believe in diversity groups, but that's the language people use. Even within groups that are marginalized, there is so much diversity, so you can't just know.
Speaker 3:So what we need to do is get better at having these conversations that result in inclusion and co-creation, rather than leaders feeling like I'm going to say the wrong thing, I don't know how to say that. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, that belief isn't okay, you know. There's this kind of criticism of it rather than co-creation and that's an issue for us to actually result in inclusive experiences at work. Now in society, it's a different structure and there's different rights involved and different boundaries. So I'm not talking about that and I just want to separate those two. Inclusive leadership in an organization is wildly different to what I expect of an inclusive leadership leader in politics or in government or in societal settings. They're different because they have different boundaries on them Right?
Speaker 2:You know, what's coming up for me as you're talking about this is a super simple idea or a situation that happens. It's super simple, but I hear about it a lot, and that is so. There's more and more women in leadership positions and and especially if you think about the age group maybe they're starting families, so they've got children, and so they're getting these leadership positions. But then what's happening is they're being told you know, here we're including you. Now we want you to show up, you know, either very early in the morning for an early morning meeting and then maybe at the last minute, say now you've got to stay late and it's. You know.
Speaker 2:I just think that whoever is doing the telling hasn't even ever experienced having to drop off a child at daycare or pick them up. And there is a time frame there, that is, you know they don't have any choice. They have to either drop off or pick up at a certain point. They can't just leave their child in daycare, pick up at a certain point, they can't just leave their child in daycare. And so what you're? I mean it's a simple example, but that's exactly what you're saying. Nobody ever asked like what's a good time to get together to have a meeting on this topic, or maybe you could do it virtually rather than in person, or yeah, it's simple.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and also I'd say, Susan, even if they have had the experience because this is what I have found is that some people will have had an experience of something and because they were so harsh on themselves because they thought they had to be, they just transfer it. So, like I joke about COVID, before COVID, if anyone came to work, didn't come to work sick, they would need to be in hospital. In my opinion, like this is years ago, right, I would be like if you're not in hospital, you can be in work. Because I had this belief about myself if I wasn't in hospital I could go to work. Right, I didn't think about transferring the germs or I. You know it was like, whereas since COVID, we now say, if you, if that's, if you can pass that on, just go home. Like we don't want to engage with it.
Speaker 3:So sometimes what happens is people look in my experience with male leaders especially and the majority of my clients are male leaders, because statistically there's a lot of male leaders um, they have had really harsh standards on themselves. They didn't even consider harsh and they don't even know and they're transferring it and what they're seeing in the reaction, whether from women or from younger people, their interpretation is they're not as committed, they don't want to work as much. Right, yes, their experience they have to, like, suck it up and figure it out in some form if they did. But there's actually another side to this, which is whenever I do inclusive leadership with people, and the way I do it is talk about and look, it's because I come from a psychological lens, it's looking at the whole person, right, and I talk about like moments when you felt included or excluded, and I've never met anyone who doesn't know what it feels like to be excluded, right, so let's start there. And then the second part is saying what parts of you do you reject? And people are like, oh, what do you mean? And I'm like, well, are you allowed to be sick? Are you allowed to rest? Are you allowed to leave? Leave a meeting when you need to use the bathroom, would you? You know what are the needs that you reject? And the male leaders I work with have a load of needs they didn't even consider like loads, right, and so that's my starting point, which is I cannot be inclusive to another until I am validating my needs. And that's not to say that I don't have an obligation to the other. It's to say that sometimes the barrier between inclusive leadership for senior people who've experienced a lot of privilege is actually because they don't know that there's a whole, a whole standard of needs they don't meet and they are transferring that onto others. And when we do that piece of work, it's astounding because they're like oh so it so.
Speaker 3:For instance, the research around women and men in leadership roles is um. We say women are more emotional, but the truth is, when we say that we're only measuring hurt, if we included anger, the measure actually says men are. We don't count anger in the workplace as an emotion because it's been separated from the idea of emotions. It's an appropriate emotion for men to have, but we ignore that anger is usually a secondary emotion, which means there's hurt underneath, and so a lot of men aren't allowed to acknowledge their hurt and they have no visual examples of it. I'm just using gender as an example, because that's the piece of research I'm discussing, but there's a piece about if, if we want people to be inclusive leaders, they have to have a sense of how their ways of being might be harming them too, whereas otherwise all they're seeing is these unrealistic asks of them that they would never ask of themselves. You know so they would never. You know they they wouldn't think it's okay to come in like they wouldn't think it was an okay request. So until they think it's an okay request, they're not really rejecting the person with the need. They're rejecting their own needs within that. So a lot of the private coaching that I do with people around this is actually understanding that inclusion requires us to be able to also include the parts of ourselves and the needs we have that we reject or we think aren't valid, before we can start understanding the experience of others, whereas a lot of the efforts that we're making at the moment is theoretical. It's to tell people we should have flexible working hours or we should be more inclusive, and they're like yeah, yeah, grand, and then they go back to their mental model of the world that they inherited, and so I and I think that's why I have a different angle we need to help people to have a mental model that helps them remain effective and also utilize inclusion to do better.
Speaker 3:It's not about shame and blame, because it doesn't work. They don't engage. You shame someone enough. They either feel terrible and fall apart or they reject you. So they reject themselves, they reject you. It's no good to us, it doesn't get us anywhere.
Speaker 3:So I do think that we need to be more strategic and effective working with, with leaders around being inclusive, because we're ignoring some, some of the fundamental reasons that they're not. And, yes, privilege can be part of it it's it's rarely the full picture of why they're not. Like I predominantly work with men, very privileged people, because leaders generally have a lot of privilege and whether they inherited it or or created it, they tend to um, but they they often don't even understand why this conversation about privilege is happening. They're like what? But like I, I had to do this and I had to do that, and they're not wrong, they did have to do things. But what's not happening is showing them the link between how inclusion is good for them and good for their environment.
Speaker 3:And loads of people say, well, we shouldn't have to. But actually the very basic motivation for all people is what's in it for me, and the research that I've been doing in Ireland and the UK, specifically in for-profit organizations, has shown that no matter who you're talking to, no matter what their identity is, marginalized or not, they start looking for what's in it for them. So why would we not use that as a motivation, when it is a motivation for all adults? Um, so I just think that we need to be a bit more. We can't just tell people they shouldn't do that.
Speaker 3:I guess like it doesn't work when people tell me I shouldn't eat the chocolate cake every day. You know it doesn't work. What we're getting me connected to why that's not helpful, and I think we need to spend a bit more time in that transformational space with leaders, rather than lecture space or dictatorship or shaming space, which I think is what's indirectly happening. And when I ask people, why do you not think inclusive leadership's for you? They say things like I don't have a diverse team. Well, you never have a diverse team without inclusive practice, or never have a diverse team with that inclusive practice. Or they say, oh look, I did that unconscious bias training. They don't think inclusion is about helping them perform, and then they also then support others to perform. That's not how it's being presented, so they have no connection to it.
Speaker 2:Well, sheila, we're coming to the end of our time and there's so much more to talk about. Do you have um, just a final, um thought or advice to give our listeners today?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think I would. I would summarize it all as inclusive leadership requires good relationships, and excellence requires that we go further than we could alone, and so that requires inclusion. You can't get further alone, you know. You'll only go as far as you can go. So I think we need to think about relationships when we think about excellence and leadership, when we think about inclusion, and we need to think about co-creating them, not just kind of setting the scene and then inviting people into them. We need to co-create. So that's what I'd leave everyone with. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that and you know fundamental to that. So, thank you for being a part of Seasons Leadership today. And how can people reach you?
Speaker 3:They can follow up on my website, which we'll share the details of, and on all the socials. It's just my name with a one, so you can find me on all the social platforms that way.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's great. Well, it's so lovely to have you and it's it's so nice to be close to you and on the same Island and and then hopefully someday we'll get to meet in person. That would be lovely.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, listeners, for joining us today. We hope that you were inspired by this conversation.
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Speaker 1:Make sure to join us next time for more conversation about leadership excellence.
