Inclusive Leadership Through Crucial Conversations
By Shivangi Walke
Published on May 5, 2022
A friend of mine is going through a tough time at home. They are working through a difficult marriage, challenges at school and the struggle to focus on their job when their life is falling apart at home.
After reading the first sentence, how many of you thought this was a woman? And how many of you feel utterly more sympathetic when you get to know that this friend is a man?
But you know what, man/ woman, it doesn’t make life easy for them in any way. You can’t help his marriage, or drop his kids’ to school or pay their tuition fees or tell him to take a sabbatical. I am sure he has thought through all that. So you having a solution/ opinion on his state of life certainly doesn’t help him.
Now if I tell you he wears a turban, and got married very young and his spouse is far younger than him - all kinds of stereotypes kick in.
At the workplace we live and function at the intersection of many different communities. Each community has differing norms and behave differently, and uncertainty is what we are constantly dealing with.
To manage uncertainty, we resort to stereotypes - what we think we know about people.
Stereotypes help us categorize and understand people. However your opinion about a community or a race or a people or of people identifying themselves with a select gender or on other spaces on that spectrum, all of that stems from what you’ve experienced so far. And if you haven’t been exposed to many differences, it's natural that your opinions may be rooted in discomfort and sometimes even fear. A skull cap worries us. Sometimes a beard does. Or maybe a turban. Or maybe a burkha. We are wary of skin colour or may be a hair style. And we know those emotions, whether conscious or subconscious, don’t bring out the most cogent thoughts in us. This cascades to the workplace as well.
How does diversity in all its forms - the gender spectrum, race, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, functions and identity amongst others feature in your conversations at work?
Personally I have always been keen to create a space for inclusive conversations. And I am always learning.
What Am I Learning?
Recently I have had a few conversations in the #Thrivewithmentoring community around how we can offer mentoring to neurodiverse mentees. Probably many of our current processes around attraction, recruitment, launching, matching, sustaining - will require a rethink.
The tool that I keep falling back on is CrucialConversations.
How can crucial conversations facilitate an open dialogue on inclusion?
Crucial conversations can help us bias correct or at least be bias aware. Everybody comes to a conversation from their level of observing and understanding. What makes a conversation successful is when people understand the lived experiences of the others. The skill lies in understanding where they come from - to listen to what they have to say about their own experiences, values, beliefs and feelings. Oppression (however subtle or unintended) is as real to people even if it may seem unclear it may seem to us.
As Crucial Conversations practitioners we can start becoming more culturally competent and empathetic as we gain a more sophisticated understanding of rank, privilege and power.
Move away from silence and violence. We know that we resort to silence ( when we stop contributing to dialogue) or violence ( when we compel others towards our point of view) as a natural response when we feel unsafe.
How can your conversation skills incite reflection, both in yourself and others? What is visible to another may be anger, but may be what you are actually feeling is hurt/ embarrassment or even shame. The more we understand our own reactions, and accept them, the more we start understanding others. And we have the possibility to move away from silence and violence towards having a dialogue.
Don’t tell yourself stories of what supposedly happened. Easier said than done, right? When you ascribe intent or intellect, you are subtly saying that “you” know better. You are assuming intent, an intent that isn’t inclusivity. The choice in these conversations should be to work with “caring respect”. That should be a measurable goal- the desired behaviour is something that people should strive for, it shouldn’t be the minimum that’s expected of them.
Sticking to facts and letting go of the 'Story' is an ongoing journey.
As a crucial conversations practitioner and teacher, I find it important to create spaces where dialogue flows. Every piece of “chatter” helps me understand better who I am talking to. These spaces are of camaraderie, shared experiences and inclusion.
Where am I speaking?
Super excited to speak at the #TedxBasel event on 7th May, 2022 .
Have you wondered How to lead a life of Abundance?
Join me to learn more about the practice that helped me to pay minute attention to what is emerging in my life and who I am becoming.
ThrivewithMentoring the non-profit I founded 4 years back is returning back to in-person launches in 5 cities in this quarter. I am so excited to be meeting with the cohort leadership teams and mentors and mentees in-person. I hope you join our amazing tribe if you are a business woman seeking guidance as a mentee or providing guidance as a mentor.
I would love to meet you
In Johannesburg on 31st May, 2022
In Tel Aviv on 24th June, 2022
In Manchester end of June
And let me also take this opportunity to invite you to the Annual Thrive Awards on
Emotional Courage LinkedIN Live Sessions
Emotional courage is valuable because it helps us take action on what we care about. It means being willing to recognize our emotions and act on them, even if we are afraid of the outcome because we know that it’s worth doing. Intrigued? Find out more in our LI Live session on Emotional Courage at the Workplace.
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