A lot of employers are doing inclusion all wrong. They’re thinking that offering reasonable adjustments is the best way to make an employee feel included.
But what this actually does, in my experience, is make them feel singled out and excluded. Let’s be real: people hate having conversations with their managers about their weaknesses, about what they struggle with more than others. Who really wants to talk to their boss about their ‘broken’ bits?
We need to flip the conversation and think of inclusion as a way to unlock high performance in teams by looking at all the characteristics, quirks and rhythms in an entire team, not just in one person. We need to create working environments where employees aren’t forced into these confidence-sapping conversations which just focus on their struggles, but instead the team is considered as a whole.
(To hear more about how to achieve ‘Healthy high performance in an age of uncertainty’ come along to MAD World Leaders Summit on 9th October in London where Dr Monika Misra, Mars’ Global Head of Health and Wellbeing and author of ‘Healthy High Performance’ is presenting a keynote on this topic, to register see here)
Why singling out prevents inclusion
For instance, you may have one team member who is neurodivergent. But many of us can relate, and experience, some of the characteristics that can be linked with neurodivergence – such as mental fatigue, continual worry or a sense of overwhelm.
Rather than single one person out, though, I’ve found it’s better to be curious about how everyone’s brain works, and how differently each member approaches problems and situations.
As well as this, I’ve found focusing on differing strengths rather than deficiencies (which ‘adjustments’ do by definition, by labelling someone as having to change themselves to fit in with the majority) works better.
Sometimes, if we just see the struggles that someone has – the disorganisation, the inconsistency, the challenge with communication – we overlook the parts of them from which you can unlock their high performance.
Investing time in relationships pays off
Yes, this requires taking time to invest in relationships. There’s no short cut to this. But, ultimately this extra time you take at the outset will make your team, and business, much more powerful in the long run.
Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t about trying to satisfy the needs of all your team all the time. That would be nuts! And is also a surefire way to manager burnout.
No, it’s about, as a manager, asking the question: how do I make my working environment flexible enough by design that all team members are able to thrive?
Within this there’s an acceptance that you often can’t change people and the best way to unlock performance is to understand how high productivity is achieved for each person, which will look different.
Asking the wrong questions
For example, I am ADHD diagnosed. It’s part of someone with ADHD’s nature to leave work until the last minute at which point they’ll often get into a hyper-focused, super productive zone.
Managers who don’t understand someone who operates this way might want to change it, because they worry it’s a stressful way to approach work. I’ve certainly had managers ask me about their neurodivergent colleagues: how can I stop them leaving everything to the last minute?
But this is the wrong question. It’s not managers’ job to manage how an individual gets the work done, so a better question to ask would be:
How do I create the environment which allows an understanding of, and flexibility to accommodate each team member as an individual?
Creating environments for all to thrive
In my case, that means understanding that, even if I’ve tried to plan in advance, I’ll often find myself doing the work just before the deadline. I thrive – like everyone – in environments where I can work in a way that suits me and where others understand my working style.
Healthy high performance is about co-creating the right conditions in which each team member can take responsibility for their own success. This comes down to mutual understanding.
This mutual understanding, fortuitously, leads to the single most important ingredient for healthy, high performing teams: psychological safety. Google’s ‘Aristotle’ project famously identified this as the number one driver of successful teams, ahead of dependability, structure and clarity, meaning and impact.
Psychological safety is misunderstood
But psychological safety, again, is often misunderstood. It’s not about merely being ‘nice’ or a kind boss. Yes, of course, that helps. But psychological safety requires much more strategic thought, and action, than that. It requires much more than simply pasting a few posters on the wall about the company values.
To foster psychological safety you really have to get into the trenches with your team. You need to ask questions like: what values are my team living? What are the unsaid things? What are the norms that have developed that people instinctively know?
Yes – it’s not always easy because humans can be hard work and messy. But, in a world pushing us to become more automatic and robotically productive than ever before, being human in our relationships, at work and at home, is going to be the most important factor for success in future.
Jill is Founder of inpurpose, which helps founders and organisations build better workplaces through strategy, systems and people development. One of her key areas of focus is helping teams understand how each member works, how to work better together and deliver what matters.
To find out more about Healthy High Performance, come along to the many sessions touching on this key topic at this year’s MAD Leaders Summit in London on 9th October. See the full agenda and register here.
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