Inclusive Leadership

All together now: experiential, drama-based training to help leaders bring the best out of individuals and teams.

“Excellent training; this course should be mandatory for everyone whose role includes leading others.”

Inclusive leaders understand that it’s not all about them. They know it’s really about everybody else. Because it’s everybody else that delivers the goods, looks after the customers, cares for the patients, writes the software, designs the products, maintains the technology, knows what’s really happening and what would make it better.

Inclusive leaders totally get this. That’s why they make it their job to do everything in their power to make everybody else feel like they can do their best work. It’s vital work in itself. Work that calls on a specific set of skills and capabilities that, no matter what people tell you, don’t come naturally.

Our half-day, training programme focuses on exactly what’s needed to bring the best out of individuals and teams. Based around our Inclusive Leadership Framework it uses a dynamic blend of live-action drama, group exercises, and powerful conversations to get to the heart of the challenges facing aspiring inclusive leaders in today’s workplace and inspire participants to make a positive difference.

Learning Outcomes

Appreciation of the personal and organisational challenges facing leaders aspiring to create a more inclusive workplace
Recognition of the need for leaders to develop an inclusive mindset to get the most from a diverse workforce
Understanding of the proven key elements of Inclusive Leadership, including a range of associated skills and capabilities
Experience of Inclusive Leadership in action through dramatised content
A plan to put their learning into action and continue to develop and improve their managerial performance back in the workplace

The Programme

Intended for anybody responsible for leading others, our half-day training programme is highly interactive and includes fictional dramatised content delivered by professional actors, alongside electronic voting, group exercises, and skilful facilitation. It is designed to be delivered to up to 20 people at a time in face-to-face workshops held either on-site at your premises or off-site at an appropriate venue.

The programme consists of the following modules.

Module 1:	welcome and explanation of purpose; getting to know each other, outlining aims and objectives, and establishing norms for the workshop.
Module 2:	where we are now, where we want to be; using electronic voting and group discussion to quantify and describe what people have experienced and witnessed at work, as well as what they have done themselves. We establish what the inclusive workplace looks like, desirable employee behaviours, and potential barriers. Then, we look at diversity and research on the benefits of inclusion for individuals and organisational performance.
Module 3:	the leadership continuum; unpacking ‘common sense’ preconceptions about what leadership is and what makes a good leader with help from our fictional leader and insights from a world leader and an organisational change expert. We make the case for understanding leadership as a context dependent continuum.
Module 4:	inclusive leadership skills; introducing learners to our Inclusive Leadership Framework, which grew out of research commissioned by the Employer’s Network for Equality and Inclusion. It consists of four interrelated elements – Work, Engagement, Growth, and Wellbeing – each of which contains a group of practical competencies or skills for inclusive leaders.
Module 5:	interactive scenario – the team meeting; learners watch our fictional leader as they take the ‘morning huddle’, which starts well, but unravels when one of their team members starts to get under their skin. Having witnessed events end badly, learners use the Inclusive Leadership Framework to explore just what went wrong. They then replay the scene using stop-start forum theatre to try and get a better outcome for everyone involved.
Module 6:	interactive scenario – after the meeting; picking up after the previous scenario, we see how our fictional leader handles a ‘difficult conversation’ with the ‘challenging’ team member. As well as allowing learners to work on specific elements of the Inclusive Leadership Framework, this scene is used to develop the skills needed for leaders to manage their emotions.
Module 7:	summary, action planning and evaluation; at the end, learners get the chance to identify one or more practical actions they will take back in the workplace, before the session closes with a series of electronic polls to evaluate whether the session met its objectives.

Learning Into Action

We have been delivering leadership programmes since the company started in 2011. In that time, we’ve had customers from a wide range of sectors, including health, utilities, local government, and finance.

Results from in-session electronic polling include:

92% said the session helped them think about the challenges facing leaders aspiring to create a more inclusive workplace
95% identified ways in which they could become a more inclusive leader
86% said they had identified ways to help people feel like they can do their best work and progress
94% found the session worthwhile
97% of learners want to take an inclusive leadership approach to managing their team
95% felt inspired to make a positive difference back in the workplace

In follow-up surveys (6 weeks later):

68% of learners had engaged in a ‘difficult’ or ‘honest’ conversation in response to a situation or behaviour they thought was undesirable (just over one in four hadn’t been in such a situation)
61% had done all or some of the actions they had planned as part of the training programme (only one in twenty hadn’t done anything)
80% continued to feel that taking part in the training had been worthwhile
27-34% of team members reported improvement in key aspects of their manager/ team leader’s leadership approach

Interested?

If you are interested in running this training programme in your organisation, or if you simply want to ask a question about it, hit the button to contact us or call +44 (0)1484 310234.

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