Section 2: Inclusive Leadership and Work-Life Effectiveness

Section 2: Inclusive Leadership and Work-Life Effectiveness

“Making the Connection … What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You … Trust, Transparency, and Communication … Applying Concepts to Real Life … Develop Your Personal Work-Life Plan … Rounding Out Knowledge”
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Summaries

  • Section 2: Inclusive Leadership and Work-Life Effectiveness > Making the Connection (16 min.) > All About Inclusive Leadership
  • Section 2: Inclusive Leadership and Work-Life Effectiveness > What You Don't Know Can Hurt You (14 min.) > Voices of Work-Life
  • Section 2: Inclusive Leadership and Work-Life Effectiveness > Trust, Transparency, and Communication (7 min.) > Making Work-Life Work: Trust Is the Foundation

Section 2: Inclusive Leadership and Work-Life Effectiveness > Making the Connection (16 min.) > All About Inclusive Leadership

  • Catalyst research also says that when women and men feel included in their work groups or their workplaces, they’re more likely to do two things: innovate and be a team player.
  • Inclusive leaders empower themselves and others to make decisions about when, where, and how the work gets done.
  • As an individual, you know how you work best and where and when you are most productive.
  • So you know the best solutions that work better for you in your situation.
  • You can understand, accept, and celebrate different ways of working, even if they’re different from your own.
  • Inclusive leaders hold their team members and themselves accountable to get the work done.
  • When the focus is on results, and not about time spent in the office or punching into the time clock, the leaders can start to micromanage less and give clear and regular feedback on work performance.
  • So what does that look like? If a senior leader is transparent about the reason for leaving work, such as attending a school play or maybe taking a class, that sends a message to their team and the organization that work-life effectiveness is an accepted part of the culture, and that work and life both matter.
  • They need to advocate for different ways of getting the work done.
  • Trusting that your employees will get the work done, but also actively building trust by talking about the ways that work best for you and how to make the team work more effectively.
  • They also trust their employees to get the work done, which means that they don’t ask why they’re working flexibly.
  • It shouldn’t matter whether an employee is leaving early to pick up their kids, or to go to a yoga class, or to volunteer at the soup kitchen, as long as they’re getting the work done.
  • Inclusive leaders, especially those who manage others, acknowledge the complexity of work and life, and that these two things sometimes conflict.
  • Finally, inclusive leaders stand up for others and fight against a mentality that emphasizes work at the cost of everything else.
  • Finally, inclusive leaders demonstrate humility, by knowing that they always have more to learn when it comes to managing work and personal lives, and by checking their own assumptions when it comes, for example, to their employees they are managing or working with in the team- knowing that people have different needs, priorities, and ways of working.
  • Inclusive leadership at work and in other parts of your life has the power to make an enormous difference.
  • Inclusive leadership can really provide you the tools, and the behaviors, and the mindset to be more effective at work and in your personal life.

Section 2: Inclusive Leadership and Work-Life Effectiveness > What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You (14 min.) > Voices of Work-Life

  • So there is automatic trust in the teammates, and everybody working, that you’re working.
  • There’s never been a question, is somebody working or not working.
  • Work life flexibility means, for me, that not only can I work anywhere and people can get in touch with me whenever they need to, but there’s also a mutual understanding that I have a life.
  • That we can all work at our own pace and just trust that everybody cares enough about the work that it’s simply going to get done.
  • You need to empower your coworkers to get their job done, and also to work flexibly themselves.
  • To be able to integrate their work and life in a way that makes them as productive as possible.
  • There was a time when I was on an international assignment, and for a year and a half, I was working from home.
  • It’s really about communicating with your clients, and finding a way to call the schedule that works the best for the both of you.
  • My flexible work arrangement means that I work a compressed week at the moment, and of the days that I work, half the days are when I come into the office, and the other half are when I work virtually from my home environment.
  • When I work from home, it actually means I work longer hours, because I save myself a 90-minute commute, believe it or not, each way coming to the office.
  • So that’s more time at my desk, getting work done.
  • On the days that I do come to the office, I’m really mindful that I have limited time to engage with my colleagues face to face, so that’s something that I tend to prioritize, rather than really sitting down and working on the big projects, where I know I can succeed at that just as much working from home.
  • So when you see emails from people saying, “I’m working flex today because I have an appointment,” or, “I’m going to be reachable from here to here,” it lets you know that those people are saying, “Listen I’m around, at these hours, and I’m letting you know where I’m going to be.” And then you learn that behavior from them.

Section 2: Inclusive Leadership and Work-Life Effectiveness > Trust, Transparency, and Communication (7 min.) > Making Work-Life Work: Trust Is the Foundation

  • We had policies that would allow flexibility.
  • We knew that if we were going to solve this thing, it wasn’t going to be through a new policy.
  • We certainly had some good examples around the world, where there was good use of flexibility, where employees and their managers agreed on the flexibility that they needed to get their job done.
  • So we realized in order to truly drive to a different culture in the area of flexibility, we needed an intervention.
  • That intervention came via a declaration from our CEO, almost exactly three years ago, in the spring of 2012.
  • It sounds interesting, but what is it? Where’s the policy? And we kind of had to stop and reset and say, no, no, no, it’s not about a policy.
  • It’s a commitment by leadership to encourage personalized flexibility.

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