I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed this morning and I was hit by several posts that gave me a little extra bounce to the start of my day day. You see, I left a job as a management consultant with a nice salary, great teammates and good leaders about a year ago. During the last year, I co-founded a consultancy and started sharing skills that addressed what I felt was missing in today's work environments - great leadership. Don't get me wrong, I know some really great leaders but they were usually the exception, not the norm.
One of the posts included an article by Punit Renjen for Deloitte Insights that described why diversity and inclusiveness matters and describes the impact of great leadership quantitatively.
Deloitte’s research shows that the behaviors of leaders (be they senior executives or managers) can drive up to 70 percentage points of difference between the proportion of employees who feel highly included and the proportion of those who do not. . . Furthermore, an increase in individuals’ feelings of inclusion translates into an increase in perceived team performance (+17 percent), decision-making quality (+20 percent), and collaboration (+29 percent). Pause for a second to let those numbers sink in. This phenomenal difference reflects the power of a leader’s shadow.
Behaviors like collaboration, courage, commitment and curiosity were the traits that inclusive leaders embody. These are the very traits that my team is teaching our clients and I couldn't be prouder of my team and those clients for offering a fresh way to stand out as leaders.
The importance of great leadership is often the difference between hanging on to the status quo and the ability to thrive and grow. Teams that are collaborative and resilient are the very teams that can embrace change and overcome obstacles; they see the solutions others overlook.
Bottom line, today is a good day. I am pleased to be helping leaders be more effective by demonstrating to their team members what it looks like to be inclusive, creative, and curious.