Increase your Team’s Productivity With These Simple Inclusivity Tips
It’s your secret sauce for team leadership
Which manager wouldn’t wish to assemble a team and yet have them engaged and productive?
Well, I’d show you how getting it right with people management leads to team success and how if you got it wrong could adversely affect your team.
The 2024 Global Work Culture Report by The O.C. Tanner Institute showed that only 44% of employees said their company’s diversity and inclusivity programs
were effective or believed inclusion was part of their culture, while only 34% felt efforts on inclusiveness were sincere.
Another study by the same organization found that when employees trust that they will be treated fairly regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or age, they tend to be more productive and engaged at work.
The field of sports is one in which I’v learned plenty of lessons on inclusiveness. Here, we like to see those we are supporting win tournaments consistently and a major reason why they do so is due to the collaborative efforts of team members.
As a follower of the English Premiership, Manchester
City football is a club I admire the consistency with which they’ve won major tournaments in recent times. Their superb performances brought joy to their fans .
The coach has put in some work in assembling a crop of diverse players and blended them to achieve his goal - winning tournaments.
Pep Guardiola, the club’s manager attributes this to employing inclusiveness on the team.
Does it mean other coaches don’t do the same? Well, I don’t have an answer but it’s obvious Pep has a good grasp of how to lead people.
Inclusivity means making sure everyone feels welcome, valued, and respected, no matter who they are or where they come from. It is the quality of including many different types of people and treating them all fairly.
Here lies the gap.
Imagine a school or workplace where everyone is invited and treated Wouldn’t it be a great place to be?
Unfortunately,we still hear teachers treating their pupils unfairly because they’re not as smart as the others or parties where people are treated unfairly because they don’t belong to a certain class.
I have seen this happen in the workplace too.
Some years back,I worked as a young pharmaceutical sales representative in a company.I was in a team where the manager rather than promoting inclusivity favours the formation of cliques. He deals only with the "smart guys" to the exclusion of other team members. He will seek your opinion if only you are 'his pal’. This led to the loss of good fellows on our team to competitors.
Too bad you’d think but it is often said that people leave bad bosses and not bad companies. I saw it play out and it wasn’t good for the organisation.
This is one challenge those leading teams will always have to deal with. Good leaders are adept at people management. They realise that people are unique in some way as individuals and they must identify the capabilities of each person on their team and blend them to enable cohesion where the individuals disappear leaving only the team as a result. This resultant team is the one capable of winning tournaments with consistency.
So, if I should ask you,what kind of leader do you want to be?
If you find this piece useful kindly share your comments.
See you next time.
Emmanuel
