Top 10 Books for Today’s Inclusive Leader
The power of motivating and guiding others is not the privilege of a certain shape, color, or sex. Thanks to the increase in demography changes, today's leaders are required not only to have cultural competence and effective heads of multicultural teams but also to do this most inclusively. A good number of CEOs, business leaders, team leaders, and HR professionals have never received training on building an inclusive and diverse workplace, and out of those who have received such training, only a few know how to turn the workplace into a collaborative one. To this end, education, especially reading relevant literature, is very helpful.
Please find the top 10 books anyone interested in turning your workplace into a truly diverse and inclusive experience should read. Start exploring stories from different communities since this is integral in reducing stereotypes and discrimination and encouraging diversity and inclusion.
1. The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
In "The Culture Map," author Erin Meyer seeks to educate her readers on bridging the gap across cultures and properly adjusting to any setting. In their style, Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments: French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get to the point; Latin Americans and Asias are hierarchical by nature; Scandinavians think the most effective boss is one of us. It is something very common when such groups attempt to communicate. "The Culture Map" provides the audience with various models and perspectives from cultural dimensions with people (explanation in the previous paragraph). Erin Meyer provides a market-grounded solution that suggests using smart culture in business, resulting in smart culture for workplace culture design and management.
2) Inclusion: The Ultimate Secret for an Organization's Success by Perrine Farque
Perrine Farque, an author and international keynote speaker, helps her readers with practical work that allows them to become the inclusion leaders they always wanted to be, thanks to the contribution of real-life case studies, work experience, research, and a special additional chapter providing practical tools one can implement. Employee disconnection, engagement, and productivity often prove to be a challenge for most business managers. Severin reports that 85% of employees are rather disengaged while at work. Their organisation becomes profitable when people feel inclusion, engagement, and productivity increase. The book "Inclusion" by Perrine Farque will help in every aspect of this and how making work inclusion and culture in the workplace can greatly enhance the performance of the organisation, who can work toward creating such work inclusion and culture, and, of course, what is everyone's business, the need for work inclusion. Last but not least, it will enable you to become the leader you have always wanted to be.
3) Diversify by June Sarpong
How do we cut off race, color, creed, class, age, religion, sexual orientation, physicality, and all of these accepted differences we have? Is it possible to stop being prejudiced? And what's wrong with that? Diversify states how it takes six stories and six easy actions to demonstrate why social packaging is important to us – how it influences self-perception, self-identity formation, and what one can do and achieve. More than that, it provides us with practical strategies for overcoming those limits and diversifying. Combining sharp observations, fascinating case studies, and interviews with key political, cultural, and business leaders, Diversify is a very efficient, easy, believable, and positive solution to combat communities' disintegration and fulfill our societal potential.
4) How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive by Jennifer Brown
Most of us understand the importance of diversity, but what steps are taken to change the status quo at the workplace? Diversity and inclusion expert Jennifer Brown demystifies the process of putting together the whole and emotional journey we must undertake if we want to have a workplace where everyone can flourish. One's potential is maximised if we are part of a community. It is why there is always more engagement and performance, and even profit in enterprises that incorporate all personnel, regardless of color or creed. Still, the situation remains that most people feel they cannot bring their authentic selves to the workplace. As the workforce becomes more heterogeneous, it becomes even more critical for leaders to grasp how best to harness inclusion. Based on a long work history with several top-ranked organisations, Jennifer Brown identifies steps any leader can take to make a positive change regardless of their position. She takes her readers on the Inclusive Leader Continuum that comprises four development levels: Unaware, Aware, Active, and Advocate. Brown presents each stage, what defines it, the actions and beliefs shaping it, and what the audience can do to enhance their performance further.
No matter your level in the organisational hierarchy, from being a powerful CEO to a new employee with no direct reports, things can be done to alter the everyday experiences of other employees and the direction a firm takes.
5) Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald
"I know my mind. I know how to evaluate other people and to do it in a fair and just manner." This self-understanding has been subjected to criticism by psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they investigate the stigma attached to everyone owing to the pervasive influences of cultural constructs such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, sexual orientation, disabilities, and nationality. The authors use the term blind spot to pertain a segment of the brain that contains prejudices that everyone is unaware of. Clear, energetic, yet thoughtful, Banaji and Greenwald examine how we 'automatically,' unconsciously, and uncontrollably stereotype, thus affecting our preferences and judgments of people's characters, skills, and prospects. In Blindspot, the authors open the readers' eyes to biases that people seldom recognise because of their encounters with the Implicit Association Test, which has transformed the image of psychological science in practically all aspects. The 'good people' of the title are those of us who try to behave as we intend and wish. The purpose of Blindspot is to detail the science enough so that well-meaning but misguided individuals can achieve that end margin.
Through this understanding, beliefs and actions can be modified, and that 'machine' inside us can be 'outsmarted' so that we are more just to people. It is a call to comprehend ourselves.
6) How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X X Kendi
It's not enough to say that one is not a racist. We have to go a step further and be antiracist, striving for authentic equality regardless of color, ethnicity, or race. Within this honorable anthropologist potshot in history, Ibram Kendi, who orchestrates the Antiracism Research and Policy Center, affirms the inability to be neutral on racism: It's either you're part of the problem or part of the solution. With an intelligent manner as a teacher and storyteller, Kendi makes us aware of the fact that every one of us will be growing up in a world wherein racism exists and how, as children, we will be unable to escape it, directing moving humility from his personal experience where child Kendi has been reluctant of racism and choosing to be an antihomophobe instead, as once he has grown up. At the same time, Kendi bursts all the myths and taboos regarding race, which paralyse our reason or judgment, whether it is race, something created by people, or race and race relations, which come up when races, ethnicities, classes, genders, and sexualities overlap or remain issues of disagreement.
During this time, he destroys the notion of a post-racial society. He replaces it with a new Indigenous and useful understanding of racism – what it is, where it's concealed, how to recognise it, and what actions are necessary.
7) Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams by Stefanie K. Johnson
Emphasising an inclusive approach is gratified in the book, when management guru Stefanie Johnson exposes what it means to have the leadership skill of the future, one that will, forgive the cliche, build the "nested model" where diverse teams of people are nurtured but most of all employees who want to feel comfortable being themselves at work. Two marginal motives of every person exist: being different and being familiar. This is because the company creates perspective at the extreme. It either groups people where no one stands out, everyone does, or people are standing out, and no one is fitting in.
Where do employees draw the line between self-expansion and inclusion? The solution to Stefanie Johnson is Inclusify. In this critical guide, the author defines Inclusify and its potential applications within any organisation. Inclusifying – as opposed to "diversifying" or 'including' – connotes a constant long-term approach to sustaining satisfaction, entrenchment, and acceptance of heterogeneous teams. There is little point in possessing diversity where there are no inclusions, you get everyone has a claim, she insists.
Inclusion opens up the surprising reasons why even caring leaders hurt their teams and how the attributes and misconceptions that engender these practices may be identified and enable an individual to be such a leader. They learn the significance of uniqueness and belonging which helps them understand how to covey and inspire their employees to be themselves without sacrificing the sense of belonging to a team. This, in turn, solves the problem of neglect as it leads to a high degree of diversity in thinking, which is invaluable when generating powerful and novel concepts.
8) Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin
Are you looking to build a workplace culture with a certain buzz about it? Employees fitting in and bringing in mega engagement survey scores. People of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual preferences, ages, and people with various abilities are being hired and put in a position to succeed – and everybody else wants their friends to join the party because it is so great. One magic trick to bring out such a workplace is allyship. And its not something only a certain group or rank can do. In "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces," you will get training to identify opportunities to engage in constructive actions for organisational inclusion and some reasonable actions to take. With leadership Coach Karen Catlin, you will learn how to become a better ally by properly attracting and keeping minority staff members, how to uplift, support, and advocate on others' behalf, how to give constructive performance evaluations, faring all employees equitably, and how to use simpler terms. Please read this book to level up your allyship skills and create a culture where everyone, including you, can do their best work and flourish.
9) The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy Edmondson
This book provides enlightened teams and organisations focused on their achievements in a global economy. For effective warfare, it is very important to harness the power of the people, of course, but with minimal ability to say a word, what use is harnessing this power? There is no room for the 'fit in and go along' culture, especially in a knowledge economy. What is needed in such cases is a never-ending supply of fresh ideas, fresh problems, and fresh critical thinking, all of which must be maintained by the picking or teasing of people.
In any case, only some ideas will be the best; yes, there are unanswerable questions. Yes, there is sometimes a need to diverge, which may lead to slowing everything down, but explaining these aspects is a productive way of engaging in creating something new. People should be encouraged to make such sentences when as yet incomplete thoughts are working, to pose questions that are not appropriate, and to brainstorm with open mouths; such practices engender an environment where a low-level mistake or a small lapse in concentration is perfectly tolerable and where real errors are made and repaired, and where the next crazy idea may actually be the next amazing idea. An investigation of this book contains arguments for the importance of such norms of culture and how to implement such a culture in practice. The road is sometimes not easy, but short and dense scenario-based reasons allow for continuous progress and productive imagination.
10) The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace by Lindsey Pollak
It is the millennials who have just only started taking over as the largest generation in the workplace. But also only for a short time. For at least the next decade, these young professionals will be working with and alongside the older generations, such as the baby boomers who are working longer than they ever used to and new people coming into the workplace, generation Z. This means within any organisation, any team, any meeting, any marketing opportunity, any social occasion and you can think of, you can find and any combination of the generations. They all work similarly but at different levels of hierarchy. There is no doubt that in any organisation today – and especially in multinational – you will have to hire new generation leaders and change the pace of work to the speed of the millennials and, at the same time, pay attention to the older employees and the upcoming young generations. The Remix provides the answers and the tools to implement them for all generations and business strategies. Lindsey Pollack, as an advocate of generations in the workplace, includes the most up-to-date data from various sources, her surveys, and her case studies with Fortune 500 companies.
Pollak describes how business people, among them executives, midlevel managers, employees, and entrepreneurs, can address potential problems caused by different working styles and proposes definite strategies for making business sense out of diversity within generations. Change of generation is taking a toll on every industry, every organisation, every leader. Remix is hard to resist when all you want is to be able to live and succeed today and tomorrow.
Books on achieving a more diverse and inclusive work culture are very helpful in developing one's capability to be an inclusive leader.