Inclusive Leadership: Driving Multilevel Organizational Change

Very excited that a chapter I wrote about the need for organizational change at multiple levels has been published in the book INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP: TRANSFORMING DIVERSE LIVES, WORKPLACES, AND SOCIETIES edited by Bernardo M. Ferdman, Jeanine Prime, and Ronald E. Riggio and was released on Sep 29, 2020 by Routledge.

Here is a short excerpt which represents the essence of my arguments in this book chapter. (A pre-publication version may be downloaded HERE)

“To drive change, many diversity and inclusion researchers and practitioners have focused on a bottom-up approach, one that involves changing mindsets and behaviors one at a time: one person, one group, one unfair rule, and one HR policy at a time. Although this strategy might result in incremental changes, and those small changes may have ripple effects that extend beyond one individual or group, their effects can be disparate, fleeting, and may not necessarily amount to large-scale, lasting, and sustained change. The systemic or top-down approach, in contrast, involves challenging the ecosystems that currently validate and perpetuate bias and inequality; this approach focuses on changing behavior and interactions by changing the contexts and systems in which they take place. The former approach lacks the scale and scope often needed for sustainable systemic change, while the latter approach lacks the nuance and agility that can make for quick impact.

[…]

For organizations, communities, and societies to embrace inclusion more wholeheartedly, both bottom-up efforts and systemic top-down changes are required. The role of inclusive leaders in this conceptualization is to create the conditions and take the courageous steps required for more bold, systemic action that harnesses both individual agency and the power of structural change.”