YOUR ROLE AS A MANAGER IN CREATING A POSITIVE, INCLUSIVE WORKPLACE CULTURE: TOWARD A MORE POSITIVE AND INCLUSIVE CULTURE

Neutralizing A Negative Workplace: Understanding
and dealing with negativity at the office
White, Paul

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ABSTRACT (ENGLISH)
Negativity is one of the most common, and deeply ingrained, obstacles to a healthy work environment. When
working with front-line employees, supervisors and mid-level managers, a frequent question I hear is, “What can I do
to create more positive interactions in my workplace? People are so negative here!”

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Negativity is one of the most common, and deeply ingrained, obstacles to a healthy work environment. When
working with front-line employees, supervisors and mid-level managers, a frequent question I hear is, “What can I do

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to create more positive interactions in my workplace? People are so negative here!”
Negativity: What is it, really?
Believe it or not, the term “negativity” does not mean the same thing to everyone or display itself consistently in all
work settings. Each facility, or even departments within a facility, can be “negative” in different ways. So the first step
is to behaviorally define: “What does ‘negativity’ look like in your work setting?”
In getting feedback from supervisors and employees, we came up with a long list of behaviors and characteristics.
Here is our current list.
Examples of Negative Behaviors in the Workplace
Where Negativity Comes From
Negative reactions are created by a variety of factors, and often a combination of issues. One of the most frequently
ignored set of factors are physiological ones. While it becomes obvious once mentioned, we need to remember that
we are more likely to react with negative behavior when we are tired, hungry or thirsty, if there are hormonal
changes occurring, or when we generally don’t feel well, have a headache, or in pain.
Probably the most common source of negative reactions is when expectations aren’t met. We get angry (at different
intensity levels) when what we think should happen doesn’t, or when something happens that we think shouldn’t.
So, if a team member is (or a group of employees are) consistently displaying negative reactions in the workplace, it
is quite likely that they are experiencing a mismatch between their expectations and what they are experiencing in
day-to-day work life. Hundreds of books have been written on the topic of controlling our emotional reactions by
examining our thought patterns and belief systems which can be of help.
How to Begin to Neutralize Negativity
So what can be done? Do you just have to accept the level of negativity expressed in your workplace?
No, you don’t have to resort to “walking on eggshells” waiting for someone to explode, or try to avoid colleagues who
seem angry much of the time. Nor do you have to endure the seemingly endless complaining, grumbling and cynical
comments made by others.
“We do not have the power to change others’ attitudes, and often we have minimal ability to shape their behaviors.
But each of us has the capability to impact those we work with on a daily basis”. Here are three practical steps to
begin with:
1. Don’t engage in the negative. When others are complaining, keep quiet. If a group is gossiping about another
team member, just walk away. When someone acts in a hostile way toward you, respond appropriately and calmly.
Don’t add to the negative energy others are displaying.
2. Contribute to the positive. A positive comment is like throwing water on a fire trying to get started. Smile. Make a
humorous (non-cutting) comment. Tell someone thanks for a job done well. Comment on how nice the weather is or
being thankful for air conditioning. A little positivity and gratefulness can douse a developing “negativity” wildfire.
3. Explore your and others’ expectations and compare them with reality. Examine whether people’s expectations are
reality-based. (Tip: It is best to start with yourself rather than others.) Compare your situation with other situations
worse than yours, and see how that impacts your perspective. Consider doing some in-service training with staff on
what are realistic and unrealistic expectations for their jobs and workplace.
Unfortunately, negative attitudes and behaviors seem to reign in many workplaces. But don’t let others dominate and
take control of your workplace environment. Each person can begin to take steps to help create a more positive
workplace, and when employees work together to do so, a far healthier workplace culture can be developed.
Author Bio
Dr. Paul White is the author of The Vibrant Workplace and co-author of The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the
Workplace with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the NY Times #1 Bestseller, The 5 Love Languages.

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Subject: Employees

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People: Chapman, Gary

Publication title: Personal Excellence Essentials; Aurora

Publication year: 2018

Publication date: Apr 2018

Publisher: HR.COM

Place of publication: Aurora

Country of publication: Canada, Aurora

Publication subject: Sociology

Source type: Magazine

Language of publication: English

Document type: Feature

Publication history :

Online publication date: 2018-04-08

Publication history :

   First posting date: 08 Apr 2018

ProQuest document ID: 2043346287

Document URL: https://www.proquest.com/magazines/neutralizing-negative-workplace-
understanding/docview/2043346287/se-2?accountid=14872

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Last updated: 2022-11-23

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Digital
Article

Diversity And Inclusion

Diversity Doesn’t Stick
Without Inclusion
The latter is harder to measure but just as important. by Laura Sherbin
and Ripa Rashid

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Diversity Doesn’t Stick
Without Inclusion

The latter is harder to measure but just as important. by Laura Sherbin
and Ripa Rashid

Published on HBR.org / February 01, 2017 / Reprint H03FC8

Leaders have long recognized that a

diverse workforce of women, people of

color, and LGBT individuals confers a

competitive edge in terms of selling

products or services to diverse end users.

Yet a stark gap persists between

recognizing the leadership behaviors that

unlock this capability and actually

practicing them.

Part of the problem is that “diversity” and

“inclusion” are so often lumped together

that they’re assumed to be the same thing.

But that’s just not the case. In the context

of the workplace, diversity equals

representation. Without inclusion, however, the crucial connections

that attract diverse talent, encourage their participation, foster

innovation, and lead to business growth won’t happen. As noted

diversity advocate Vernā Myers puts it, “Diversity is being invited to the

party. Inclusion is being asked to dance.”

Numerous studies show that diversity alone doesn’t drive inclusion.

In fact, without inclusion there’s often a diversity backlash. Our

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research on sponsorship and multicultural professionals, for example,

shows that although 41% of senior-level African-Americans, 20% of

senior-level Asians, and 18% of senior-level Hispanics feel obligated to

sponsor employees of the same gender or ethnicity as themselves (for

Caucasians the number is 7%), they hesitate to take action. Sponsors

of color, especially at the top, are hobbled by the perception of giving

special treatment to protégés of color and the concern that protégés

might not “make the grade.” The result: Just 18% of Asians, 21% of

African-Americans, and 25% of Hispanics step up to sponsorship (and

27% of Caucasians).

Another difficulty in solving the issue is data. It’s easy to measure

diversity: It’s a simple matter of headcount. But quantifying feelings

of inclusion can be dicey. Understanding that narrative along with the

numbers is what really draws the picture for companies.

For example, we worked with a Chile-based firm that would seem

to have no problems with diversity. After all, one of their most

valued employees is an indigenous Peruvian, a man who is respected,

well-paid, and included in the leadership team’s decision-making

discussions. Yet in a one-on-one interview he confided that he saw

no future for his ambitions at that firm. “I know they value me,” he

said, “but I am an indigenous person, and they are white, legacy, and

Spanish. They will never make me a partner, because of my color and

background.” Conventional measures would never flag this talented

man for a flight risk; it’s up to the narrative to tell the tale.

At the Center for Talent Innovation, we have constructed a

unique, robust framework for measuring the things that matter. Our

methodology relies on three streams of information: wide-ranging,

anonymous, quantitative surveys provide the statistical foundation;

Insights In-Depth sessions, a proprietary web-based tool used to

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conduct facilitated focus groups within companies, provide the stories

to flesh out the statistics; and one-on-one interviews enrich the

statistics with deeper meaning. Within that framework our research has

uncovered four levers that drive inclusion.

Inclusive leaders. This kind of leadership is a conglomeration of six

behaviors: ensuring that team members speak up and are heard; making

it safe to propose novel ideas; empowering team members to make

decisions; taking advice and implementing feedback; giving actionable

feedback; and sharing credit for team success. Of employees who report

that their team leader has at least three of these traits, 87% say they feel

welcome and included in their team, 87% say they feel free to express

their views and opinions, and 74% say they feel that their ideas are

heard and recognized. For respondents who reported that their team

leader has none of these traits, those percentages dropped to 51%, 46%,

and 37%, respectively.

Authenticity. It’s not surprising that everyone expends energy by

repressing parts of their persona in the workplace in some way. But

according to our research, 37% of African-Americans and Hispanics

and 45% of Asians say they “need to compromise their authenticity”

to conform to their company’s standards of demeanor or style. Our

research on women in the science, engineering, and technology

industries shows that, regardless of gender, acting “like a man” can

provide an advantage in becoming a leader in these fields. What a waste

of employees’ energy, let alone their employers’ diversity dollars.

Networking and visibility. For women and people of color, the key

to rising above a playing field that remains stubbornly uneven is

sponsorship. A sponsor is a senior-level leader who elevates their

protégé’s visibility within the corridors of power, advocates for key

assignments and promotions for them, and puts their reputation

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on the line for the protégé’s advancement. For those who feel

marginalized by their gender, ethnicity, age, sexual identity, or

educational and economic background, sponsorship is particularly

crucial in invigorating ambition and driving engagement. Having a

sponsor increases the likelihood of being satisfied with the rate of career

advancement. Conversely, lack of sponsorship increases someone’s

likelihood of quitting within a year.

Clear career paths. For women, LGBT individuals, and people of

color, the map to career success is murky. Our research shows that

45% of women off-ramp to take care of children, although elder care

is increasingly pulling women off the career track, with 24% leaving

to care for aging relatives. But a significant number of women also

feel pushed off the ladder: 29% say their career isn’t satisfying, and

23% feel stalled in their careers. Comments from women in focus

groups note that they’re frustrated by being passed over for high-profile

assignments, and they have a general sense of missing out on the right

opportunities. LGBT individuals and people of color, too, struggle to

name a simple solution to open up a blocked career path. Ironically, it’s

usually the majority group that presumes to identify the reason these

people aren’t advancing, which too often results in the problem being

oversimplified.

Companies should start from the simple but fundamental

understanding that there are different perspectives, each of them

valuable, and work to explore and identify the range of barriers holding

these individuals back. Organizations can then formulate plans and

programs that offer options and provide signposts that help women,

LGBT people, and people of color find the path that’s right for where

they are in their lives and careers.

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Focusing on these four levers can elicit real change. Our research finds

that employees with inclusive managers are 1.3 times more likely to feel

that their innovative potential is unlocked. Employees who are able to

bring their whole selves to work are 42% less likely to say they intend to

leave their job within a year. Those with sponsors are 62% more likely to

have asked for and have received a promotion. And 69% of women who

off-ramp would have stayed at their companies if they’d had flexible

work options.

Diversity without inclusion is a story of missed opportunities, of

employees so used to being overlooked that they no longer share ideas

and insights. But diversity with inclusion provides a potent mix of talent

retention and engagement.

This article was originally published online on February 01, 2017.

Laura Sherbin, PhD, is co-president of the Center for Talent
Innovation. She is an economist who specializes in the creation of
competitive advantage through inclusion and diversity.

Ripa Rashid specializes in global talent strategies. She has spent
over a decade as a management consultant and has held senior
positions at Met Life and Time Warner. She is coauthor with
Hewlett of Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets (Harvard
Business Review Press, 2011). She is a graduate of Harvard University
and INSEAD’s MBA program.

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REPRINT H05F5N
PUBLISHED ON HBR.ORG
FEBRUARY 17, 2020

ARTICLE
LEADERSHIP
Don’t Let Negativity
Sink Your Organization
by Bill Taylor

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LEADERSHIP

Don’t Let Negativity Sink
Your Organization
by Bill Taylor
FEBRUARY 17, 2020

HENRIK SORENSEN/GETTY IMAGES

Every so often, you encounter academic research that snaps into place a whole bunch of tensions,
issues, and problems that you’ve noticed but haven’t been able to understand. That happened to me
when I read a new book called The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can
Rule It. The authors of the book, renowned research psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and award-
winning journalist John Tierney, offer lessons from social science about life, love, parenting, even
politics.

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For me, though, the book provided eye-opening insights into a set of questions about business and
leadership that I have been wrestling with for years — questions that get to the heart of why so many
organizations find it difficult to transform themselves despite the best of intentions. Questions such
as:

Why do so many big, established, well-funded companies remain so cautious and conservative, even
in the face of radical technology advances and head-spinning disruptions in the marketplace? Why is
change so hard?

Why are so many executives so deadly afraid of failure, even though most of them will admit that
successful innovation rarely comes without setbacks, that the very nature of launching new products
or rethinking old processes requires risk-taking, experimentation, and inevitable bumps in the road?

How is it that just one discordant colleague, a single voice of negativity in a business unit or project
team that is upbeat and enthusiastic, can cast such a long shadow on group morale? How does one
bad apple always seem to spoil the whole bunch?

John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister help us wrestle with these and other questions about strategy,
culture, and creativity by starting with a defining principle of human psychology — bad is stronger
than good. We humans are wired in such a way, they argue, that there is a “universal tendency for
negative events and emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones.” We are “devastated by a
word of criticism” but “unmoved by a shower of praise.” We “see the hostile face in the crowd” but
“miss all the friendly smiles.”

I don’t know about you, but for me, as a parent, an author, and a public speaker, these observations
ring painfully true. But this built-in “negativity bias” also has huge implications for us in our roles as
leaders, colleagues, and change agents.

For one thing, it explains why so many organizations remain so reluctant to change, even in the face
of massive evidence that the risk of trying something new is much lower than the cost of clinging to
what’s worked in the past. Too many of us are “safety junkies,” according to Tierney and Baumeister.
“We pay so much attention to bad things — reliving them, imagining them, avoiding them — that we
let fear run our lives and become irrationally cautious.”

The social-science term for this mindset is “loss aversion” — most of us prefer to play not to lose
rather than play to win, because we feel the sting of defeat so much more intensely than the pleasure
of success. But for leaders who want their companies to win, especially in fast-changing, hyper-
competitive fields, allowing their organizations to remain addicted to safety is the ultimate losing
proposition. I’ve found that the best leaders infuse their organizations with what John Gardner, the
legendary leadership scholar, called “tough-minded optimism” — excitement, enthusiasm, grit. The
future, he insisted, “is rarely shaped by people who don’t themselves believe in the future.” Effective
leaders keep their people excited about the future and break their addiction to safety.

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The power of bad also explains why it is so hard to sustain innovation over the long term, even when
things are basically going well. It turns out that the impact on morale of even a small setback — a
project that goes over budget, a product that doesn’t deliver quite as promised — can overwhelm all
the successes that surround it. Tierney and Baumeister call it The Rule of Four: “It takes four good
things to overcome one bad thing.”

I’ve found that the most effective leaders go out of their way to remind colleagues of the progress
they are making, to celebrate small wins as frequently and colorfully as they can. There’s a reason so
many startups ring a bell (or lately, it seems, a gong) every time they land a new customer, or
organize Friday celebrations to revel in the week’s good news. Much of our day-to-day experience in
business, from building a new company to changing an established one, is tinged with
disappointment — the customer we didn’t land, the meeting that didn’t go well. The Rule of Four
means leaders should make it a point to emphasize (even over-emphasize) good news in order to
drown out the bad news.

The power of bad explains one final element of the hard work of big change, this one more personal
than strategic. I’ve always been struck by how a small number of discordant voices inside a company
— a loud skeptic, a died-in-the-wool traditionalist — can slow down or paralyze a change program
that enjoys widespread support. As it turns out, one “bad apple” really can spoil the whole bunch
(the lyrics of that Osmond’s song notwithstanding), so it’s urgent for leaders to rid their teams of the
three different kinds of bad apples that Tierney and Baumeister describe: the jerk, the slacker, and
the downer.

Researchers have documented the positive impact of “social support” — friends, colleagues,
neighbors who pump you up and cheer you on. Researchers have also documented the negative
impact of “social undermining” — people who gossip, carry grudges, and otherwise bring you down.
Not surprisingly, “Social undermining was found to have a bigger impact than social support.” So
leaders with great ideas and good intentions won’t succeed unless they are prepared to deal with
their bad apples.

Ultimately, the good news is that bad news doesn’t have to drag down your company or your team.
But it does require all of us, as executives, entrepreneurs, and change agents, to infuse well-designed
strategies with a healthy dose of psychology. In business, as in life, it’s hard to get to the good unless
you overcome the power of bad.

Bill Taylor is the cofounder of Fast Company and the author, most recently, of Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations
Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways. Learn more at williamctaylor.com.

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REPRINT R1906L
PUBLISHED IN HBR
NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2019

ARTICLE
MANAGING YOURSELF
How the Best
Bosses Interrupt Bias
on Their Teams
Strategies to foster equity and inclusion
by Joan C. Williams and Sky Mihaylo

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Illustrations by LARS LEETARU

MANAGING YOURSELF

HOW THE BEST
BOSSES INTERRUPT
BIAS ON THEIR TEAMS
Strategies to foster
equity and inclusion
by Joan C. Williams and Sky Mihaylo

COMPANIES SPEND MILLIONS on antibias training each
year. The goal is to create workforces that are more inclusive,
and thereby more innovative and more effective. Studies
show that well-managed diverse groups outperform homoge-
neous ones and are more committed, have higher collective
intelligence, and are better at making decisions and solving
problems. But research also shows that bias prevention
programs rarely deliver. And some companies don’t invest

Experience
Advice and Inspiration

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November–December 2019  2

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in them at all. So how can you, as an
individual leader, make sure your team
is including and making the most of
diverse voices? Can one person fix what
an entire organization can’t?

Although bias itself is devilishly
hard to eliminate, it is not as difficult to
interrupt. In the decades we’ve spent
researching and advising people on
how to build and manage diverse work
groups, we’ve identified ways that man-
agers can counter bias without spending
a lot of time—or political capital.

The first step is to understand the
four distinct ways bias plays out in
everyday work interactions: (1) Prove
it again: Some groups have to prove
themselves more than others do.
(2) Tightrope: A narrower range of behav-
iors is accepted from some groups than
from others. (3) Maternal wall: Women
with children see their commitment
and competence questioned or face
disapproval for being too career focused.
(4) Tug-of-war: Disadvantaged groups
find themselves pitted against one
another because of differing strategies
for assimilating—or refusing to do so.

The second step is to recognize when
and where these forms of bias arise day-
to-day. In the absence of an organiza-
tional directive, it’s easy to let them go
unaddressed. That’s a mistake. You can’t
be a great manager without becoming a
bias interrupter. Here’s how to do it.

PICKING YOUR PEOPLE
Bias in hiring has been extensively
documented. In one study, “Jamal”
needed eight more years of experience
than “Greg” to be seen as equally
qualified. Another found that men from

elite backgrounds were called back for
interviews more than 12 times as often
as identical candidates from non-elite
backgrounds. Other studies have found
that women, LGBT+ candidates, people
with disabilities, women in headscarves,
and older people are less likely to be
hired than their peers.

Fairness in hiring is only the first
step toward achieving diversity, but
it’s an important one. Here are four
simple actions that will yield the best
candidates by eliminating artificial
advantages:

1 Insist on a diverse pool. Whether
you’re working with recruiters or
doing the hiring yourself, make it

clear from the outset that you want
true diversity, not just one female or
minority candidate. Research shows
that the odds of hiring a woman are 79
times as great if at least two women
are in the finalist pool, while the odds
of hiring a nonwhite candidate are 194
times as great with at least two finalist
minority applicants. For example, when
Kori Carew launched the Shook Schol-
ars Institute at Shook, Hardy & Bacon,
she designed it to bring a diverse mix of
students into the law firm and offered
career development and mentoring that
prompted many of them to apply for
summer associate positions.

2
Establish objective criteria,
define “culture fit,” and demand
accountability. Implicit biases

around culture fit often lead to homo-
geneity. Too often it comes down to
shared backgrounds and interests that
out-groups, especially first-generation
professionals, won’t have. That’s why it’s
important to clarify objective criteria for
any open role and to rate all applicants
using the same rubric. When one insur-
ance company began hiring in this way,
it ended up offering jobs to 46% more
minority candidates than before. Even if
your organization doesn’t mandate this
approach, ensure that everyone on your
team takes it. Write down the specific

qualifications required for a particular
position so that everyone can focus
on them when reviewing résumés and
conducting interviews. For example,
when Alicia Powell was managing chief
counsel at PNC Bank, she made a point
of listing the qualities that would make
new team members successful in their
roles: proactive in managing risk, self-
disciplined, patient, customer focused,
and independent. Powell shared this
information with the rest of her team
and candidates, ensuring that everyone
was on the same page. You should hold
people accountable in the same way.
Waive criteria rarely, and require an
explanation for those exceptions; then
keep track of long-term waiving trends.
Research shows that objective rules tend
to be applied rigorously to out-groups
but leniently to in-groups.

3
Limit referral hiring. If your organi-
zation is homogeneous, hiring from
within or from employees’ social

networks will only perpetuate that.
So reach out to women and minority
groups. Google partners with histor-
ically black colleges such as Spelman
and Florida A&M University and with
Hispanic-serving institutions such as
New Mexico State and the University of
Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. As an individual
leader, you can work with the same orga-
nizations or recruit from similar ones in
your industry or local community.

4
Structure interviews with skills-
based questions. Ask every person
interviewed the same questions

and make sure that each question
directly relates to the desired knowledge
and skills you’ve outlined. Rate the
answers immediately—that will allow
you to compare candidates fairly on
a pre established rubric and prevent
favoritism. You should also use skills
assessments: Rather than ask “How com-
fortable are you with Excel?” say “Here’s
a data set. How would you find out X?”
For more-complex skills, such as project
management, pose a problem or a task
that candidates are likely to encounter on

3 Harvard Business Review
November–December 2019

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the job and ask them to describe in detail
how they would handle it.

MANAGING DAY-TO-DAY
Even good leaders sometimes fall into
bad habits when it comes to the daily
management of their teams. Women
report doing about 20% more “office
housework,” on average, than their
white male counterparts, whether it’s
literal housework (arranging for lunch
or cleaning up after a meeting), admin-
istrative tasks (finding a place to meet
or prepping a PowerPoint), emotional
labor (“He’s upset—can you fix it?”), or
undervalued work (mentoring sum-
mer interns). This is especially true in
high-status, high-stakes workplaces.
Women engineers report a “worker bee”
expectation at higher rates than white
men do, and women of color report it
at higher rates than white women do.
Meanwhile, glamour work that leads
to networking and promotion oppor-
tunities, such as project leadership and
presentations, goes disproportionately
to white men. When the consultancy
GapJumpers analyzed the performance
reviews of a tech company client, it
found that women employees were 42%
more likely than their male colleagues to
be limited to lower-impact projects; as
a result, far fewer of them rose to more-
senior roles.

Meetings are another problem area.
Research shows that men are more likely
than women to dominate the conver-
sation, and that whereas men with
expertise tend to be more influential,
women with expertise tend to be less
so. Our study of lawyers found that half
of women report being interrupted in

meetings at a higher rate than their male
peers are. Another study found that in
meetings that included more men than
women (a common scenario), women
typically participated about 25% less
often than their male coworkers did.
Double standards and stereotypes play
out whenever diverse identities come
together. Is a woman “emotional,” or a
black man “angry,” while a white male
is “passionate”? We once heard from a
woman scientist that she was sharply
criticized as “aggressive” when she
brought up a flaw in a male colleague’s
analysis; after that she felt she needed to
just “bring in baked goods and be agree-
able.” A black tech company executive
we know told us about a meeting during
which she said little while the only other
woman, an Asian-American, said a lot.
But she later heard that people thought
she had “dominated” the conversation
while her Asian-American peer had been
“very quiet.”

Unsure whether this sort of thing is
happening on your team? Start tracking
assignments and airtime in meetings.
Use our free online tools (at http://bias
interrupters.org/toolkits/orgtools/) to
find out which work done by your group
is higher- or lower-profile and who’s
doing what. For meetings, pay attention:
Who’s at the table? Who’s doing the
talking? Is someone taking notes when
he or she could be leading the conversa-
tion? If you find a problematic dynamic,
here are some ways to change it:

1
Set up a rotation for office house-
work, and don’t ask for volunteers.
“I always give these tasks to women

because they do them well/volunteer”
is a common refrain. This dynamic

reflects an environment in which men
suffer few consequences for bypassing
or doing a poor job on low-value work,
while women who do the same are seen
as “prima donnas” or incompetent.
Particularly when administrative staff is
limited, a rotation helps level the playing
field and makes it clear that everyone is
expected to contribute to office house-
work. If you ask for volunteers, women
and people of color will feel powerful
pressure to prove they are “team play-
ers” by raising their hands.

2
Mindfully design and assign
people to high-value projects.
Sometimes we hear “It’s true, I keep

giving the plum assignments to a small
group—but they’re the only ones with
the skills to do them!” According to Joyce
Norcini, formerly general counsel for
Nokia Siemens Networks, if you have
only a tight circle of people you trust
to handle meaningful work, you’re in
trouble. Her advice: Reconsider who is
capable of doing what these important
jobs require; chances are someone not
on your usual list is. You may need to
move outside your comfort zone and
be more involved in the beginning, but
having a broader range of trained people
will serve you well in the end.

3 Acknowledge the importance
of lower-profile contributions.
“Diversity” hires may lag behind

their majority-member peers because
they’re doing extra stuff that doesn’t
get them extra credit. If your organi-
zation truly prioritizes inclusion, then
walk your talk. Many bosses who say
they value diversity programming and
mentorship don’t actually take it into
account when promotion or comp time
becomes available. Integrating these

Waive criteria for hiring rarely. Research shows that objective rules tend to
be applied rigorously to out-groups but leniently to in-groups.

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contributions into individual goal setting
and evaluating them during performance
reviews is a simple start. And don’t be
afraid to think big: A law partner we
know did such a great job running the
woman’s initiative that the firm begged
her to stay on for another year. She said
she would if the firm’s bosses made her
an equity partner. They did.

4
Respond to double standards,
stereotyping, “manterruption,”
“bropriating,” and “whipeating.”

Pay close attention to the way people on
your team talk about their peers and how
they behave in group settings. For exam-
ple, men tend to interrupt women far
more often than the other way around;
displays of confidence and directness
decrease women’s influence but increase
men’s. If a few people are dominating
the conversation in a meeting, address
it directly. Create and enforce a policy
for interruptions. Keep track of those
who drown others out and talk with
them privately about it, explaining that
you think it’s important to hear every-
one’s contributions. Similarly, when
you see instances of “bropriating” or
“whipeating”—that is, majority-group
members taking or being given credit for
ideas that women and people of color
originally offered—call it out. We know
two women on the board of directors of a
public company who made a pact: When
a man tried to claim one of their ideas,
the other would say something like “Yes,
I liked Sandra’s point, and I’m glad you
did too.” Once they did this consistently,
bropriating stopped.

5
Ask people to weigh in. Women,
people of Asian descent, and
first-generation profession-

als report being brought up with a

“modesty mandate” that can lead them
to hold back their thoughts or speak in a
tentative, deferential way. Counter this
by extending an invitation: “Camilla,
you have experience with this—what
are we missing? Is this the best course
of action?”

6
Schedule meetings inclusively.
Business meetings should take place
in the office, not at a golf course, a

university club, or your favorite concert
venue. Otherwise you’re giving an artifi-
cial advantage to people who feel more
comfortable in those settings or whose
personal interests overlap with yours.
Whenever possible, stick to working
hours, or you risk putting caregivers and
others with a demanding personal life
at a disadvantage. Joan once noticed
that no mothers were participating in a
faculty appointment process because all
the meetings were held at 5:30 pm. When
she pointed this out to the person leading
them, the problem was fixed immedi-
ately. This colleague had a stay-at-home
wife and simply hadn’t thought about the
issue before.

7
Equalize access proactively. Bosses
may meet with some employees
more regularly than others, but it’s

important to make sure this is driven
by business demands and team needs
rather than by what individuals want
or expect. White men may feel more
comfortable walking into your office or
asking for time. The same may be true
of people whose interests you share.
When Emily Gould Sullivan, who has led
the employment law functions for two
Fortune 500 retail companies, realized
that she was routinely accepting “walk-
ing meeting” invitations from a team
member who was, like her, interested in
fitness, she made a point of reaching out
to others to equalize access.

DEVELOPING YOUR TEAM
Your job as a manager is not only to get
the best performance out of your team
but also to encourage the development
of each member. That means giving
fair performance reviews, equal access
to high-potential assignments, and

5 Harvard Business Review
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promotions and pay increases to those
who have earned them. Unfortunately,
as we’ve noted, some groups need to
prove themselves more than others, and
a broader range of behaviors is often
accepted from white men. For example,
our research shows that assertiveness
and anger are less likely to be accepted
from people of color, and expectations
that women will be modest, self-
effacing, and nice often affect perfor-
mance assessments. One study found
that 66% of women’s reviews contained
comments about their personalities,
but only 1% of men’s reviews did. These
double standards can have a real impact
on equity outcomes. PayScale found that
men of color were 25% less likely than
their white peers to get a raise when they
asked for one. And gender norms stunt
careers for women. PayScale found that
when women and men start their careers
on the same rung of the professional
ladder, by the time they are halfway
(aged 30–44), 47% of men are managers
or higher, but only 40% of women are.
These numbers just worsen over time:
Only 3% of the women make it to the
C-suite, compared with 8% of the men.

Take these steps to avoid common
pitfalls in evaluations and promotions:

1
Clarify evaluation criteria and focus
on performance, not potential. Don’t
arrive at a rating without thinking

about what predetermined benchmarks
you’ve used to get there. Any evaluation
should include enough data for a third
party to understand the justification for
the rating. Be specific. Instead of “She
writes well,” say “She can write an effec-
tive summary judgment motion under
a tight deadline.”

2 Separate performance from
potential and personality from
skill sets. In-groups tend to be

judged on their potential and given the
benefit of the doubt, whereas out-groups
have to show they’ve nailed it. If your
company values potential, it should be
assessed separately, with factors clearly
outlined for evaluators and employees.
Then track whether there’s a pattern as
to who has “potential.” If so, try relying
on performance alone for everyone or
get even more concrete with what you’re
measuring. Personality comments are no
different; be wary of double standards
that affect women and people of color
when it comes to showing emotion or
being congenial. Policing women into
femininity doesn’t help anyone, and—as
courts have pointed out—it’s direct evi-
dence of sex discrimination. If that’s not
motivation enough, evaluators can miss
critical skills by focusing on personality.
It’s more valuable, and accurate, to say
someone is a strong collaborator who
can manage projects across multiple
departments than to say “She’s friendly
and gets along with everyone.”

3
Level the playing field with respect
to self-promotion. The mod-
esty mandate mentioned above

prevents many people in out-groups
from writing effective self-evaluations
or defending themselves at review time.
Counter that by giving everyone you
manage the tools to evaluate their own
performance. Be clear that it’s accept-
able, and even expected, to advocate
for oneself. A simple two-pager can help
overcome the modesty mandate and
cue majority men (who tend toward
overconfidence) to provide concrete
evidence for their claims.

4
Explain how training, promotion,
and pay decisions will be made,
and follow those rules. As the chair

of her firm’s women’s initiative, one
lawyer we know developed a strategy to
ensure that all candidates for promotion
were considered fairly. She started with
a clear outline of what was needed to
advance and then assigned every eligible
employee (already anonymized) to
one of three groups: green (meets the
objective metrics), yellow (is close),
and red (doesn’t). Then she presented
the color-coded list to the rest of the
evaluation team. By anonymizing the
data and pregrouping the candidates by
competencies, she ensured that no one
was forgotten or recommended owing to
in-group favoritism.

All the evaluators were forced to stick
to the predetermined benchmarks, and
as a result, they tapped the best can-
didates. (Those in the yellow category
were given advice about how to move up
to green.) When it comes to promotions,
there may be limits to what you can do as
an individual manager, but you should
push for transparency on the criteria
used. When they are explicit, it’s harder
to bend the rules for in-group members.

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE is crucial,
but it doesn’t happen overnight. For-
tunately, you can begin with all these
recommendations today.

HBR Reprint R1906L

JOAN C. WILLIAMS is a professor and
the founding director of the Center for

WorkLife Law at the University of California’s
Hastings College of the Law. SKY MIHAYLO
is a policy and research fellow at the Center
for WorkLife Law.

Harvard Business Review
November–December 2019  6

Whenever possible, schedule meetings during working hours, or you risk putting
caregivers and others with a demanding personal life at a disadvantage.

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REPRINT R2001E
PUBLISHED IN HBR
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2020

ARTICLE
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
The New Analytics
of Culture
What email, Slack, and Glassdoor reveal about your organization
by Matthew Corritore, Amir Goldberg, and Sameer B. Srivastava

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2 Harvard Business Review
January–February 2020

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Mgng People & Promoting Collab-Fall 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

What email, Slack, and Glassdoor
reveal about your organization

Matthew
Corritore
Assistant
professor,
McGill
University

Amir
Goldberg
Associate
professor,
Stanford
University

AUTHORS

PHOTOGRAPHER JEAN-PIERRE ATTAL

Sameer B.
Srivastava
Associate
professor,
University of
California,
Berkeley

ORGANIZ ATIONAL
CULTURE

THE NEW

ANALYTICS

OF CULTURE

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Yet the tools available for measuring it—namely, employee
surveys and questionnaires—have significant shortcomings.
Employee self-reports are often unreliable. The values and
beliefs that people say are important to them, for example,
are often not reflected in how they actually behave. More-
over, surveys provide static, or at best episodic, snapshots
of organizations that are constantly evolving. And they’re
limited by researchers’ tendency to assume that distinctive
and idiosyncratic cultures can be neatly categorized into a
few common types.

Our research focuses on a new method for assessing
and measuring organizational culture. We used big-data
processing to mine the ubiquitous “digital traces” of
culture in electronic communications, such as emails,
Slack messages, and Glassdoor reviews. By studying the
language employees use in these communications, we can
measure how culture actually influences their thoughts
and behavior at work.

In one study, two of us partnered with a midsize tech-
nology company to assess the degree of cultural fit between
employees and their colleagues on the basis of similarity
of linguistic style expressed in internal email messages. In
a separate study, two of us analyzed the content of Slack
messages exchanged among members of nearly 120 software
development teams. We examined the diversity of thoughts,
ideas, and meaning expressed by team members and then
measured whether it was beneficial or detrimental to team
performance. We also partnered with employer-review web-
site Glassdoor to analyze how employees talk about their
organizations’ culture in anonymous reviews to examine

ORGANIZ ATIONAL
CULTURE

A BUSINESS’S CULTURE

CAN CATALYZE OR

UNDERMINE SUCCESS.

ABOUT THE ART

In his project Cells, photographer Jean-Pierre
Attal explores the social urban archaeology of

modern office towers, revealing the recurrence
of patterns and postures found inside.

4 Harvard Business Review
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IDEA IN BRIEF

THE PROBLEM
Culture is easy to sense
but difficult to measure.
The workhorses of
culture research—
employee surveys and
questionnaires—are
often unreliable.

A NEW APPROACH
Studying the language
that employees
use in electronic
communication has
opened a new window
into organizational
culture. Research
analyzing email,
Slack messages, and
Glassdoor postings is
challenging prevailing
wisdom about culture.

THE FINDINGS
• Cultural fit is

important, but what
predicts success most
is the rate at which
employees adapt as
organizational culture
changes over time.

• Cognitive diversity
helps teams during
ideation but hinders
execution.

• The best cultures
encourage diversity
to drive innovation
but are anchored by
shared core beliefs.

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the effects of cultural diversity on organizational efficiency
and innovation.

The explosion of digital trace data such as emails and
Slack communications—together with the availability of
computational methods that are faster, cheaper, and easier to
use—has ushered in a new scientific approach to measuring
culture. Our computational-lingustics approach is challeng-
ing prevailing assumptions in the field of people analytics
and revealing novel insights about how managers can
harness culture as a strategic resource. We believe that with
appropriate measures to safeguard employee privacy and
minimize algorithmic bias it holds great promise as a tool for
managers grappling with culture issues in their firms.

THE STUDIES
Our recent studies have focused on cultural fit versus adapt-
ability, the pros and cons of fitting in, cognitive diversity, and
the effects of diversity on organizational performance. Let’s
look at each in detail.

Fit versus adaptability. When managers think about hir-
ing for cultural fit, they focus almost exclusively on whether
candidates reflect the values, norms, and behaviors of the
team or organization as it currently exists. They often fail to
consider cultural adaptability—the ability to rapidly learn
and conform to organizational cultural norms as they change
over time. In a recent study two of us conducted with Stan-
ford’s V. Govind Manian and Christopher Potts, we analyzed
how cultural fit and cultural adaptability affected individual
performance at a high-tech company by comparing linguis-
tic styles expressed in more than 10 million internal email
messages exchanged over five years among 601 employees.
For example, we looked at the extent to which an employee
used swear words when communicating with colleagues who
themselves cursed frequently or used personal pronouns
(“we” or “I”) that matched those used by her peer group.
We also tracked how employees adapted to their peers’
cultural conventions over time.

We found, as expected, that a high level of cultural fit led
to more promotions, more-favorable performance evalua-
tions, higher bonuses, and fewer involuntary departures.
Cultural adaptability, however, turned out to be even more

important for success. Employees who could quickly adapt
to cultural norms as they changed over time were more
successful than employees who exhibited high cultural fit
when first hired. These cultural “adapters” were better able
to maintain fit when cultural norms changed or evolved,
which is common in organizations operating in fast-moving,
dynamic environments.

These results suggest that the process of cultural align-
ment does not end at the point of hire. Indeed, our study
also found that employees followed distinct enculturation
trajectories—at certain times in their tenure demonstrating
more cultural fit with colleagues and at other times less. Most
eventually adapted to the behavioral norms of their peers,
and those who stayed at their company exhibited increas-
ing cultural fit over time. Employees who were eventually
terminated were those who had been unable to adapt to the
culture. Employees who left voluntarily were the most fasci-
nating: They quickly adapted culturally early in their tenures
but drifted out of step later on and were likely to leave the
firm once they became cultural outsiders.

To further assess how cultural fit and adaptability affect
performance, Berkeley’s Jennifer Chatman and Richard Lu
and two of us surveyed employees at the same high-tech
company to measure value congruence (the extent to which
employees’ core values and beliefs about a desirable work-
place fit with their peers) and perceptual congruence (how
well employees can read the “cultural code” by accurately
reporting the values held by peers). We found that value
congruence is predictive of retention—employees with it are
less likely to voluntarily leave the company—but is unrelated
to job performance. We found that the opposite is true of
perceptual congruence: It is predictive of higher job perfor-
mance but unrelated to retention. These results suggest that
companies striving to foster a stable and committed work-
force should focus on hiring candidates who share similar
values with current employees. Employers needing people
who can quickly assimilate and be productive should pay
greater attention to candidates who demonstrate the ability
to adapt to new cultural contexts.

The benefits of not fitting in. When might it better to
hire a cultural misfit? People who see the world differently
and have diverse ideas and perspectives often bring creativ-
ity and innovation to an organization. But because of their
outsider status, they may struggle to have their ideas recog-
nized by colleagues as legitimate. In a recent study two of us
conducted with V. Govind Manian, Christopher Potts, and
William Monroe, we compared employees’ levels of cultural
fit with the extent to which they served as a bridge between
otherwise disconnected groups in the firm’s internal com-
munication network. For instance, an employee might have
connections with colleagues that bridge both the engineering

ORGANIZ ATIONAL
CULTURE

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6 Harvard Business Review
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and sales departments, allowing her to access and pass on
a greater variety of information and ideas.

Consistent with prior work, we found that cultural fit was,
on average, positively associated with career success. The
benefits of fitting in culturally were especially great for indi-
viduals who served as network bridges. When traversing the
boundary between engineering and sales, for example, they
could hold their own in technical banter with the former and
in customer-oriented discourse with the latter. People who
attempted to span boundaries but could not display cultural
ambidexterity were especially penalized: They were seen
as both cultural outsiders and social outsiders without clear
membership in any particular social clique. However, we
also identified a set of individuals who benefited from being
cultural misfits: those who did not have networks spanning
disparate groups but instead had strong connections within a
defined social clique. By building trusting social bonds with
colleagues, they were able to overcome their outsider status
and leverage their distinctiveness. These results suggest that
an effective hiring strategy should strive for a portfolio of
both conformists—or at least those who can rapidly adapt
to a company’s changing culture—and cultural misfits.

Cognitive diversity. Proponents of cultural diversity
in teams presume that it leads to cognitive diversity; that
is, diversity in thoughts and ideas. But the findings about
whether cognitive diversity helps or hinders team perfor-
mance are inconclusive. Part of the problem is that these
studies use imperfect proxies for cognitive diversity, such
as diversity in demographics, personalities, or self-reported
beliefs and values. Moreover, this line of research has rarely
looked at how diversity is actually expressed in communica-
tions and interactions, which is problematic given that team
members are sometimes reluctant to share their real feelings
and opinions. Finally, cognitive diversity is often assumed to
be static, even though we know team dynamics frequently
change over a project’s life cycle.

In a new study, which two of us conducted with Stan-
ford researchers Katharina Lix and Melissa Valentine, we
overcame these challenges by analyzing the content of Slack
messages exchanged among team members of 117 remote
software-development teams. We identified instances when
team members discussing similar topics used diverse mean-
ings, perspectives, and styles, and then analyzed the impact
of that diversity on performance. For example, in discus-
sions of customer requirements, different interpretations of
the desired look and feel of the user interface in some cases
led developers to talk past one another and fail to coordinate
but in other cases sparked creative new ideas.

Our results indicate that the performance consequences
of cognitive diversity vary as a function of project milestone
stages. In the early stages, when the team is defining the

problem at hand, diversity lowers the chances of successfully
meeting milestones. During middle stages, when the team is
most likely to be engaged in ideation, diversity increases the
likelihood of team success. Diversity becomes an obstacle
again toward the end of a project, when the team is deep
into execution.

Cultural diversity and the organization as a whole.
We’ve seen that there are trade-offs associated with diver-
sity in teams, but how does it affect the performance of
entire organizations? Conventional wisdom holds that firms
must choose between a homogeneous, efficient culture
and a diverse, innovative culture. A homogeneous culture
improves efficiency and coordination, the theory goes,
because employees agree about the norms and beliefs guid-
ing work, but the benefits come at the expense of fewer novel
ideas about how to accomplish tasks. In contrast, a hetero-
geneous culture sacrifices the benefits of consensus in favor
of healthy disagreement among employees that can promote
adaptability and innovation. The evidence supporting this
thinking, however, is scant and inconclusive.

In a recent study, we analyzed the language that employ-
ees used when describing their organization’s culture (for
example, “our culture is collaborative,” “our culture is entre-
preneurial,” and so on) in anonymous reviews of nearly 500
publicly traded companies on Glassdoor. We first measured
the level of interpersonal cultural diversity, or disagreement
among employees about the norms and beliefs characteriz-
ing the organization. We found that interpersonal cultural
diversity makes it difficult for employees to coordinate with
one another and reduces the organization’s efficiency as
measured by return on assets.

We then measured the organizations’ level of intra-
personal cultural diversity. Those with high intrapersonal
cultural diversity had employees with a large number of cul-
tural ideas and beliefs about how to accomplish tasks within
the company (measured as the average number of cultural
topics that employees discussed in their Glassdoor reviews).
For instance, employees at Netflix conceptualized the work
culture in terms of autonomy, responsibility, collaboration,
and intense internal competition. We found that organiza-
tions with greater intrapersonal cultural diversity had higher
market valuations and produced more and higher-quality
intellectual property via patenting, evidence that their

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employees’ diverse ideas about how to do work led them to
be more creative and innovative.

This suggests that organizations may be able to resolve
the assumed trade-off between efficiency and innovation by
encouraging diverse cultural ideas while fostering agreement
among employees about the importance of a common set of
organizational norms and beliefs. Again, consider Netflix:
Although “multicultural” employees contributed to the
company’s diverse culture and drove innovation, the culture
was nonetheless anchored by core shared beliefs, such as
the importance of radical transparency and accountability,
which help employees coordinate and work efficiently.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
How can these findings inform leaders’ understanding of
culture as a tool for improving the performance of employ-
ees, teams, and the broader organization?

First, managers can increase retention by hiring can-
didates whose core values and beliefs about a desirable

workplace align well with those of current employees.
However, too much emphasis on cultural fit can stifle diver-
sity and cause managers to overlook promising candidates
with unique perspectives. Hiring managers should look for
candidates who demonstrate cultural adaptability, as these
employees may be better able to adjust to the inevitable
cultural changes that occur as organizations navigate increas-
ingly dynamic markets and an evolving workforce.

Hiring managers should also not overlook cultural misfits.
They can be wellsprings of creativity and innovation. But to
make sure they flourish inside the organization, managers
should consider assigning them to roles in which they are
likely to develop strong connections within particular social
groups. That’s because misfits need the trust and support
of colleagues to be seen as quirky innovators rather than
outlandish outsiders.

Second, leaders should be mindful that the expression of
diverse perspectives in teams needs to be managed. Cognitive
diversity is essential for generating novel, innovative solutions
to complex problems, especially during the planning and ide-
ation phases of a project. However, the expression of diverse

Jean-P
ierre A

ttal/C
ourtesy of G

alerie O
livier W

altm
an

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perspectives can quickly become a liability when the team
needs to focus on execution and meet looming deadlines.
It is during these times that team members have to unify
around a common interpretation of the problem and come to
agreement about what needs to get done to solve it. Leaders
must be adept at switching back and forth, learning when and
how to promote the expression of divergent opinions and
meanings and when to create a context for convergence.

An important distinction is warranted here. The term
“diversity” is often used to connote variation in the demo-
graphic makeup of a firm’s workforce. This has been particu-
larly the case in recent years, as companies have tackled
pernicious problems such as the underrepresentation of
women and minorities in decision-making positions in
organizations. In our work, we use “cultural diversity” to
refer to variation in people’s beliefs and normative expecta-
tions, irrespective of their demographic composition. As we
pointed out earlier, demographic and cultural diversity are
related, but a demographically homogenous group may be
culturally diverse, and vice versa. Our research on cultural
diversity is relevant to but ultimately independent of efforts
to increase gender, race, and ethnic diversity in firms.

Third, leaders should foster a culture that is diverse yet
consensual in order to promote both innovation and effi-
ciency. Such a culture is composed of multicultural employ-
ees who each subscribe to a variety of norms and beliefs
about how to do work. These diverse ideas help employees
excel at complex tasks, such as dreaming up the next ground-
breaking innovation. Managers should encourage employees
to experiment with different ways of working—extensive
collaboration for some tasks, for example, and intense
competition for others. At the same time, a culture should
also be consensual in that employees agree on a common set
of cultural norms—shared understandings—that helps them
successfully coordinate with one another. Leaders can signal
the importance of these norms during onboarding and in
everyday interactions, just as leaders at Netflix do by reward-
ing employees for sharing their mistakes with colleagues in
order to promote beliefs about the value of transparency.

A NEW MANAGEMENT TOOL
Many of the tools we used in these studies are off-the-shelf
products, and there is great potential for managers to use
them to help solve practical challenges inside organizations.
For instance, Stanford PhD candidate Anjali Bhatt is working
with two of us to demonstrate how language-based culture
measures can be used to anticipate the pain points of post-
merger integration. We are studying the merger of three retail
banks, and analysis of emails has revealed stark differences

in the rates of cultural assimilation among individuals.
Such tools can be used diagnostically to assess the cultural
alignment between firms during premerger due diligence,
as well as prescriptively during integration to identify where
and how to focus managerial interventions.

Yet the accessibility of these tools also raises important
ethical concerns. In our work, we maintain strict employee
confidentiality, meaning that neither we nor the organization
is able to link any employee to any specific communication
used in our studies. We also strongly advise against using
these tools to select, reward, or punish individual employees
and teams, for at least four reasons: Accurately predicting
individual and team performance is considerably more
challenging than estimating average effects for broad types
of individuals and teams; culture is only one of many factors
influencing individual and team performance in organi-
zations; algorithmic predictions often create a false sense
of certainty in managers; and finally, giving any algorithm
undue weight can have unintended consequences—for
instance, exacerbating human biases that negatively affect
women and members of underrepresented social groups.

Algorithms make estimates, but it is ultimately humans’
responsibility to make informed judgments using them.
Managers must be vigilant about keeping metadata anony-
mous and must regularly audit algorithmic decision-making
for bias to ensure that the use of language-based tools does
not have unintended adverse consequences on culture
itself—for instance, by breeding employee distrust.

These important ethical questions notwithstanding, we
believe that these tools will continue to generate insights that
allow managers to finally manage the culture as a strategic
resource, and ultimately lead to more culturally diverse and
inclusive teams and organizations.

HBR Reprint R2001E

MATTHEW CORRITORE is an assistant professor of strategy and
organization at McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management.

AMIR GOLDBERG is an associate professor of organizational behavior
at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. SAMEER B. SRIVASTAVA
is an associate professor and the Harold Furst Chair in Management
Philosophy and Values at the University of California, Berkeley’s
Haas School of Business. He and Goldberg codirect the Berkeley-
Stanford Computational Culture Lab.

ORGANIZ ATIONAL
CULTURE

FOR ARTICLE REPRINTS CALL 800-988-0886 OR 617-783-7500, OR VISIT HBR.ORG

Harvard Business Review
January–February 2020  9

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Digital
Article

Diversity And Inclusion

The Key to Inclusive
Leadership
Overcome unconscious bias using humility and empathy.
by Juliet Bourke and Andrea Titus

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Mgng People & Promoting Collab-Fall 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

The Key to Inclusive
Leadership

Overcome unconscious bias using humility and empathy.
by Juliet Bourke and Andrea Titus

Published on HBR.org / March 06, 2020 / Reprint H05GLB

Richard Drury/Getty Images

What makes people feel included in organizations? Feel that they are

treated fairly and respectfully, are valued and belong? Many things of

course, including an organization’s mission, policies, and practices, as

well as co-worker behaviors.

But mostly it comes down to leaders. We find that what leaders say and

do makes up to a 70% difference as to whether an individual reports

feeling included. And this really matters because the more people feel

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included, the more they speak up, go the extra mile, and collaborate —

all of which ultimately lifts organizational performance.

Given this formula, inclusive leadership is emerging as a unique and

critical capability helping organizations adapt to diverse customers,

markets, ideas and talent. Our previous research found that inclusive

leaders share a cluster of six signature traits:

1. Visible commitment: They articulate authentic commitment to

diversity, challenge the status quo, hold others accountable, and

make diversity and inclusion a personal priority.

2. Humility: They are modest about capabilities, admit mistakes, and

create the space for others to contribute.

3. Awareness of bias: They show awareness of personal blind spots, as

well as flaws in the system, and work hard to ensure a meritocracy.

4. Curiosity about others: They demonstrate an open mindset and

deep curiosity about others, listen without judgment, and seek with

empathy to understand those around them.

5. Cultural intelligence: They are attentive to others’ cultures and

adapt as required.

6. Effective collaboration: They empower others, pay attention to

diversity of thinking and psychological safety, and focus on team

cohesion.

This sounds like a laundry list, so it’s not surprising that we are

regularly asked which is the most important trait. The answer depends

on who is asking. If it’s the leader, commitment is the most critical,

because without it, the other five attributes can’t be fully developed.

For those working around a leader, such as a manager, direct report or

peer, the single most important trait generating a sense of inclusiveness

is a leader’s visible awareness of bias. To underscore this insight: Our

analysis of the 360-degree Inclusive Leadership Assessments (ILA) of

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more than 400 leaders made by almost 4,000 raters reveals that while

all six traits are important and operate as a cluster, a leader’s awareness

of personal and organizational biases is the number one factor that

raters care most about.

Comments from raters on the ILA tell us that they particularly notice,

for example, when a leader “constantly challenges (their) own bias and

encourages others to be aware of their pre-conceived leanings” or when

a leader seeks insight into their biases by, for example, “[Asking] others

to test whether their thought process is biased in any way.”

But this is not all. Raters are not looking for a simple acknowledgment

of bias, tinged with a fatalistic sense that little can be done about

it. They care about awareness of bias coupled with two additional

behaviors:

• Humility: Raters want to see that their leaders are determined to

address their biases. Fatalism looks like “Hey, I know I have this

prejudice, but whatever, I am what I am.” In contrast, leaders who are

humble acknowledge their vulnerability to bias and ask for feedback

on their blind spots and habits.For example, one direct report told us

that their leader “is very open and vulnerable about her weaknesses,

which she mentions when we undergo team development workshops.

She shares her leadership assessments openly with the team and often

asks for feedback and help to improve.” Our research shows that when

cognizance of bias is combined with high levels of humility it can

increase raters’ feelings of inclusion by up to 25%.

• Empathy and perspective taking: Raters aren’t looking for their

leaders to try to understand their viewpoint and experience as a dry

intellectual exercise, but empathically.  That means understanding

others deeply and leaving them feeling heard.  For example, one rater

commented “[The leader’s] empathy in interacting with others, makes

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[the leader] approachable, trustworthy and shows [their] eagerness

to work with and/or support peers, colleagues and superiors.”  

When cognizance of bias is combined with high levels of empathy/

perspective-taking, it can increase raters’ feelings of inclusion by up to

33%.

Why are humility and empathy so important in this context? Humility

encourages others to share their feedback (e.g., that a leader might

have favorites or have a tendency to interrupt people or regularly

ignore a class of information). Empathy and perspective taking gives

people hope that a leader cares about them and takes their views into

account, rather than barreling on with preconceptions or a narrow set of

ideas about their perspectives. Moreover, it creates a sense of personal

connection between leaders and a diverse set of stakeholders, making it

easier to make and implement shared decisions.

Putting the traits to work

How can leaders put these insights into practice? One tactic is to

establish a diverse personal advisory board (PAD) — a group of people,

often peers, who have regular contact with the leader and whom the

leader trusts to talk straight. These trusted advisers can give leaders

granular feedback on everyday interpersonal behaviors that support

or inhibit inclusion, for example: Does the leader give equal time to

all meeting participants, or favor those who are co-located over those

who have dialed in? Does the leader always refer to one gender when

giving examples or both? Does the leader use a broad spectrum of

imagery when addressing a diverse audience, or imagery (such as sport

metaphors or all male iconography) that represents only one group of

people? Because a PAD is ongoing, leaders can receive feedback on

whether the changes they make are hitting the mark.

A second tactic is for leaders to share their learning journey about

recognizing and addressing biases. We have seen leaders do this by

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discussing their 360 assessment results with their manager, speaking at

a town hall about their growth or creating a standing item in weekly

team meetings (“inclusion moments”), during which they or a team

member identifies what they have learned that week about diversity

and inclusion. These actions express humility, help leaders to test and

build on their insights and role model the importance of humility in

addressing biases.

A third tactic is for leaders to immerse themselves in uncomfortable

or new situations which expose them to diverse stakeholders, for

example by attending an Employee Resource Group meeting, or sitting

in different parts of the workplace each week. Exposure, combined

with open-ended questions, helps to expand horizons and disrupt pre-

conceived ideas.

Inclusive leadership is a critical capability to leverage diverse thinking

in a workforce with increasingly diverse markets, customers, and talent.

We have previously observed that only one in three leaders holds an

accurate view about their inclusive leadership capabilities. A third

believe they are more inclusive than they are actually perceived by

those around them to be, while a third lack confidence in their inclusive

leadership capability and so do less than they could to actively guide

others and challenge the status quo.

Becoming more aware is critical to self-development, but awareness in

isolation is not sufficient. Without humility and empathy/perspective

taking, it’s difficult for leaders to gain deep insights into the nature

of their blind spots or remedial strategies and, therefore, to grow.

This requires effort, but fortunately the circle of learning is virtuous.

Leaders who are humble and empathetic will be open to criticism about

their personal biases, and greater self-insight into personal limitations

prompts greater humility, empathy and perspective-taking. Not only

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are these behaviors critical for leaders’ personal development, they also

serve to make others feel more included along the way. And that is, of

course, the objective.

This article was originally published online on March 06, 2020.

Juliet Bourke, PhD, is a professor of practice in the School
of Management and Governance, UNSW Business School, UNSW.
She is the author of Which Two Heads Are Better Than One:
The Extraordinary Power of Diversity of Thinking and Inclusive
Leadership. Email her at [email protected]

AT
Andrea Titus is a consultant in Human Capital, Deloitte Australia,
and PhD candidate in organizational psychology at Macquarie
University.  Email her at [email protected]

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Your Role as a Manager in Creating a Positive, Inclusive Workplace Culture: Toward a More Positive and Inclusive Culture

Your Name

Master of Business Administration, Walden University

WMBA 6010: Managing People and Promoting Collaboration

Instructor’s Name

Month XX, 202X

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1

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Part 1: Toward a More Positive Culture

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Part 2: Toward a More Inclusive Culture

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References

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Digital
Article

Diversity And Inclusion

Why Inclusive Leaders Are
Good for Organizations,
and How to Become One
Four ways to get started. by Juliet Bourke and Andrea Titus

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Mgng People & Promoting Collab-Fall 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

Why Inclusive Leaders Are
Good for Organizations, and
How to Become One

Four ways to get started. by Juliet Bourke and Andrea Titus

Published on HBR.org / March 29, 2019 / Reprint H04V8Y

Richard Drury/Getty Images

Companies increasingly rely on diverse, multidisciplinary teams that

combine the collective capabilities of women and men, people of

different cultural heritage, and younger and older workers. But simply

throwing a mix of people together doesn’t guarantee high performance;

it requires inclusive leadership — leadership that assures that all team

members feel they are treated respectfully and fairly, are valued and

sense that they belong, and are confident and inspired.

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Inclusiveness isn’t just nice to have on teams. Our research shows that

it directly enhances performance. Teams with inclusive leaders are

17% more likely to report that they are high performing, 20% more

likely to say they make high-quality decisions, and 29% more likely

to report behaving collaboratively. What’s more, we found that a 10%

improvement in perceptions of inclusion increases work attendance by

almost 1 day a year per employee, reducing the cost of absenteeism.

Video Available Online
To view, please visit this article at HBR.org.

What specific actions can leaders take to be more inclusive? To

answer this question, we surveyed more than 4,100 employees about

inclusion, interviewed those identified by followers as highly inclusive,

and reviewed the academic literature on leadership. From this research,

we identified 17 discrete sets of behaviors, which we grouped into six

categories (or “traits”), all of which are equally important and mutually

reinforcing. We then built a 360-degree assessment tool for use by

followers to rate the presence of these traits among leaders. The tool

has now been used by over 3,500 raters to evaluate over 450 leaders. The

results are illuminating.

These are the six traits or behaviors that we found distinguish inclusive

leaders from others:

Visible commitment: They articulate authentic commitment to

diversity, challenge the status quo, hold others accountable and make

diversity and inclusion a personal priority.

Humility: They are modest about capabilities, admit mistakes, and

create the space for others to contribute.

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Awareness of bias: They show awareness of personal blind spots as

well as flaws in the system and work hard to ensure meritocracy.

Curiosity about others: They demonstrate an open mindset and deep

curiosity about others, listen without judgment, and seek with empathy

to understand those around them.

Cultural intelligence: They are attentive to others’ cultures and adapt

as required.

Effective collaboration: They empower others, pay attention to

diversity of thinking and psychological safety, and focus on team

cohesion.

These traits may seem like the obvious ones, similar to those that

are broadly important for good leadership. But the difference between

assessing and developing good leadership generally versus inclusive

leadership in particular lies in three specific insights.

First, most leaders in the study were unsure about whether others

experienced them as inclusive or not. More particularly, only a third

(36%) saw their inclusive leadership capabilities as others did, another

third (32%) overrated their capabilities and the final third (33%)

underrated their capabilities. Even more importantly, rarely were

leaders certain about the specific behaviors that actually have an impact

on being rated as more or less inclusive.

Second, being rated as an inclusive leader is not determined by

averaging all members’ scores but rather by the distribution of raters’

scores. For example, it’s not enough that, on average, raters agree

that a leader “approaches diversity and inclusiveness wholeheartedly.”

Using a five-point scale (ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly

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disagree”), an average rating could mean that some team members

disagree while others agree. To be an inclusive leader, one must ensure

that everyone agrees or strongly agrees that they are being treated fairly

and respectfully, are valued, and have a sense of belonging and are

psychologically safe.

Third, inclusive leadership is not about occasional grand gestures,

but regular, smaller-scale comments and actions. By comparing the

qualitative feedback regarding the most inclusive (top 25%) and the

least inclusive (bottom 25%) of leaders in our sample, we discovered that

inclusive leadership is tangible and practiced every day.

These verbatim responses from our assessments illustrate some of the

tangible behaviors of the most inclusive leaders in the study.

• Shares personal weaknesses: “[This leader] will openly ask about

information that she is not aware of. She demonstrates a humble

unpretentious work manner. This puts others at ease, enabling them to

speak out and voice their opinions, which she values.”

• Learns about cultural differences: “[This leader] has taken the time to

learn the ropes (common words, idioms, customs, likes/dislikes) and

the cultural pillars.”

• Acknowledges team members as individuals: “[This leader] leads a team

of over 100 people and yet addresses every team member by name,

knows the work stream that they support and the work that they do.”

The following verbatims illustrate some of the behaviors of the least

inclusive leaders:

• Overpowers others: “He can be very direct and overpowering which

limits the ability of those around him to contribute to meetings or

participate in conversations.”

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• Displays favoritism: “Work is assigned to the same top performers,

creating unsustainable workloads. [There is a] need to give newer team

members opportunities to prove themselves.”

• Discounts alternative views: “[This leader] can have very set ideas on

specific topics. Sometimes it is difficult to get an alternative view

across. There is a risk that his team may hold back from bringing

forward challenging and alternative points of view.”

What leaders say and do has an outsized impact on others, but our

research indicates that this effect is even more pronounced when they

are leading diverse teams. Subtle words and acts of exclusion by leaders,

or overlooking the exclusive behaviors of others, easily reinforces the

status quo. It takes energy and deliberate effort to create an inclusive

culture, and that starts with leaders paying much more attention to

what they say and do on a daily basis and making adjustments as

necessary. Here are four ways for leaders to get started:

Know your inclusive-leadership shadow: Seek feedback on whether

you are perceived as inclusive, especially from people who are different

from you. This will help you to see your blind spots, strengths, and

development areas. It will also signal that diversity and inclusion are

important to you. Scheduling regular check-ins with members of your

team to ask how you can make them feel more included also sends the

message.

Be visible and vocal: Tell a compelling and explicit narrative about

why being inclusive is important to you personally and the business

more broadly. For example, share your personal stories at public forums

and conferences.

Deliberately seek out difference: Give people on the periphery of your

network the chance to speak up, invite different people to the table, and

catch up with a broader network. For example, seek out opportunities

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to work with cross-functional or multi-disciplinary teams to leverage

diverse strengths.

Check your impact: Look for signals that you are having a positive

impact. Are people copying your role modeling? Is a more diverse group

of people sharing ideas with you? Are people working together more

collaboratively? Ask a trusted advisor to give you candid feedback on

the areas you have been working on.

There’s more to be learned about how to become an inclusive leader

and harness the power of diverse teams, but one thing is clear: leaders

who consciously practice inclusive leadership and actively develop their

capability will see the results in the superior performance of their

diverse teams.

This article was originally published online on March 29, 2019.

Juliet Bourke, PhD, is a professor of practice in the School
of Management and Governance, UNSW Business School, UNSW.
She is the author of Which Two Heads Are Better Than One:
The Extraordinary Power of Diversity of Thinking and Inclusive
Leadership. Email her at [email protected]

AT
Andrea Titus is a consultant in Human Capital, Deloitte Australia,
and PhD candidate in organizational psychology at Macquarie
University.  Email her at [email protected]

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Digital
Article

Diversity and Inclusion

To Build an Inclusive
Culture, Start with
Inclusive Meetings
Look out for people who dominate the conversation. by Kathryn Heath
and Brenda F. Wensil

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Mgng People & Promoting Collab-Fall 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

To Build an Inclusive Culture,
Start with Inclusive Meetings

Look out for people who dominate the conversation. by Kathryn Heath
and Brenda F. Wensil

Published on HBR.org / September 06, 2019 / Reprint H0552J

Nicholas Rigg/Getty Images

Chances are you’ve attended a meeting today. Was it time well spent

or a soul-draining exercise in futility? Although no two meetings are the

same, their collective impact on the culture of a company is significant.

Meetings matter. They are the forum where people come together to

discuss ideas, make decisions, and be heard. Meetings are where culture

forms, grows, and takes hold.

So it stands to reason that if an organization desires a more inclusive

culture — and leaders want to model inclusion — then meetings are

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the place to start. But, from what we’ve seen, executives often miss

the mark. Like a plate spinner at the circus, leading a meeting requires

eyeballing a dozen different details: agenda setting, time management,

conflict resolution, decision-making, and more. Inclusion? Who has the

bandwidth to keep yet another plate in the air?

But leaders must.

Decades of research show that diverse organizations are more engaged,

creative, and financially successful. Diverse hiring can be measured

and managed by crunching the numbers, but when we take this best

practice out of the lab and apply it to everyday work settings, like

meetings, positive results are more elusive.

Our previous study, an examination of 360-degree feedback collected

from over 1,000 female executives, gave us insights into why some

people feel shut out in meetings. We learned that women are often

uncomfortable speaking up and are more than twice as likely to

be interrupted in group dialogue — particularly in industries and

organizations that are male-dominated. Our more recent coaching

experiences reveal that men from minority groups feel similarly. If

organizations fail to address this issue, women and minorities will

remain on the periphery, and in turn, your creativity and innovation

will suffer.

Setting a diverse workforce up for success requires a commitment to

the practices of inclusion. This means more companies need to create

meeting cultures where diverse contributors have equal impact. As a

leader, it’s your responsibility to actively and intentionally give them

opportunities to do so.

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The problem is that many leaders don’t know where to start. Inclusive

behaviors in meetings can be wide ranging, from making sure everyone

has a seat at the table to giving each person a chance to speak. To

simplify what amounts to a complex equation, we coach leaders to focus

on three key areas.

Customs. Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering emphasizes

the importance of setting the stage for inclusion before your meeting

even begins. Focus on structural behaviors that make people feel

comfortable. This could be as simple as sending a pre-meeting email to

attendees, and inviting people to come “ready to share as well as listen.”

It may sound like a little thing you can delegate to another employee,

but in our everyday work, we hear loud and clear that leaders are in the

best position to make people feel safe in this kind of setting.

Priya also suggests leaders demonstrate what she calls “gracious

authority”— a polite demeanor that nonetheless leaves little doubt

about who is in charge. To set the tone, welcome people by name as

they enter the meeting room, and make sure the seating accommodates

everyone.

In the meeting itself, customs and expectations should be established

upfront. Let people know they can speak openly and offer a dissenting

opinions without fear of retribution. If you have introverts in the room,

start with a brief round robin activity that includes everyone and helps

the attendees get to know one another better. If it is an especially large

group, either break people up into smaller teams or rotate the seating

halfway through the exercise.

Conduct. The role of the conductor in an orchestra is to manage the

tempo of a performance. They listen critically to keep musicians playing

in unison and actively control the dynamic to prevent one instrument

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from overpowering the rest. The same goes for leaders in meetings —

you need to manage conduct and give everyone space to play their part.

In many cases, one alpha individual dominates the conversation. In

other cases, there is an “in-crowd” or a group of allies who share

commonalities, such as gender, personal interests, or job seniority. The

in-crowd often takes up more space in the room, supports the same

ideas, and speaks up inordinately, drowning out differing viewpoints.

Regardless of the specifics, it’s your job to step in when strong

personalities over-reach, tamp down offenders, and actively bring all

voices into the conversation.

Take advice from a few of our most successful clients:

• Set clear ground rules at the start of the meeting and stick to them.

When inclusive meeting conduct is codified, it puts offenders on

notice and makes everyone aware of their rights and responsibilities.

• Watch closely for dominators and interrupters. If someone tries to

control the dialogue, interject and redirect the conversation back to

the broader group.

• If someone is interrupted, step in quickly. You might say, “Wait a

minute, I want to hear more of what Janice has to say,” or “Back up. I

am intrigued with what Luke was telling us. Luke, can you finish your

thought?”

Leaders who actively orchestrate meeting interactions in this way create

an inclusive space by leaving room for everyone to contribute, and set a

standard for respect across the group.

Commitment. Most organizations have already put a stake in the

ground on diversity in hiring practices and creating diverse teams. The

same needs to happen for inclusion — we need to insist that it is the

standard in meetings and beyond.

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If you’re a leader, start with yourself:

• Explicitly define inclusivity.

• Be clear and transparent about what it looks like in meetings.

• Model the behavior you expect to see from others.

• Hold teams accountable for following through every time.

Only then will people feel empowered to offer their best ideas and speak

the truth, instead of telling you what they think you want to hear.

It’s also important to remember that leading an inclusive meeting is a

skill that you have to develop and refine. Find out what is working and

what isn’t by asking your team members for feedback — either at the

end of your meetings, or with an email or app that allows anonymity.

Checklist for leading inclusive meetings:

• Review your list of attendees: are you missing people who represent

diverse or dissenting points of view?

• Send the agenda out ahead of time.

• Greet each meeting participant warmly, by name, so everyone feels

welcome.

• State ground rules up front and make sure they explicitly foster

inclusion.

• Mediate and facilitate: keep track of who’s talking — and who’s

not. Exhibit zero tolerance for interruptions. Prevent anyone from

dominating or derailing the discussion.

• Remain engaged in the conversation from beginning to end.

• Follow up after the meeting. Thank participants for attending and ask

for their feedback.

Meetings have morphed over the years: we gather virtually, across time

zones, and often, with far less face-to-face time. Yet, one thing has not

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changed. Meetings are still the prime venue to build and foster a fully

inclusive culture that engages and equips people to do their very best at

work. As a leader, it’s your job to make sure they do.

This article was originally published online on September 06, 2019.

Kathryn Heath is a principal of Flynn Heath Holt Leadership. She is
a coauthor of The Influence Effect: A New Path to Power For Women.

BW
Brenda F. Wensil is managing director with Bravanti, a global
provider leadership acceleration practices and executive and career
coaching expertise.

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