Leadership Fundamentals

“Inclusion is a sense of belonging: feeling respected, valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so than you can do your best work.”

– Miller, Frederick A. and Katz, Judith H. 2002. The Inclusion Breakthrough: Unleashing the Real Power of Diversity. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

In today’s world, accepting and adapting to change is one of the most important abilities any employee, manager, or team can adopt. A company that stagnates is not a company that will survive in today’s changing world. Yet change is often uncomfortable and threatening, and while some personalities thrive on change, others are intimidated or even annoyed by it. These negative feelings are heightened when the project leaders are not inclusive with the team who will be affected and who, surprisingly, may more closely understand the issues involved and the testing, requirements, and timing needed to avoid breaking the production cycle while these changes happen.

So what can we do as managers/leaders to encourage employees to buy into change? The following are key approaches to getting their trust and engagement:

• Bring them into discussions on the anticipated changes as early in the process as you can, and ask for their input
• Show them how the change will benefit them in their daily workday. If they reply that it will not, ask them why not. Request specifics. If the team doesn’t see clear benefits from completing the project, they won’t buy into it.
• What about the organization? Will the change bring about substantial improvement in the company’s market standing? Will it result in more customer satisfaction? Have you asked a select group of your customers whether this change would be agreeable or even desirable? What is it’s purpose and it’s goals, and can they be achieved, based on the resources available?
• Ask your team to contribute their ideas, questions, or arguments for or against the changes. Be open to their suggestions. Be prepared to really examine if their perspective is something that should be seriously weighed. Have you overlooked something? Don’t let ego stand in the way of rejecting weak or unsustainable projects.

As with so many workplace issues, communication is the key here. There are many types of changes that can happen as a result of long-term strategies, all of which have the possibility of overwhelming the team. When that happens, your team is not functioning at full capacity, because their stress levels are accelerated, and they are unclear about what their future day to day work lives will look like.

Open communication will contribute to the success of a project because the team is encouraged to contribute their ideas and solutions.

Be careful about your timelines, though. If a project that should take 6 months or less drags on for 2 years, something is drastically wrong with the way it is being run. Once the feeling of project failure starts creeping in, it’s too late to rally an enthusiastic team. By now they’re exhausted by missed deadlines, unmet requirements, and the feeling of being on a sinking ship.

Incoming search terms:

• miller and katz (2002) defined inclusion as: “ a sense of belonging: feeling respected valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so that you can do your best ” (3)
• “Inclusion is a sense of belonging: feeling respected valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so than you can do your best work ” (2)
• Inclusion is a sense of belonging feeling respected Miller Frederick A and Katz Judith H 2002 (2)
• miller and katz a sense of belonging: feeling respected valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so that you can do your best (2)
• Miller Frederick A and Katz Judith H 2002 (2)
• a sense of belonging: feeling respected valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so that you can do your best work (2)
• a sense of belonging: feeling respected valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive (2)
• sense of belonging and inclusion (1)
• “a sense of belonging: feeling respected valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so than you can do your best work ” (1)
• “Inclusion is a sense of belonging: feeling respected valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so than you can do your best work (1)


No related posts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 6:02 am and is filed under Communication, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Management, Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.