In my first post about inclusive leadership I described how leaders tend to engage more with followers who are more like them and engage less with followers who are less like them. This tendency leads to an imbalance in the provision of leadership. The similar followers benefit from the additional leadership compared to the less similar followers. Often without realizing it, leaders leave those less similar followers behind and fail to achieve the group's full performance potential.
To guard against that undesirably outcome, leaders must consciously resolve to lead everyone.
A conscious and consequential choice
This idea is more important and more profound than it may seem at first. An inclusive leader chooses to lead everyone. Not just their subordinates. Not just people at work. Every single person they interact with. That’s a lot of people.
This expansion of the typical boundaries of the leadership relationship is the important first step to truly leading inclusively. The lead everyone mindset is the best mental cue to prompt leaders to ensure they are engaging equally with all their people. The strongest way to avoid subconsciously favoring any group of followers is to consciously reject the idea of groups.
Leading everyone means every interaction is an opportunity to lead
How is a lead everyone mindset different from a more conventional approach? A first example is a leader’s attitude towards organizational structure. Most organizations have a clear hierarchy that communicates senior-subordinate relationships. Every leader knows who their people are. However, the structure also tells each leader who are not their people. A literal reading of the org chart boxes leaders into thinking exclusively.
Choosing to lead everyone means the imaginary barriers created by organizational structure melt away. An inclusive leader looks to engage not just their own direct reports, but everyone. Within an organization, an inclusive leader may not be directly responsible for the performance of people from other places on the org chart, but can and should contribute to their performance by leading anyone at any time as opportunities arise.
The idea of leading everyone, even those people a leader is not responsible for in the formal organizational structure, drives us to another even more important realization about leadership in an organization. Leading everyone is not the same as managing everyone. Organizations give managers policies and procedures to manage employees’ performance. However, managers usually only have authority to us those tools with employees they are formally responsible for in the organizational structure. Management tools cannot be used to lead everyone.
This limitation focuses our definition of leadership as interaction and inspiration of other people without formal authority or power. An inclusive leader thinks about leading everyone but knows they do not have authority over everyone. Managers may apply policies or procedures to get the job done with the people formally assigned to them as subordinates, but leaders interact and inspire everyone.
Freed of the crutch of authority and management policy, the inclusive leader must rely on their ability to engage and inspire others on a connected, human level. It is certainly more challenging than formal management, but it also more powerful. To be inclusive, a leader must operate at this deeply personal level. An inclusive climate cannot be created by human resources management policy alone - it can only come from strong relationships among leaders and followers.
In an organization with a lead everyone mindset, relationships among leaders and followers build an infinite web of connections. Any person can look for leadership from anyone else in the organization they may find inspiring, not just their assigned supervisor. The knowledge that a direct report has a strong relationship with a leader from somewhere else on the org chart doesn't scare an inclusive leader and doesn't prompt them to try to defend their authority. The lead everyone mindset allows leadership bonds to form between any two points in the organization, connecting every person to the leader that is best able to inspire them. In an inclusive climate, leadership is a two-way street: no follower is left behind without inspiration, but also no leader is hidden away from any follower.
Leading everyone happens everywhere - not just at work
Striving to lead everyone changes how a person interacts with the entire world. It cannot be a mindset that is turned on for the workday and turned off on the drive home. It must always be on. It demands that an inclusive leader be in tune and conscious of their interactions with every person they encounter. This is certainly not easy, but the benefits are huge.
Outside of work, interactions with family, friends and even strangers become more meaningful. The opportunities to lead are subtle and arise frequently. Looking someone in the eye, smiling and saying, “good morning” as you pass in the hallway is an act of leadership. Listening to someone who is having a bad day and responding with empathy is an act of leadership. Introducing yourself and learning someone else’s name is an act of leadership. Even those simple gestures can inspire another person and improve their outlook. A leader can do that with a total stranger in a tiny moment. Tiny moments add up.
Someone with the lead everyone mindset does these things with every person they interact with, from the most senior leader of their organization to the person who bags their groceries. An inclusive leader may not be responsible for the work performance of the grocery store employee, but they should be concerned with that person's wellness as a human being for the few minutes they spend together in lane 5. A person with the lead everyone mindset, who is consciously resisting the tendency to lead some people but not others, takes interest in engaging and inspiring every other person they interact with, no matter who they are.
The goal to lead everyone, to have a small positive influence on every person you interact with, is the basis of inclusive leadership. Leading everyone becomes a daily habit that defines who a leader is, not just as a worker, but as a human being. That habit helps immunize a leader against the unconscious tendency to engage more with some people and less with others. It opens the door to a new realm of relationships and helps ground a leader in human to human interactions, not senior to subordinate interactions. Leaders who strive to lead everyone put themselves in the right mental place to lead inclusively. There are other necessary inclusive leadership strategies but choosing to lead everyone is the first step.