ABSTRACT
We are living in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Navigating VUCA successfully requires inclusive leadership: the ability to identify, value, and actively incorporate diverse people, experiences, and ideas to create successful, sustainable solutions. Inclusive leaders can also help mitigate the disconnect and overwhelm that often comes with VUCA by having an appreciative approach as their mindset.
This chapter, based on my work with several organizations, takes an appreciative approach to inclusive leadership. This approach increases connection (to oneself and each other) and a sense of shared agency, and further inspires inclusion. I call this state of being spaciousness, and it can be achieved when organizations take action based on the generative potential of what is working and what is possible, rather than on how to fix what is broken.
I position this appreciative approach and its principles as an important way to foster the experience of and to promote inclusion. I further explain appreciative leadership as an inclusive process by which people come together to renew their sense of self and their relationship to each other as they co-create a shared future and commit to heartfelt actions that bring plans into realization. I use the metaphor of the lotus to highlight key insights from actual client outcomes that speak to inspiring inclusion and action.
