Inclusive Leadership Practices

This chapter contributes to understanding inclusive leadership practices by examining everyday encounters between individuals occupying varying levels of socially ascribed privilege. It draws on research that identifies micro-episodes of inclusion and non-inclusion in interactions of minority-status group members (e.g., ethnic minority employees) with dominant-status group members (e.g., organizational leaders) with relatively more privileged gender, ethnic, and/or professional statuses. The chapter contributes to our understanding of leadership practices for building inclusive organizations in two key ways. First, it adopts a micro-level focus to shed light on inclusion practiced by dominant or privileged group members, as understood from the lived experience of minority-status organizational members. Second, it demonstrates how overtly positive (i.e., inclusive) or negative (i.e., exclusionary) practices are complex, and may not be necessarily interpreted as mutually exclusive categories of positive/inclusive and nonpositive/exclusionary experiences. Individuals who are the “targets” of such practices can and do demonstrate agency in perceptions of and responses to practices of inclusion and exclusion in organizations. Finally, the chapter discusses practical implications of everyday inclusion, including the idea that the responsibility for sustaining inclusive work cultures rests beyond formal leadership positions. This points to the value of relationship-based, “other-focused” leadership in producing inclusive cultures.