ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights how focusing on inclusion provides an appealing way to advance diversity and derive its potential benefits. People typically resonate with the idea that inclusion involves increasing comfort and reducing discomfort for more people, especially those previously excluded or marginalized. When organizations and groups truly foster diversity and inclusion, differences among members in identities, values, ways of achieving goals, and preferences about both major and minor aspects of work and life become more salient. Rather than emphasize commonalities, inclusive groups and organizations work to incorporate both similarities and differences. Inclusion, then, can involve a good measure of discomfort, especially for those who were relatively comfortable with the previously less-inclusive system. A key goal of inclusion is to maximize the degree to which individuals feel safe, trusted, accepted, respected, supported, valued, fulfilled, engaged, and authentic in their working environment. Inclusion does not mean reproducing the dynamics of exclusive groups, except now with a greater diversity of members.
