Inclusive Leadership means Diversity of Thought

Last updated: August 23, 2026

I recently shared on social media that I'd be the leadership speaker at a large global event. 

Unfortunately, the best image that showcased yours truly included two other white men. The optics were not great, considering that I'm an advocate for women's leadership and have signed a pledge not to appear on all-male panels.

There were some women and other ethnicities speaking at the conference, and the panel was diverse, just not diverse enough. I called the organizer, a former mentee of mine, and he shared his frustration that he'd asked many women, but they'd refused to speak.

I've faced this same issue before, organizing physical and virtual events. It leads to conversations like:

"We are missing a Black woman or an Asian man, and we have nobody representing LGBTQ."

That's the part representation targets miss. You can have a visibly diverse lineup and still not have inclusion, because inclusion is about whether people feel safe enough, and invited for the right reasons, to actually put their hand up.

What Actually Gets People to Speak Up

In a perfect world, we'd have the best person for the job regardless of ethnicity, gender, age, ability, or sexual orientation. But we need to address centuries of prejudice and bias first, which means checking that unconscious stereotypes aren't shaping our choices, and making sure underrepresented people feel safe and motivated to volunteer in the first place.

My research has shown that women, and especially women of color, are more likely to speak up or be available for senior roles when:

• They have domestic and child support, hired or from their spouse
• The environment is already diverse
• They are invited by other women
• The invitation stresses their talent or story, not that they're filling a quota
• They haven't had their self-worth destroyed by their upbringing

Why are Inclusive Leadership and Diversity of Thought not more common?

Well, the human mind is hardwired to consider ideas and perspectives from our own tribe superior to those from outside it. This human tendency leads to political partisanship regardless of the facts and can result in a senior leadership team that looks the same and thinks the same. The dangers of this 'we are right, everybody else is wrong' mindset are obvious, especially in times of rapid change, when past ways of doing things are losing or have lost their relevance. 

If a closed mindset is the default setting, what must leaders do to override it and adopt inclusive leadership and diversity of thought?

But before I explain how, let’s discuss why.

Why Inclusive Leadership?

Research by Deloitte makes a compelling case for Inclusive leadership.

1. 17% more likely to report being a high-performing team
2. 20% more likely to say they make high-quality decisions
3. 29% more likely to report behaving collaboratively

In 2014, when Satya Nadella took over from Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft, he realized that the top leadership lacked diversity of thought. Nadella showed inclusive leadership by inviting the founders of Mojang (a company that Microsoft had acquired) to the company offsite, even though they didn’t qualify. These young entrepreneurs were already cloud and digital natives and had the kind of thinking that Microsoft needed to pivot. At the time Nadella did this, Gartner gave them 2 to 3 years of relevance left; today, they are a trillion-dollar company.

My inclusive leadership gets tested every time I step in front of a group to facilitate or coach. It's not uncommon for me to have leaders from 8 to 10 different countries and cultures; some who won't speak up and some who can't keep quiet. Navigating a minefield of sensitivities whilst challenging perspectives is what gets my blood racing.

How to promote Diversity of Thought?

Surprisingly, many leaders who practice inclusive leadership behaviors are unaware of this, and those who don’t practice these behaviors are under the impression that they are inclusive.

Taking a Cartesian approach, let’s look at what the absence of inclusive leadership or diversity of thought looks like:

• Being overpowering – not letting others speak, not inviting other inputs or perspectives
• Discounting – putting down, ridiculing, or ignoring any idea not generated by themselves or their ‘tribe’.
• Obvious Bias – only a select group of people are ever given opportunities to give opinions or make decisions

So, if these narrow-minded and divisive behaviors are toxic to a company's growth and sustainability, what mindsets and behaviors should be encouraged?

The most powerful mindset a leader could adopt is that of humility. I don’t mean humility in the sense of making yourself less than you are, but in the sense of the true meaning of humility, which is grounded. A grounded leader knows what they are good at and knows their own weaknesses. The grounded leader is self-aware that their perspective is just a perspective and can consider alternative, even contradictory views as equally valid.

With this truly humble mindset, the inclusive leader will:

1. Create a psychologically safe space for discussion
2. Admit their weaknesses as well as their strengths
3. Ask for feedback on their blind spots
4. Actively seek out differing perspectives
5. Be informed of cultural differences
6. Treat people as individuals with something to offer
7. Ensure they are making decisions on the best ideas, irrespective of where those ideas come from

Or they could just remember that:

“Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas”

If you want inspiration that a shift of perspective is possible, I recommend the movie Hidden Figures. Yes, diversity isn't easy, but neither is going to the moon, and we only accomplished that through diversity.

In Conclusion

If you want to foster diversity of thought and cultivate inclusive leadership, consider engaging me as a speaker for your next event or leadership offsite.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is inclusive leadership?
Inclusive leadership is the practice of actively seeking out and valuing perspectives that differ from your own, rather than defaulting to the people and ideas that feel most familiar. It's a mindset and a set of behaviors, not a policy or a headcount target.

Why is diversity of thought important in leadership teams?
Research from Deloitte found teams practicing inclusive leadership were 17% more likely to report being high-performing, 20% more likely to make high-quality decisions, and 29% more likely to behave collaboratively. Homogeneous leadership teams default to agreement, which becomes a liability when past approaches no longer work.

Does having a diverse panel or team automatically mean it's inclusive?
No. Representation and inclusion are different problems. A visibly diverse panel or team can still be built on tokenism if people were invited to fill a quota rather than for their talent, and genuine inclusion also depends on whether underrepresented people feel safe enough to actually speak up once they're in the room.

How do you build genuine inclusive leadership, not just representation?
Start with humility: know your own blind spots, actively ask for feedback on them, and treat every perspective as equally valid to your own rather than as something to be managed. Concretely, that means creating psychological safety, inviting people for their talent rather than their demographic, and making decisions on the merit of the idea regardless of its source.