Managers: The missing piece in the inclusion puzzle

Have you or your organisation missed a vital factor in your ongoing drive to create an inclusive workplace?

In this week’s guest column, HR expert and author David Deacon explains why he believes that managers are the missing piece in the inclusion puzzle; and the key to accelerating inclusion progress at your company. By excluding them you risk them derailing and potentially sabotaging your inclusion efforts. Here’s why managers have a much bigger role to play in the quest for inclusion; and how to include them to be a force for good.

Pretty much everyone who works in a company, works for someone. Most employees experience being within that company mainly through interactions with their colleagues and their direct manager. The team they are in, and the manager they work for, influence their entire working day, every day.

It’s managers who shape the team environment that employees experience; not companies or policies. It’s managers who build the team culture. Through what they do and what they say, managers create the reality of work for everyone on their team.  They forge the microclimate which the team works within. That can be a really strong and positive climate, where everyone feels that they belong, do their best work, contribute and succeed on their terms.  Managers are the people who create a climate of inclusion for the people who work for them. 

Sadly, they can also do the opposite; teams where there are bad experiences – favouritism, biased treatment, bullying, and controlling and coercive behaviours driving anxiety and fear, are also all led by managers. The choices that managers make about the ways to lead the team are a significant factor in how it feels like to come to work; even if coming to work now means simply sitting at your laptop. Managers shape the team by how they behave and lead.

INCLUSION ROLE

Yet for some reason, the role of the manager has not been on our radar; other than when we have tried to influence their decision making – especially when making hiring, promotion or other people-based decisions – and eliminating bias and bad practice from their actions. But managers have a much bigger role to play in the workplace, and we haven’t addressed that yet.

You can find great teams within horrible company cultures. And you can find toxic teams inside amazing companies.  Policies and procedures, initiatives and announcements, have little impact if the team environment is not good. If a manager doesn’t know how to, or doesn’t want to, create a strong and positive team climate, the chances are that every policy and initiative you have invested in will not make any difference to your employees’ experiences.

This has been magnified during the pandemic. With many staff now working remotely, and interacting through platforms like zoom, managers have been the primary and sometimes only contact with their employer.

Everything to do with our work has been through our interaction with our manager and the team.  We might be proud of the name and reputation of our employer; we might identify with the mission and values; but still our experience of working has been through the smaller prism of the team we are on and the manager we work for. This means that how we perform and how we feel is highly dependent on the way our manager treats us and leads the team.

A FORCE FOR GOOD

Managers are a hidden force for good. They are the leverage, the unit of influence, that can deliver on all the good momentum around DE&I that companies are building. They are the means to drive the positive outcomes; the success and innovation and growth, commitment; discretionary effort; retention and high performance; that can result from teams where people feel they are valued, welcomed and empowered. Managers can deliver everyday inclusion – the power of belonging that everyone needs.

So why do we not focus on this? Why are managers still, in many organisations, the hidden or under-appreciated asset? Why is the potential for managers to make a huge difference to how people experience working, being left to chance?  I see a lot about hiring, policies, visibility, metrics, unbiased processes and high impact initiatives; and it’s all good. I increasingly see more commentary about the importance of culture to creating an organisation where inclusion is a lived experience; and that is great. But if leaders do not shape a company culture where belonging is part of the picture they are letting everyone down.  

Managers can be the extension of those leadership actions, the team leaders who can be relied on to make the difference. But the vital importance of the manager in creating that strong sense, every day, of a team where we can be appreciated, welcomed and supported to succeed and grow, is still under-recognised; and in many cases, it’s simply ignored.

A NEW APPRECIATION

If you are responsible in some way for DE&I in your organisation, you have to pay attention to managers and their vital role in creating micro-climates of success and growth and inclusion. To make a start, here are three things you should be doing:

1. Invest in recognition

Find the teams that are being well led. Leverage data if you have it, or your network of influencers, to find managers who are already creating amazing team environments, and then use all your channels to appreciate, applaud and celebrate them for being great managers. Just that – recognise them for being role models, for making a difference by being really good at leading their teams. 

2. Invest in surveys  

Use what you have, or add a manager survey, to help encourage everyone to up their game, and to signal to employees that you care about how good (or not) their manager is, that you care about whether inclusion and belonging and simple fairness is seen clearly at the level of every manager. There’s always reasons to be cautious about how you use the results of this kind of survey – to be clear, it’s not an assessment – but a regular poll is a great way of focusing everyone’s minds on how impactful great managers can be

3. Invest in development

Encouraging managers and measuring them will help those who already manage their teams well. It’s even better if you can help every manager learn how to be great, and invest some time and some resources into training them – which doesn’t mean training in coaching and delegating, nor in performance management, nor in unconscious bias, important as all these things can be; it means training them in how to create positive and powerful environments where everyone belongs, can succeed and can thrive. Train them to be great – and inclusive – managers, and everyone will benefit.

THE SOLUTION TO INCLUSION

Let’s get clearer about the importance of people managers in creating a climate of inclusion; not as an optional extra, but as an integral part of our policies and initiatives to create companies where everyone can thrive. Managers are in a unique position to make a difference. It’s time to help them become part of the solution.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

David Deacon is an advocate for the real value of people managers, and his Self-Determined Training Company helps managers to become exceptional. He is the author of The Self Determined Manager, the Founder of The Talent Office, a head of talent, an advisor to a start up, and a regular writer of articles on managers, culture and leadership.

Check out his three part series on ‘How great managers create belonging and inclusion’ here.