Lead Bigger

July 29, 2024
“Today’s rapidly evolving world demands inclusion as a core leadership competency,” according to this straightforward manual. Chow (coauthor of The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias), who serves on the boards of 3M and the leadership consultancy Franklin Covey, contends that teams benefit from including members diverse in age, ability, belief systems, and life experiences. By way of example, she notes that “JPMorgan Chase found that their autistic employees were... 92 percent more productive than neurotypical employees” and discusses a “two-way” mentorship she established with a younger employee who helped her set up a professional blog in exchange for career advice. Serving the needs of a diverse workforce requires flexibility, she contends, urging managers to, for instance, adopt an expansive definition of family when determining who’s eligible for child leave. Chow also calls on leaders to protect their workers’ mental well-being by relieving the workloads of overburdened employees and normalizing discussions of mental health. Chow’s argument in favor of diverse workforces largely tracks what other authors have written, though she does call attention to a few under-addressed biases, encouraging supervisors to be cognizant of how, for instance, “lookism” (the preference for conventionally attractive people) might affect hirings and promotions. This may not break much new ground, but it’s nonetheless a sensible primer on creating a welcoming workplace. Agent: Scott Miller, Gray + Miller.