Inclusive Leadership in Thought and Action: A Thematic Analysis

Abstract

While research in the diversity and leadership literatures has given attention to the concept of inclusive leadership, work in these areas has progressed within relatively independent theoretical streams with little integration of findings. To integrate findings from these literatures and develop theory on inclusive leadership, this study explores the concept and enactment of inclusive leadership from the leader’s perspective. Through manual and assisted thematic analyses of 27 leaders’ written responses to questions regarding how they perceive and demonstrate inclusive leadership, we investigate how leaders do sensemaking about what it means to be inclusive. Consistent with the findings of prior research, conceptualization themes emerged related to understanding, valuing, and utilizing differences as well as encouraging a shared identity and collaboration. The findings also highlight the importance of relational leadership—specifically, relating to, showing a genuine interest in, and generating trust from others on the team. In the demonstration of inclusive leadership, the results emphasize behaviors to recognize diversity, respond to individual needs and work styles, and actively listen to what team members voice. Our findings also highlight the importance of building environments in which members share and build on each other’s ideas freely and leaders make time and space for leveraging member contributions for decision-making, even when such contributions diverge from team norms. Based on these insights, we consider the limitations of our work and offer directions for theory, research, and practice.

What Leaders Say versus What They Do: Inclusive Leadership, Policy-Practice Decoupling, and the Anomaly of Climate for Inclusion

“…Inclusive leadership was viewed as an aspect of relational leadership which focuses on leader-follower interactions and whether employees felt that leaders were attentive to their personal needs (Carmeli et al, 2010;Hirak, Peng, Carmeli, & Schaubroeck, 2012). Roberson and Perry (2021) demonstrate how leaders enact inclusive leadership, highlighting the importance of relational leadership-particularly with respect to showing a genuine interest in others and generating trust from group members.…”

A Diversity Mindset Perspective on Inclusive Leadership

“…The leader can do this through such actions as inviting diverse input and encouraging the discussion and integration of diverse perspectives (cf. Roberson & Perry, 2021). The logic here is that shared understanding emerges from shared experience at least as much as from exposure to leader advocacy, in part because experiencing something can clarify what talking about it in the abstract may not.…”

Self-Ascribed Paranormal Ability: Reflexive Thematic Analysis

“…Thus, an advantage of larger samples is they allow more typical accounts to be identified, which is useful to the determination of superordinate themes. Moreover, the presence of greater narrative content is likely to substantiate sub-themes ( Roberson and Perry, 2021 ). These factors in combination will strengthen the conclusions about the nature of self-ascribed paranormal abilities.…”