What does it mean to be an inclusive manager? In part, it means that you do your best to utilize the talents of your entire group and get everyone involved in solving problems and creating policies. It’s easy to fall into comfortable habits when it comes to managing employees and delegating tasks, but those habits can also be destructive to the morale and effectiveness of your group.
Know Your Employees
The National Integration Working Group for Workplaces insists that managers cannot create an inclusive environment if they do not take the time to understand the talents of their employees. If you do not know the capabilities of the people who work for you, then how can you utilize those talents to their maximum return?
An inclusive manager takes the time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each employee and delegates responsibility based on that understanding. When you are inclusive, you are more interested in the strength and success of the group, than in the personal success of individual employees.
Be Fair With Evaluations
If your company does only annual employee evaluations, then your employees spend all year working hard and looking forward to those evaluations. According to The Guardian, you are wasting the potential positive effects of those evaluations if you are repeatedly giving promotions and raises to the same people. An inclusive manager works with their entire staff to carefully determine which employees deserve raises and which employees should use evaluations as a time to work on issues and develop better working skills.
Value Diversity
An inclusive manager does not look at the diversity of a workforce as a burden, but rather as an opportunity to become more efficient and develop better solutions to problems. To become a truly inclusive manager, you must understand how to take the various points of view of your diverse staff and use those varied backgrounds to your advantage. Encourage your entire group to give input on issues and bring together that input to create innovative and effective solutions.
Being Inclusive Is Empowering To Employees
An inclusive manager invites input from every employee and values the innovative manner in which a diverse group of employees can solve problems. When a manager is inclusive, it inspires employees to think of the best ways to help the company and it also empowers employees to take control of their own professional careers. Empowered employees take a greater emotional interest in the success of the company and that helps to drive a company to achieve its growth goals.
Every manager has to learn to walk that fine line between being too involved in their employees’ activities to seeming as though the entire staff does not matter to the success of the company. By being inclusive and remaining professional, a manager can get professional input from employees and make every employee feel like their ideas matter to the company. In order to energize an entire company to take an active part in the company’s continued success, a manager must be inclusive and inspire employees to care about their own futures and the future of the organization.
Contact us today and start developing the skills you need to be an inclusive manager. We can work with you to develop the skills you need to motivate your staff and maximize productivity.
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