TIPTOP

Puneet Rathi, advisory and knowledge head, SHRM India, on being an inclusive ethical leader

The foundation of leadership is on being purposeful, inclusive, ethical and inspiring. True leadership isn’t about superiority, position or ego. It's about nurturing and developing the potential of those around you. Inclusive leadership is the basic need and true leaders through their thoughts, words and actions have to ensure that they help build a culture of inclusivity in their organisations. Through working with people, inclusive leadership in itself provides opportunities and promotes fairness of input and output to all. An inclusive leader is expected to—

• Respect each one as individuals: look at his/her employees' unique abilities/qualities rather than treating everyone the same way.  Ensure that critical decisions and organisational goals, policies and systems aren’t biased for/against any gender, colour, religion or creed but are focussed to bring out the merits in each person.
• Be flexible: Be flexible to listen to one's subordinates and appreciate each one's opinion.
• look beyond the obvious: Support team to build a culture of inclusion and let it not remain on paper but in visible actions.
• Understand the profile of the organisation: Make efforts to understand the nuances of different cultures, societies and people. Appreciate and create a healthy balance rather than taking decisions on just gut feel.
• Communicate the right way: The kind of communication an employee has within the organisation and outside matters a lot. An inclusive ethical leader is one who is aware of his/her words and actions that will help build a culture of values and inclusivity.
• Be ethical: Being ethical simply means to follow and do what is right and the biggest challenge is to define what is right. For that, it requires to have sufficient knowledge, attitude and skills.

Also, it’s important to look at perspectives while defining what is right. Many times organisations define right as linked to their culture, style and business need. Here we aren’t talking about perspectives but being ethically right. Culture is mostly seen as intangible and not easily measurable but many aspects which are observable in organisations can lead to culture.