What is inclusion?

- One of the things that I've noticed from doing this work is that people often put diversity and inclusion together. They're really two very different things. I mean, diversity is really speaking to sort of the mix of different identities and cultures and experiences that our individuals share, and some are common, and some are obviously different from each other. But inclusion is a whole 'nother story. It's an action. It's about being intentional. It's really about building the kind of culture and environment, and especially if you're in a workplace, where people of every background can come and thrive and contribute and be seen. And actually, also, I say three different things sort of make sure that people are feeling included. One is, they're expected to be there, and they're expected to be good. Two is that they are reflected in the policies and the practices. Sometimes those are formal. Sometimes they are informal. And the third thing is that they feel respected and they feel like they belong and they feel like they are engaged in the most exciting aspects of that particular environment, that they're not left out. So in some ways, diversity is about counting, so like, we have one of those, we've got two of those, we've got three of those. But inclusion is about cultivating, and I think that's the difference. Inclusion is something that a lot of times people say, well, I'm sure, yeah, my boss or my supervisor should be really thinking about inclusion. But one of the things that is true is that there's no way to create this kind of environment that we're looking for unless every single person is thinking, from their own perspective and their behavior and their relationships, how inclusive are they being? So it's basically the job of everyone, and yes, leaders do have some, I think, some specific things to be thinking about, especially with regard to what type of opportunities they're making available to people, how they're evaluating people, but bottom line is all of us are responsible for being inclusive.