INFORMATION
Creating an inclusive culture - part three
Marsha Ramroop (pictured), Founder Director of Unheard Consulting, concludes her three-part feature for Business Network about the steps needed to create a truly diverse and inclusive culture.
In Part One of this trilogy of articles I outlined the four Cultural Intelligence, CQ™, capabilities to help you move from the awareness you need to be better at Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), to tangible, academically success-proven, action. In Part Two I outlined how it needs to be overlaid with the McKinsey
Change model to embed an inclusive culture. In this final part, I outline how you can think about doing this and point
to some resources that can help. The four CQ™ capabilities are CQ Drive – motivation to improve your
effectiveness at working with those different from you; CQ Knowledge – cognition, what are you thinking about, and what you need to know about those who are different from you; CQ Strategy – your planning, checking and awareness, what you’re thinking about what you’re thinking about; CQ Action – your behaviours and adapting or not when interacting with those different from you. The McKinsey Change model states people will change their mindsets
and behaviour if: they see Role Modelling – they see leaders, colleagues and staff behaving differently; they can Foster Understanding and Conviction – they understand what’s being asked of them and it makes sense; the change is Reinforced with Formal Mechanisms – they see that structures, processes and systems support the changes they’re being asked to make; they can Develop Skills and Talents – they have the skills and opportunities to behave in the new way. Your first step is to truly get to grips with what CQ™ is and how it’s
relevant to you, your team and organisation, either by engaging a CQ™ professional for workshops, coaching and consulting, and/or by reading and digesting the work of Dr David Livermore, Professor Soon Ang and Professor Linn Van Dyne. Beware, there are other products and services calling themselves Cultural
Intelligence, but there is only one that’s been properly academically researched, peer-reviewed and trademarked. Please see
culturalq.com/about-cultural-intelligence/research/ for more on this. The next step is to make three grids; with the four CQ™ capabilities as
four rows on the left of a page, and then four McKinsey change cornerstones as four columns. One grid would be for you as an individual; one for your team; one for your whole organisation. In each resulting intersecting box, write what that action would look like. As a leader in an organisation, your grid could have entries something like the ones illustrated in the table below:
INDIVIDUAL CQ Drive
CQ Knowledge CQ CQ Strategy Role modelling
Use leadership position to demonstrate my enthusiasm for D&I
Give my team the time they need to really understand new clients
At the beginning of each day plan by looking at the people I’m due to engage most with and allow for personality differences
CQ Action
Get to grips with how to adapt and during negotiations
business network February 2020 97 As a team then do one for the department. As a Leadership team, do
one for the organisation, and seek feedback and input from other staff. Each box can have many more than one entry. Once all boxes are filled, make a plan for how you will achieve each
action point. This will become a working document to help create and embed your inclusive culture. As well as CQ™ work, consider reading Matthew Syed’s Rebel Ideas, as it
can help you with CQ Drive if you’re still sceptical about this work. I also recommend June Sarpong’s Diversify, which has some great race resources to help with CQ Knowledge and some ideas for CQ Action. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez also helps with CQ Knowledge and can inform your CQ Strategy when thinking about gender parity. There are many more articles, books and websites which can start you thinking more productively about D&I. D&I change is a journey. It cannot be achieved by a workshop or a single
trip from a consultant. It requires time, effort and resource. You need all four of the change cornerstones, each being informed by the four CQ™ capabilities, taking personal responsibility, and just like a consultant might serve you as a personal trainer, you still have to do the work to get fit. Anything less, and you won’t make it. The benefits of nailing D&I are innumerable and valuable, take the steps
you need today.
Understanding and conviction
Reinforcing formal mechanisms
Developing skills and talents
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