EXCERPT: 

During the closing keynote, Dr. Arin Reeves, Researcher, Author and Advisor on Leadership and Inclusion, discussed how inclusion doesn’t require compliance professionals to add time to their day. “Everything you are doing, you are either doing inclusively, or you are not,” Dr. Reeves explains. “You shouldn’t feel like you have to calendar inclusion. It’s about asking yourself: Everything you do, how can you do it more inclusively? You become a person that is constantly calibrating to be more inclusive.”

According to Dr. Reeves, there are six traits that support inclusive leadership:

• Cultural intelligence: Recognize that you need to work the other people work, not just the way you do.
• Curiosity: Focus on maintaining a 2:1 ratio of questions to statements in conversations.
• Cognizance: What you see after you get past your biases. The more curious you are, the more you land in cognizance.
• Collaboration: Find ways to increase participation by everyone such as speaking in order instead of spontaneously and finding different ways to connect.
• Commitment: Create accountability mechanisms to ensure inclusive leadership when external stressors affect cognitive load and processing.
• Courage: Focus on tiny gains and find small ways to start doing things differently.