Beyond Engagement
How inclusive leaders cultivate shared leadership and collective intelligence
Before exploring what inclusive leadership looks like in practice, it might be worth considering what happens when leaders fail to lead inclusively. The stakes are significant. Research consistently links employee disengagement to lower productivity, higher turnover, poorer customer outcomes, and reduced organizational performance. When people don’t feel seen, valued, or fairly treated at work, they withhold their full cognitive, emotional, and physical energy from their roles. They show up on the outside, but they hold back.
The costs aren’t just individual. Exclusive or indifferent leadership cultures send signals across entire organizations: that only certain voices matter, that difference is tolerated rather than welcomed, and that authenticity carries risk. This is particularly damaging for women, people of color, and others from historically marginalized groups, who are most acutely affected when inclusion is absent. Organizations that fail to address this tend not only to experience disengagement but also active attrition, losing precisely the diverse talent they need to innovate and serve increasingly complex communities.
These patterns appear regularly in my work with organizational leaders. The leadership capacities needed to create genuinely inclusive cultures are rarely made explicit, and even more rarely cultivated systematically. Many organizational practices still operate from older paradigms and ways of knowing. And yet, leaders who develop these capacities become models for others. They represent organizations that have evolved to lead more effectively and sustainably, in genuine alignment with their missions and visions. This article explores three ideas essential for leaders who want to cultivate genuine inclusion and shared leadership in their organizations, along with reflective questions to support application in practice.
The research points to something more transformative than retention: a more generative kind of organizational energy that emerges when every voice truly counts.
1. Inclusive Leadership Behaviors Directly Boost Employee Engagement
Researcher Rosalind F. Cohen identified seven key behaviors that inclusive leaders demonstrate. When leaders consistently model these behaviors, employees are measurably more engaged: more intellectually invested in their work, more socially connected to their colleagues, and more positively energized by what they do.
The seven behaviors are:
Fair treatment of people and processes. Actively challenging systems and structures that perpetuate inequity, while ensuring all team members are treated with consistent respect and dignity regardless of their identity or role.
Openness to differences. Creating teams and organizations where individuals can bring their full selves, including aspects of identity that are both visible and unseen, without fear of judgment or exclusion.
Connection. Intentionally building environments where uniqueness is celebrated alongside a strong sense of belonging and collective engagement, so that people feel both seen as individuals and part of something larger.
Valuing unique perspectives and expertise. Actively seeking out diverse voices rather than defaulting to the loudest or most familiar ones, and treating difference as an asset rather than a challenge to manage.
Shared communication. Facilitating honest, open dialogue across the team, not just broadcasting information downward, but creating a genuine two-way exchange where all perspectives are invited and considered.
Belonging. Nurturing the motivation and conditions for people to form strong, stable, and meaningful relationships with one another, so that connection to colleagues becomes a source of engagement rather than a pleasant bonus.
Authenticity. Encouraging and actively supporting group members to remain true to themselves, signaling through words and actions that conformity to a single cultural norm is neither expected nor valued.
What this looks like in practice
A useful starting point for any organizational leader is an honest self-assessment: which of these seven behaviors do I already demonstrate well, and which are underdeveloped? Cohen’s research suggests that certain skills, including active listening, challenging biases, creating space for discussion, and self-awareness, appear across multiple inclusive leadership categories. This means they carry a multiplying effect. A leader who becomes a more genuinely curious listener, for instance, simultaneously strengthens belonging, fair treatment, and the valuing of unique perspectives.
In practical terms, this might mean restructuring team meetings so that quieter voices are actively invited to contribute rather than left to speak up on their own. It also means auditing team processes for hidden bias: who gets credit for ideas? Whose concerns get followed up on, and whose are quietly set aside? Small, consistent actions, done visibly and with intention, communicate to team members that inclusion is not a program. It is a shared practice.
2. Shared Identity and Perceived Similarity Deepen Connection and Engagement
Cohen’s research found that when employees perceive genuine similarity between themselves and their manager, whether in values, background, or lived experience, they feel more connected to their colleagues and more positive about their work. The mechanism behind this is known as affinity bias: humans naturally gravitate toward those with whom they share common ground. Inclusive leaders don’t ignore this dynamic. They work with it, intentionally creating conditions where people across differences can discover unexpected common ground.
What this looks like in practice
This is where brave spaces become essential. A brave space is not simply a comfortable environment. It is one in which people are invited to engage authentically, share aspects of their identity, and encounter perspectives that may challenge their assumptions. Leaders create these spaces by going first: sharing something of themselves, naming their own uncertainties, and demonstrating through their own behavior that vulnerability is not a liability.
A leader might open a team meeting with a brief personal reflection, not oversharing, but offering enough of themselves to signal that the whole person is welcome in this room. Over time, structured opportunities for identity-sharing, such as team storytelling, values mapping exercises, or thoughtful onboarding conversations, can reveal the deeper commonalities that surface-level differences often obscure. When a team member discovers that a colleague who looks nothing like them shares a passion, a struggle, or a formative experience, the connection that forms is both real and lasting.
3. Inclusive Leadership Must Be Embedded in Systems, Not Just Modeled by Individuals
Cohen is clear that sustainable engagement cannot rest on the goodwill of a single leader. It requires organizational commitment: weaving inclusive practices into the structures and processes that shape everyday work life, including hiring, performance management, team formation, and leadership development. A culture of belonging cannot be downloaded from another organization’s playbook. It has to be deliberately built from the inside.
What this looks like in practice
The place to start is at the beginning. Cohen emphasizes that the forming stage of team development (Tuckman, 1965), when norms, behaviors, and expectations are first being established, is a critical window of opportunity. Leaders who facilitate early conversations about how the team will work together, not just what they will accomplish, lay the foundation for the kind of belonging and collective accountability that sustains engagement over time. Questions like “How will we make sure all voices are heard in decision-making?” and “How will we handle disagreement?” are not soft questions. They are structural ones.
In hiring and performance management, this means integrating inclusive leadership competencies into the criteria used to select, evaluate, and develop leaders. Interview questions like “Tell me about a time you challenged a process you believed was unfair” can reveal a candidate’s capacity for belonging, connection, and shared understanding. In performance reviews, asking team members how their manager has created opportunities for them to contribute as leaders within the team can illuminate where an inclusive culture is flourishing and where it still needs attention.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, senior leaders must commit to their own ongoing development. This means not just participating in training, but doing the harder work of naming mistakes publicly, seeking feedback, and creating genuine space for others to share their identities and experiences. Every act of authentic connection builds the kind of culture that no external program can manufacture — and that is precisely what makes it worth building.
Reflective Questions
These questions are offered as invitations for reflection. Consider writing your responses in a journal.
On how you lead:
When you look honestly at Cohen’s seven behaviors, which ones require the most deliberate effort from you? What about the conditions you are currently creating for your team?
In what ways might your own affinity bias be shaping whom you turn to, whom you listen to most readily, or whose ideas you champion?
On belonging and brave spaces:
When did you last go first: share something of yourself, name an uncertainty, or acknowledge a mistake in a way that modeled the vulnerability you hope to cultivate in others?
On systems and organizational culture:
If you were to identify one system or structure in your organization that consistently undermines belonging or fairness, what would it be? What would it take to begin addressing it?
Want to go deeper? If this article sparked questions about your own leadership or your organization's culture, I'd love to connect. I work with leaders and teams in education, nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations to put ideas like these into practice in ways that are grounded, realistic, and specific to your context. Schedule a free discovery call with me here.
References
Arao, B., & Clemens, K. (2013). From safe spaces to brave spaces. In L. M. Landreman (Ed.), The art of effective facilitation: Reflections from social justice educators (pp. 135–150). Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Booysen, L. A. E. (2014). The development of inclusive leadership practice and processes. In B. Ferdman & B. Deane (Eds.), Diversity at work: The practice of inclusion (pp. 296–329). Jossey-Bass.
Cohen, R. F. (2023). How inclusive leaders can influence employee engagement. In J. Barnes, M. J. Stevens, B. Z. Ekelund, & K. Perham-Lippman (Eds.), Inclusive leadership: Equity and belonging in our communities (pp. 145–153). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Tuckman, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399.