Dr. Stefanie Johnson is an Associate Professor of Management at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. She has received several million dollars in federal and other grant funding to study leadership and create leadership development programs. Her work and writing has been featured in The Economist, Newsweek, TIME Magazine, The Harvard Business Review, and Forbes, and she has appeared on national network shows on CNN TV, NPR radio, and on Marketplace. She has presented to, advised, and interviewed C-level officers at Starbucks, PayPal, General Motors, Netflix, Pepsi, and Citi, among other companies. She was named to the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar list, presented by the global platform for management ideas, which features 30 people whose work will shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.
About Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams
Wall Street Journal Bestseller
In this groundbreaking guide, a management expert outlines the transformative leadership skill of tomorrow—one that can make it possible to build truly diverse and inclusive teams which value employees’ need to belong while being themselves.
Humans have two basic desires: to stand out and to fit in. Companies respond by creating groups that tend to the extreme—where everyone fits in and no one stands out, or where everyone stands out and no one fits in. How do we find that happy medium where workers can demonstrate their individuality while also feeling they belong?
The answer, according to Stefanie Johnson, is to Inclusify. In this essential handbook, she explains what it means to Inclusify and how it can be used to strengthen any business. Inclusifying—unlike “diversifying” or “including”— implies a continuous, sustained effort towards helping diverse teams feel engaged, empowered, accepted, and valued. It’s no use having diversity if everyone feels like an outsider, she contends.
In her research, Johnson found common problems leaders exhibit which frustrate their attempts to create diverse and cohesive teams. Leaders that underestimated the importance of group coherence and dynamics often have employees who do not feel like they belong; leaders that ignore the benefits of listening to different perspectives leave some people feeling like they cannot be their authentic selves.
By contrast, leaders who Inclusify can forge strong relationships with their teams, inspire greater productivity from all of their workers, and create a more positive environment for everyone. Having a true range of different voices is good for the bottom line—it allows for the development of the best, most innovative, and creative solutions that are essential to success.
Inclusify reveals the unexpected ways that well-intentioned leaders undermine their teams, explains how to recognize the myths and misperceptions that drive these behaviors, and provides practical strategies to become an Inclusifyer. By learning why uniqueness and belonging are so imperative, leaders can better understand what makes their employees tick and find ways to encourage them to be themselves while ensuring they feel like they are fully part of the group. The result is a fully engaged team filled with diverse perspectives—the key to creating innovative and imaginative ideas that drive value.
