4 Commitments All Truly Inclusive Leaders Must Follow

The opinions expressed by entrepreneurs contributors are their own.

2022 was the first year of diversity, equity and inclusion accountability for inclusive leaders. Our future will be filled with rising expectations from employees, customers and business partners, who expect us to step up and courageously respond to society's needs and problems through human differences. It won't be easy, but it will be good.

Let's bring some substance to our learning about how to lead more inclusively. Here's a deeper dive into four crucial concepts and skills for inclusive leaders in the coming year.

1. Choose kindness over hurting others

I don't know when or why we allowed kindness to become a sign of fragility or ineffectiveness. We have a sickening array of “leaders” who demonize people who disagree with them politically, insult them, refuse to care, and instead foment trans pain. Examples of wickedness and cruelty are simply too long to list. Kindness is often seen as a weakness at work. There is an epidemic of giving in to the self-obsessed impulse to do good to oneself and to harm others, almost for the insidious game of it. It's a way to destroy relationships. And we see massive malevolence on social media.

Kindness is respecting the dignity of another person in ways that help them to be happy, comforted, heard, or whole.

Inclusion can be defined in the same way. As an inclusive leader, how do you make sure your colleagues know that you care about their psychological safety, their daily struggles, and their ambitions? Choose kindness and equip others to be right, not wrong. Prioritize relationships.

Related: Why Kindness is a Crucial Quality for Leaders

2. Commit to making evidence-based decisions

Inclusive leaders think critically, use credible data, and make decisions based on it. They involve their teams and their peers in decision-making. This is not an argument for cold objectivity – inclusive leaders consider the complexity of human identities and seek to accommodate the emotions of everyone involved. Evidence, facts, truth: whatever words you use, insight is essential for effective and inclusive leaders.

Inclusive leaders should reject opinions based on conspiracy without evidence, overly emotional pleas that are more about the defense than the business you're there to conduct, or endless deliberation or analysis that pretends to be "inclusive" at the expense of actually making a good and timely decision.

Diversity, equity and inclusion should be a source of rigor in your leadership work. Build a healthy definition of "evidence" (and emotions are a type of evidence), and stay in the game by making inclusive decisions.

3. Centering the future on the realities of the past

It's not a complicated point: we cannot prepare ourselves and our children for the future if we are afraid of our collective past. No committed inclusive leader will agree to a law, policy or practice to censor history because it makes someone feel uncomfortable. We must make it clear: It is sheer fear and unproductive denial to pass laws that "protect white people from discomfort" when it comes to addressing the lingering impacts of racism, anti-Semitism or homophobia.

Such a position stifles learning, refuses to prepare all of our children for the multiracial and otherwise diverse reality of the world we all...