Inclusivity in the workplace calls for more than just the occasional email thread thanking employees for their hard work or achieving desired statistics on a diversity hire spreadsheet. Establishing real relationships with team members and lifting up their passions, successes and innovations should be as important as surpassing quarterly goals or locking in a big client – and it takes more than an after-work happy hour once a month to foster an environment of support and recognition.
While being “inclusive” covers a lot of different meanings in the business world, the most common thread is the level of connection being established between leadership and employees. It can be as simple as making sure every role player on a team has the opportunity to express their opinion on a project, or as complex as analyzing internal hiring biases and addressing what key skills are truly important during the hiring process.
“Being empathetic and welcoming to each individual is key, as well as leveraging each individual’s unique background and experiences,” Rachel Wang, software engineering manager at Benchling, said.
Built In San Francisco sat down with Wang and two other engineering professionals to learn how they foster a more inclusive environment for the teams they manage, and the steps they’re taking to consistently evolve into even stronger leaders.
Cisco Meraki provides cloud-managed IT solutions to small businesses to global enterprises. Senior Engineering Manager Nilesh Hirve said that creating a safe environment through connection in the workplace gives team members more opportunities to speak up without judgment and for an even rotation of power to occur between roles.
From your experience, what is the key to being an inclusive leader?
The key to being an inclusive leader is creating a safe space for team members to voice their thoughts and know they’re being heard – creating a space for everyone to share their opinions and ideas empowers the team to solve problems and find solutions. Creating a safe space is very important. Otherwise, we can’t expect team members to speak up if they fear being judged by their manager or team.
To create a safe space, I prioritize connecting with each individual on the team at a personal level to build trust and try to be an active listener. Active listening is listening without thinking of a response while the other person is speaking. It’s a simple concept but it really allows you to listen with empathy.
What’s a real-life example of your inclusive leadership style in action?
Traditionally, an organization that uses Scrum will appoint one Scrum Master (i.e., program lead) to manage the projects during a given sprint from end to end. On my team, to get everyone involved, we decided to have a rotating Scrum Master role instead of appointing one person. This rotation allows everyone on the team to be involved in planning and running sprints. We follow each sprint with a retrospective so we can keep improving processes as a team. This shared ownership creates a sense of belonging for each team member. Every Scrum Master brings a different perspective from which the entire team benefits.
I prioritize connecting with each individual on the team at a personal level to build trust.”
It’s hard to be an inclusive leader unless you’re aware of your blind spots and biases. What steps have you taken to identify and address your own?
Everyone has unconscious biases. It’s important to acknowledge this so we can make an effort to change and grow. I am fortunate to have been exposed to unconscious bias training early in my career at Cisco Meraki. I make sure to either read about different types of unconscious bias or attend workshops at least once a year. Addressing biases is key to building a diverse team, and a diverse team is smarter and more creative than a homogeneous one. I believe that addressing my own biases has helped me build a team with individuals from different backgrounds, and with different perspectives and skill sets.
Benchling is a SaaS-based platform built specifically for life sciences and research and development. In order to practice more methods of inclusivity, Software Engineering Manager Rachel Wang said she sets aside time to discuss long-term career goals with her team. The long and short of it? Empathy is key to understanding diverse points of view.
From your experience, what is the key to being an inclusive leader?
Being empathetic and welcoming to each individual is key, as well as leveraging each individual’s unique background and experiences. I think it’s important for leaders to understand and acknowledge everyone’s point of view, what folks are dealing with both at work and at home, and how folks are showing up to work. One of Benchling’s leadership principles is to “show empathy,” and I’ve found this principle to be especially important in the last year. Empathy is a critical ingredient in fostering a sense of belonging in the work environment – it’s key in building a safe and inclusive environment so that we can allow everyone to bring their whole selves and perform their best work.
At Benchling, I’ve appreciated being surrounded by leaders who value transparency and admit their mistakes; this is another key ingredient to inclusive leadership. Our VP of engineering, Amit Gupta, is always learning and sharing – he shares articles that resonate with him and that teach him something, he reflects on decisions that may not have panned out, and always takes the time to explain his thinking. He’s helped to foster a culture that has made me feel empowered to contribute my ideas and thoughts, even when I’m not 100% confident in them. Having faced impostor syndrome since I started coding in college, I will always value teammates that help empower and encourage myself and others.
Similarly, I hope to create an environment where every voice on the team is heard. Some folks may be less comfortable expressing their opinions in a meeting, so we employ other ways to ensure that ideas are shared. In sprint retrospectives, we’ll start the meeting with a collaborative writing portion where everyone adds their notes. We also use Slack as a forum for continued discussion and as a way to broaden the audience of a discussion.
What’s a real-life example of your inclusive leadership style in action?
Building an inclusive team spans hiring to discussing career goals to team dynamics. As a manager, I set aside time to discuss long-term career goals and feedback with each person on my team at least once each quarter. Our engineering team collaboratively built a career matrix a few years ago, and it both adds structure to these conversations and promotes equity in career pathing. One of my favorite things about our career matrix is that “Multiplier” is one of the three core axes. This axis recognizes work like onboarding, mentoring and other work that is often referred to as “glue work.” This work is crucial for a team’s success but is often overlooked when thinking about promotions.
As another example, our team recently started rotating our Scrum Master every two weeks. In each rotation, one teammate manages and runs sprint rituals like stand-ups and retrospectives. It gives everyone an opportunity to learn from each other, stretch their strengths, give and receive feedback, and feel a deeper sense of accountability and ownership in their role. In our bi-weekly sprint retrospectives, we also do a “wellness check-in” so teammates can check in with each other on how they’re doing, both at work and in their personal lives.
Empathy is a critical ingredient in fostering a sense of belonging in the work environment.”
It’s hard to be an inclusive leader unless you’re aware of your blind spots and biases. What steps have you taken to identify and address your own?
Our customers are constantly asking us for new features, and our biggest rate limiter is hiring more engineers. Any organization that’s growing as quickly as Benchling can feel tremendous pressure to hire quickly, which can come at the expense of building a diverse team. I always have to remind myself to slow down and think critically to avoid bias. I have also looked for opportunities to add structure and process that makes it harder for bias to creep in.
One of the unconscious biases I’ve become aware of over the past year is a bias against non-native English speakers. One of our hiring axes is “Communication and Collaboration,” and I had given a negative mark to one of our candidates where English was not their first language. In the huddle, this was consistent throughout a few interviewers, and a hiring manager asked us to provide concrete examples of poor communication. While I had perceived that communication had been more difficult, I agreed with others that the candidate was able to explain their ideas and build off of ideas.
Since this huddle, I have taken time to dissect what we mean by “Communication and Collaboration” as an axis. As a hiring manager, I’ve made sure to be diligent in huddles: asking interviewers for examples and justifications as we make hiring decisions. I’ve also recognized that our interviews place a large emphasis on real-time communication, which may be more difficult for non-native English speakers, and is not necessarily representative of the day-to-day job where we rely a lot more on asynchronous communication. We’ve since piloted an unproctored portion of a coding interview. Coding while someone is watching over your shoulder can be anxiety-inducing and stressful; explaining real-time what you’re thinking can be even more difficult. We’ve started giving candidates the opportunity to “go dark” – off-screen, off-audio – to help them put their best foot forward.
I’ve continued to learn about bias from those around me – from trainings on unconscious bias and allyship to discussions with employee resource groups about topics like gender in the workplace. These resources have helped me better understand the biases we are subject to, how to call them out, and how to combat them. Our new diversity, equity and inclusion lead has also been extremely helpful in educating me and my peers. She’s pushed us to scrutinize each step of our interview process to see where we can remove opportunities for bias. For example, after that analysis, we wrote an interview guide for candidates so they know what to expect in each interview and what they will be assessed on, in an effort to set them up for success. I have more to learn about diversity and inclusion and am excited to continue on this journey.
PicnicHealth helps individuals manage their medical records through increased visibility by making them more accessible. Vice President of Engineering Alex Bahouth said that leaning “20% more” into traits he wants to see in his team, like vulnerability or authenticity, makes room for others to be the same.
From your experience, what is the key to being an inclusive leader?
Being a leader means being the standard-bearer for what’s “acceptable.” If you want a team where people can feel more wholly included, you need to be 20% more out, proud and authentic in how you engage with your team.
When I was training to become an aerobics instructor, I learned that if I wanted my class to perform at a certain level, I needed to lead 20% more energetically than my target. Being “20% more” is the key to growing inclusiveness: a leader needs to be 20% more vulnerable and authentic to create space for others and needs to explicitly recognize and affirm moments where others are being their authentic selves 20% more often than what one might expect. If you’re not being yourself, putting yourself out there, or celebrating your own eccentricities or failures, it doesn’t signal to others that it’s OK for them to do the same (no matter how much your company values may say so).
Responding and engaging positively in moments when teammates are being authentic or vulnerable creates space and opens the standard. Taking a moment in a one-on-one or DM to let them know how being themselves positively impacts the team affirms and reinforces their authenticity.
What’s a real-life example of your inclusive leadership style in action?
As the world has moved to a remote setting, the surfaces we have to express ourselves have become a lot smaller – sometimes only what others can see through Zoom or read in a chat. It creates a lot less room for anyone to really express themselves outside of those borders.
During the pandemic, I started painting my fingernails (because we all discovered new, surprising hobbies) and to my surprise, it started a number of conversations with people I was both regularly and newly meeting. I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous and uncomfortable about it at first; I was unsure about how it would be received. A lot of people I talked to shared their appreciation and it started a conversation about hobbies they had started during the pandemic that they hadn’t really talked about in work contexts.
Some folks mentioned to me one on one that it made them feel more comfortable expressing other aspects of themselves because they saw a leader who was expressing themselves in an unconventional way. While it seems like a small thing to mention, I was surprised at the outsized impact this seemingly small act had on others and how it created opportunity for them to share more of themselves.
If you’re not being yourself or celebrating your own eccentricities, it doesn’t signal to others that it’s OK for them to do the same.”
It’s hard to be an inclusive leader unless you’re aware of your blind spots and biases. What steps have you taken to identify and address your own?
As cliché as it sounds, you have to always assume you have biases. Technical biases from engineering leaders at startups are very common and can have subtle yet severe impact as a team grows. As new people join, the number of perspectives begins to diversify and increase – and along with it, the number of technical debates. It’s not uncommon for these discussions to start forming into biases about teammates: impressions form, not about proposals, but the person making a proposal. In-group/out-group biases can form, making people reticent to express not only their thoughts, but themselves, due to a fear of perception.
Taking the time to make clear problem statements and decision-making frameworks to evaluate proposals creates space and invites people to express their perspective. This separates the judgment of a solution from the judgment of a person. It’s important to recognize folks who contribute to the discussion even if their proposal isn’t selected – to affirm the value of and to encourage their ongoing participation. Thinking consciously about our processes helps us focus on what’s important, instead of fixating on what’s not.
