By Kimberly Díaz, CEO and Co-Founder of oneTILT
I started oneTILT about 3 years ago because of this screenshot. I was searching for resources on how to be a strong, inclusive, anti-racist leader. After 5 years in management, I had built my own tips and tricks to manage my team, but I wanted to supplement what I had been doing with research. I asked around for books, recommendations, podcasts — really anything. I couldn’t find much. Eventually, I turned to the internet and Googled “how to be a good leader”. I got the results above.
Four white men and a definition that fell flat, incomplete, frankly harmful. This definition didn’t talk about the things that I knew in my heart mattered most: people, culture, identity, and belonging.
It wasn’t just these search results. Pre-COVID, work had me in transit all the time. I’d pop into airport bookstores between flights to and from client engagements and poke around the business section. Same thing. Same voices. Same generic titles limply wooing me with the next best magic wand in people management. Lots of books about leadership, none explicitly about how to be an inclusive and anti-racist leader. All generally written by white, cis-men who have big ideas for how to lead teams. Ideas seemingly designed to work for all of us. Ideas that whitewash, minimize, dismiss, and erase many of us — all in the name of good leadership.
I knew that had to change — and it had to change fast.
Leadership is about humanity.
Now, I could spend time telling you about why being an equitable, inclusive leader is good for business (insert your top consulting firm study here), but this is so much more than that. Inclusive leadership is about humanity. This is about making work actually work for everyone. This is about cultivating spaces where people can be themselves, bring their genius to life, and thrive in the skin they’re in.
In our work at oneTILT, we’ve found that many people often desire to be inclusive leaders. The question is: how? Time and time again, leaders have asked us: what does inclusive management actually look like? How do I know if I am being a good leader? How can I identify new ways to grow in my anti-racist leadership? Leaders want a roadmap for how to be anti-racist. What we’ve heard is that leaders want a way to actively reflect on who they are, how they lead, and how they can better grow in working across lines of difference.
Introducing The Inclusive Leadership Competencies
3 years later and after lots of conversations, research, and an MBA, I’m proud to share that our Inclusive Leadership Competencies are available to all leaders, free of charge. Designed for people and project managers — from the boardroom to the Zoom room to the classroom — our competencies are here for you as a blueprint for how to be a better, more inclusive leader. Use it to reflect on your own practice, as you review your organization’s performance management system, or share it with your manager. Use these ideas as a way to provoke discourse and discovery.
And stay tuned to our oneTILT social media and newsletters, because these competencies are just the beginning. We’re cooking up an assessment that will help you better reflect on these competencies, and we’re excited to share that with you soon.
For now, check out our competencies, and let me know what you think.
Kimberly
