The Case for Making Inclusion a Bigger — Not Smaller — Business Imperative

When Anne Chow landed a role leading a team of hundreds of employees early in her 32-year career at AT&T Business, she made a life-changing decision: to create a culture of inclusion. Though she didn't call it that at the time, the impulse to nurture an environment where all employees felt valued came from her own experience as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, who didn’t always fit in. The people-first leadership style paid off for Chow and AT&T — she eventually became the first woman of color to be elevated to the CEO role.

Now retired, the executive pioneer is sharing her wisdom in a new book, Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion. In a time when companies are scaling back their DEI efforts, Chow makes a compelling case for the opposite. In the exclusive excerpt below, she explains how a bigger, more expansive approach to inclusion is the best way for business leaders to boost growth.

— Audrey Goodson Kingo

Photo Credit: Simon & Schuster

Excerpt from "Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion."

When I first encountered the term inclusive leadership, sometime in the 2000s, it seemed like the perfect way to describe my philosophy: I wanted to connect all my stakeholders to the meaning and impact of our work. I sought to achieve high performance, delivering shareholder value while embracing the workforce as people first, respecting the fact that they played out their roles in the broader context of their lives and identities. Inclusive leadership is at the heart of what I call leading bigger; in fact, I often consider the two terms synonymous. How can any organization perform to its fullest if it leaves some constituents outside of a circle of belonging?

And yet, as inclusion became a priority for business, it has somehow been buried deep in the HR department, somewhere where no one would ever think to look: at the very end of the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) acronym.

Ironically, inclusion itself has been made too small.

In the businessworld, the use of the word has been focused primarily on workforce representation, with a heavy emphasis on gender, race, and physical disability.

While this is important, it’s certainly not complete. We need to redefine — or perhaps more accurately define — the term. Inclusion, as I define it, is not just about people. It can also relate to the work itself, through, for instance, taking in larger datasets and more viewpoints for better decision-making. And it can encompass the workplace, more agilely addressing where, when, and how we work to support the needs of the business and its people in any given moment.

Leading bigger is where it all comes together, where the care for this “big tent” of people and the values-and-purpose-based assessment of inputs are translated into action. Leading bigger has to be driven by a compelling purpose and values, which are not platitudes, but rather lived. The goals are better decisions, improved performance, and ultimately a greater impact. Impact means you have the power to make real and enduring change for the better.

This is what I mean by leading bigger: widening your perspective to have greater performance and impact. How you achieve that is by advancing work that matters; developing a vital, innovative workforce; and creating a trusted, agile workplace:

1. Work That Matters: Bigger leaders ensure that their purpose, values, and performance metrics involve and engage the people directly affected by and interested in the work of their team/organization.

2. A Vital, Innovative Workforce: Bigger leaders recognize the humanity of their people, taking responsibility for how the work impacts their teams’ well-being while embracing all dimensions of their identity. The leader’s role has inevitably expanded to understanding what is happening in the employee’s career and life — potentially at any and all times. When it comes to your people, leading bigger doesn’t start and stop with the workday.

3. Your Trusted, Agile Workplace: Considering the future of work requires that we create a safe environment, we must stop thinking of the traditional rigid boundaries of work, such as hierarchy, location, and time. Bigger leaders champion flexibility in dynamic hybrid workplaces by embracing trust and empowerment for individuals, teams, and leaders alike.

For decades we’ve been urged to think bigger, yet no one has articulated how to lead bigger. Thinking bigger means envisioning new, undreamed-of possibilities that yield progressive breakthroughs; leading bigger is how you get this done. You can’t think your way into market-winning growth; execution is required. High performance, innovation, and creative solutions require you to have teams who are energized and to earn the support and even friendship of the important groups that surround your company, including your customers and the communities in which you work.

In order to successfully engage with so many, the bigger leader needs to unearth and articulate a common purpose and needs to develop a new interpersonal tool kit: empathy, caring, and listening, to name just a few elements.

The upsides of this approach are indeed bigger. According to the Harvard Business Review — where inclusive leadership is discussed in this broader manner as embodying the traits of humility, curiosity, and active learning, rather than a more narrow DEI-based version of the term — inclusive organizations are 73% more likely to reap innovation revenue (i.e., sales from new products and services), 70% more likely to capture new markets, up to 50% more likely to make better decisions, and up to 36% more likely to have above-average profitability. And inclusive leaders create a 17% increase in team performance, a 29% increase in team collaboration, and a 76% decreased risk of attrition (i.e., employees leaving).

True inclusion doesn't mean adding more to leaders’ plates; they're already facing burnout and exhaustion as great as anyone else’s in the workforce. But leading bigger isn’t yet another task or something else that one needs to do. Instead, it’s a refreshing and revitalized way to approach work, the workforce, and the workplace that will not only drive success but keep leaders and their teams engaged and inspired. Leading bigger will invigorate more people with greater degrees of cohesion and connectedness. And if we want to transform and accelerate growth, it’s time to lead bigger.

Adapted excerpt from "LEAD BIGGER" by Anne Chow, former AT&T Business CEO. Copyright © 2024 by Anne Chow. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, NY.