ASPIRE
When I started writing my book The BRAVE Leader. More Courage. Less Fear. Better Decisions for Inclusive Leadership, my main motive was to place a playbook into the hands of senior leaders.
In my book I defined inclusive leadership as the ability of leaders at all levels to
- Attract, empower and support talent to achieve a vision or goal, and do so without marginalising any of them, and
- Define, develop and maintain systems and process that are sensitive to the needs of your stakeholders
I realised that for a lot of people I worked with, only saw inclusive leadership through the eyes of trying to tick a box for Diversity Equity and Inclusion programmes. It never extended beyond talent to things like product, customer services, talent, finance and other business functions. Whereas for me as a leader if you have to make sense of the world around you, understand your role for problem solving and then make decisions, you need to have a decent toolkit in order to do so.
I also came to realise that while most of my work was focused on senior leaders - given that they tended to have most of the power and influence in orgs - it was important that leaders became aware of this long before they became senior.
And so I have developed a 90 day course called, ASPIRE, as part of The BRAVE Leadership System to introduce leaders to the concepts of inclusive leadership
To register for the first cohort, starting in May 2024, please go to www.davidmcqueen.co.uk/aspire