Inclusive Leadership and Sales

📅  12th May 2019 | Selling

My partner here at The Sales Rainmaker, Gloria Moss has had her leatest book published. It is entitled “Inclusive Leadership“.

Here’s the synopsis:

Background

In 2012, A Government report showed that 75% of British organisations have a deficit of leadership, with similar results emerging from the US too.  Strangely, as this new book shows, it is Britain that is leading the way with a solution.

This best kept secret is Inclusive Leadership, a style that can turn a good organisation into a great one and elevate a country’s GDP if politicians adopt this style too.  For, the book shows how it enhances employee productivity, motivationand mental well-being in addition to customer satisfaction.

A British success story and a boost to Brexit  At a time when Britain’s ability to stand on its own two feet is derided, we learn of several British organisations and leaders who have been exemplary in their leadership.  These include Royal Mail Sales, PageGroup, Network Rail and the top independent school for 2018 and 2008, Sevenoaks, all headed or assisted by visionary individuals.  Other outstanding individuals include Alex Ferguson and Lord Marshall with Ferguson, in his 26 years as Manchester United Manager achieving twice as many domestic and international trophies as the next-most-successful English football team manager.  Colin Marshall, meanwhile, turned round the fortunes of British Airways in the 1990s and created a workplace that led a former Customer Service Manager to speak of Marshall’s tenure as creating ‘the best working years of our lives’.

Thumbs down for the country’s leadership  Parliament meanwhile, is anything but inclusive.  Not only does the PM exercise a Command and Control style of leadership (see http://tinyurl.com/y4uujpt8) in which the views of Ministers, parliament and the people are completely ignored.   No surprise therefore that in the three months to November 2018, GDP slowed from growth of 0.4% to 0.3%, with a further drop to growth of 0.2% in the three months to January 2019.  To put this in perspective, American GDP grew by 3.1% in 2018.

The way forward  A move away from Command and Control provides the solution, with Inclusive Leadership (IL) unleashing tremendous productivity, engagement and innovation amongst employees as well as amongst organisations’ customers, be they students or purchasers of other products and services.  Why is this?  Quite simply, IL creates a culture and mindset that is focused on others – a so-called ‘Diversity Mindset’ – and this will shape products and services that has really appeal to customers.

To continue with Command and Control is to stultify and stop growth; to move to inclusive leadership is to open the doors to a world of possibilities.

The author

G Moss, Professor of Management and Marketing and Fellow of the CIPD (FCIPD), is the author of five books and c.70 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers.  She has a background as a Learning and Development Manager in blue-chip companies (Courtaulds and Eurotunnel), is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD) and has conducted consultancy for organisations on Leadership, Inclusive marketing (hope to shape design (eg websites) around the preferences of the target market segmented by nationality, gender and personality) and the talent pipeline.

Here’s a taster from Chapter 12 of the book – Inclusive Leadership, Customer Centricity and Design.

Whilst training as a method of influencing the way that employees respond to visual stimuli can be problematic, recruiting a diverse range of people who can mirror the thinking of the external customer can be less problematic.  However, the internal organisational culture needs to be accepting of differences and to arrive at this point probably requires an Inclusive style of leadership.  For, this style will embrace and foster difference and be less likely than formal command and control structures to reject values, behaviours and people at odds with mainstream certain norms.  It is just such culture that might be able empathise with a set of customer preferences that are less evident in the workforce than in the customer base.   So, for example, it would just such an inclusive organisation that could adjust the design aesthetic of an all-male design team to suit that of a predominantly female or young customer demographic or that could, perhaps better still, recruit suitable female designs.   Where satisfying the preferences of women and young customers are concerned, it might additionally be possible to undertake market research, ensuring that stimuli cover the range of design creations segmented by gender and age………

 

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