Your boss is not inclusive. How can you work with them to create a more diverse team?

Working with a boss who isn't inclusive can be challenging, but there are steps you can take to promote diversity within the team. Start by having open and honest conversations with your boss about the importance of diversity and the benefits it brings to the team and organization. Share examples and research that demonstrate how diverse teams outperform homogenous ones. Offer to assist in developing diversity initiatives or programs within the team, such as implementing unbiased hiring practices or providing diversity training.

When in doubt if one of the bosses is not being inclusive, a first option can be to highlight bias topics in safety moments or meeting introductions ... then open up for discussions with simple yes/ no questions, and allow the conversation to flow to self-reflections ... do we value diversity and inclusion in our teams? Off course, this kind of approach do not work when there are extremely few people (1-2) in the "outgroup".

I would adopt a slightly different approach, emphasizing to leadership the importance of diversity of thought. Illustrating this point with real-life examples, metrics, and data showing how contributions from a multifaceted team led to desired outcomes is crucial.

Some people may think diversity may be wanted as a "good people" wish, but the truth is that with a very homogeneuos team, your chances of group thinking and failures to identify obvious risks are increased. For the team benefit and for your own role, it is worth invested the time to prepare and make your case, to get the support from Sponsor and other allies and increase the diversity of the Team.

It may be too time consuming and maybe complex to track and document performance results caused directly by diversity and inclusion, specially following privacy/ GDPR rules in a strict manner. A simpler approach can be to promote the good performance feedback to a much wider audience. In a bigger scale, an initiative can be set to analyse the data across the whole company with a multi-discipline approach, HR/ PO, IT and technical personnel, with a more representative higher number of participants.

Be persistent in a medium term, while keeping an open-mind for opportunities to develop and grow. Be consistent with your values in the short, medium and long term.