Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams

by Stefanie K. Johnson

In this groundbreaking guide, a management expert outlines the transformative leadership skill of tomorrow—one that can make it possible to build truly diverse and inclusive teams which value employees’ need to belong while being themselves.  

Humans have two basic desires: to stand out and to fit in. Companies respond by creating groups that tend to the extreme—where everyone fits in and no one stands out, or where everyone stands out and no one fits in. How do we find that happy medium where workers can demonstrate their individuality while also feeling they belong?

The answer, according to Stefanie Johnson, is to Inclusify. In this essential handbook, she explains what it means to Inclusify and how it can be used to strengthen any business. Inclusifying—unlike “diversifying” or “including”— implies a continuous, sustained effort towards helping diverse teams feel engaged, empowered, accepted, and valued. It’s no use having diversity if everyone feels like an outsider, she contends.

In her research, Johnson found common problems leaders exhibit which frustrate their attempts to create diverse and cohesive teams. Leaders that underestimated the importance of group coherence and dynamics often have employees who do not feel like they belong; leaders that ignore the benefits of listening to different perspectives leave some people feeling like they cannot be their authentic selves.

By contrast, leaders who Inclusify can forge strong relationships with their teams, inspire greater productivity from all of their workers, and create a more positive environment for everyone. Having a true range of different voices is good for the bottom line—it allows for the development of the best, most innovative, and creative solutions that are essential to success. 

Inclusify reveals the unexpected ways that well-intentioned leaders undermine their teams, explains how to recognize the myths and misperceptions that drive these behaviors, and provides practical strategies to become an Inclusifyer. By learning why uniqueness and belonging are so imperative, leaders can better understand what makes their employees tick and find ways to encourage them to be themselves while ensuring they feel like they are fully part of the group. The result is a fully engaged team filled with diverse perspectives—the key to creating innovative and imaginative ideas that drive value.

Genres: Business, Leadership, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Self Help, Professional Development, Psychology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 2, 2020

About the author

Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson is an author, professor, and keynote speaker who studies the intersection of leadership and diversity, focusing on (1) how unconscious bias affects the evaluation of leaders and (2) strategies that leaders can use to mitigate bias.

Her new Harper Collins book, Inclusify: Harnessing the power of uniqueness and belonging to build innovative teams, shares the surprising ways the leaders undermine inclusion and provides actionable ways that leaders can pivot to build more inclusive teams.
Dr. Johnson is member of the MG 100 Coaches and was selected for the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar List, comprising 30 international management scholars whose work will shape the future of how organizations are managed and led. She works with the best companies in the world to create more inclusive leaders and has extensive consulting experience and has created and delivered leadership development training with an emphasis on evidence-based practice.
As an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, Dr. Johnson teaches undergraduate and graduate students focused on leadership and inclusion. She holds the Andrea and Michael Leeds Research Fellowship, is the Director of CU Boulder’s Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at Leeds, and is a 2020 CU Boulder RIO Fellow. She is a fellow in the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychologists (SIOP) and the American Psychological Society (APS). She is also passionate about disseminating her work more broadly and has taught two LinkedIn Learning courses on how to increase diversity and inclusion in corporations.
She has received $3,800,000 in external grant funding to study leadership and create leadership development programs. Her safety leadership course was adopted by the OSHA 30 and taken by 70,000 students in its first two years. She is an active researcher and has published 60 journal articles and book chapters in outlets Journal of Applied Psychology and The Academy of Management Journal.
Dr. Johnson is also a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and an in-demand keynote speaker. She has presented her work at over 170 meetings around the world including at the White House for a 2016 summit on diversity in corporate America on National Equal Pay Day.
Media outlets featuring Stefanie’s work include: The Economist, Newsweek, Time, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, HuffPost, Washington Post, Quartz, Discover, CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC. She has appeared on Fox, ABC, NBC, CNN, and CNN International.

Reviews

[LTJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams” by Stefanie K. Johnson was a book I was asked to read for my job and wow, I’m so glad they did! I’m an ambassador of my company’s Diverse, Equity, and Inclusivity Board and have learned many great tips and strategies around embracing and acknowledging diversity from this book I plan to put into action.

What I love the most about Johnson’s book is how she broke down all the different types of leaders that try to embrace and acknowledge diversity but need some fine-tuning. You know, how to say what you mean clearly but actually execute on them with a plan.

The examples given on how to become an Inclusifyer through the different types of leaders were fantastic. You truly learn a lot about yourself and how to tweak things based on these descriptions to take into your job and start to make a difference immediately. Best of all, this book teaches you based on real scenarios that can and will come up in your workplace so you’re prepared ahead of time.

I give “Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams” a 4/5 as it was a wonderful read and taught me a lot about diversity, inclusivity, and putting action into words in the workplace since I’m in a position to do so. I highly recommend this book if you’re also a leader and want to be a difference-maker in bringing diversity and inclusion to your company and doing it the right way.

With all the graphs, real examples of hiring processes to follow for diversity, and great stories on truly being inclusive, this is a great guide towards making a change. You know, sticking to such important changes around diversity and reaping all sorts of wonderful rewards, a true sense of belonging for everyone, and increased productivity/engagement all across the board!

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh...for a book about inclusion, it is not nearly inclusive enough.

Almost everything in the book is about women. The author gave pretty meager lip service to people of color and almost not attention at all to the LGBTQ community.

Zero mention of trans and non-binary people, who experience some of the worst workplace discrimination in the US. Plus with R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [Aimee Stephens case] being in the news and argued before the US Supreme Court while this was being written...just unforgivably exclusionary on the part of the author, who may very well be a TERF (I see no evidence to the contrary) or just very, very, VERY ignorant about the prejudice faced by transgender people, especially trans women of color.

She talks about gender diversity, but only includes men and women, not people who are non-binary, genderfluid, genderqueer, two-spirit, gender non-conforming, or agender, just to name a few groups left out by her old-fashioned, shitty insistence on binary gender.

Plus she copy-pasted the same terms throughout her book whether they were accurate or nonsensical. Women, POC, WOC, and LGBTQ. Just relentlessly copied and pasted throughout. After a while, it just became numbingly dehumanizing.

In other words, her idea of inclusion is some fake-ass bullshit.

She picked some very readable quotes and cribbed some good ideas, but her work is not enlightening or even completely well-informed. I would only recommend to women with the same background as the author, because the book is strongly centered on that experience.

Overall, skip it. You, the reader, can absolutely do better than this.

Alternative recommendation: The Person You Mean to Be (Dolly Chugh) along with Belonging at Work (Rhodes Perry).

[Jason Watkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really poorly researched and written. If I’m grading, it’s a D-. Conversational tone, wrought with her own bias throughout, and an awful job at presenting a fair and balanced argument, all the while inserting her own opinion, rather than a deductive conclusion at the end if each point. It’s not that the author was necessarily wrong, alas she copied and pasted many familiar concepts in the DEIAB discussion, but she presented them in such a manner as to highlight her own persuasion without much of any, if at all, counterpoints. This book was less a book about inclusivity than it was about diversity. The author distorts the conversation by narrowing the discussion on gender, quotas, and days of the “good-ole-boy club”. She creates a faux taxonomy and, in some ways, attempts to box people in to these fictional categories. While there are some valuable tips one might use to craft inclusivity herein, there is literally nothing fresh or additive to the discussion.

So for this book: pass. Further, I do not recommend; there are far better books on DEI out there.

[Katherine Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inclusify by Stefanie K. Johnson is a current, relatable book on diversity and inclusion efforts in a modern workplace full of intersectionality. In Inclusify (2020), Stefanie describes how leaders can foster an environment that helps their followers demonstrate their individuality while also feeling like they belong. According to Stefanie, it is a culmination of uniqueness AND belonging that creates the feeling of inclusion. You can’t have one without the other. Without belonging, people start to feel invisible, insular, detached, and alone. Especially now, in a remote working world, this feeling of isolation is slowing diversity efforts as business is now conducted through video calls. The topic of belonging has been in conversation for years now, but it seems that nothing is being done to implement new diversity strategies. Carr et al. (2019) in their HBR article note that U.S. businesses spend nearly $8 billion each year on failed diversity and inclusion efforts due to the missing criteria of making people feel included. By ignoring someone's uniqueness, a manager is discrediting the personal experiences and cultures that an individual possesses. Stefanie argues that it is essential to have both uniqueness and belonging in order to Inclusify.

In the beginning chapters, Stefanie outlines the first steps that need to be taken in the journey to inclusify. One of those being the ABC's of breaking biases, which includes admitting that we all have biases, blocking our bias thoughts, and counting the benefits that different ideas and perspectives play into the workplace. In addition, three lessons are provided from the transition from unconscious bias to conscious bias: 1) reflect on your good fortunes, 2) understand how systemic biases can affect hiring and impact promotions and the overall success in the workplace, and 3) begin to think about systems are designed and whether they are truly effective at creating a safe and productive environment for everyone.

Once one has confronted their conscious bias and begun to think about how inequalities can sabotage diversity, it is time to move toward making a conscious effort to inclusify. Stefanie lists six archetypes that highlight the subtle ways in which leaders miss out on uniqueness and belonging, with graphs and resources included to help leaders figure out which category they fall into. For me, I fell into the category of "optimist" as I am able to see value in uniqueness and belonging in my followers but fail to actively create change. Even though these six archetypes sound positive, each one has underlying motives and negative actions that exclude members from the organization.

Overall, Inclusify includes a culmination of research and statistics, interviews, personal stories, and actionable steps to creating a workplace environment that values both uniqueness and belonging. The topic of diversity can scare people off as they are confronted with their own biases and negative behaviors, but Stefanie uses a tone of hope with a call-to-action approach. She invites readers into the conversation on learning about new perspectives, empowering their teams, and motiving others. In order to do this, leaders must establish a growth mindset, practice empathy with their followers, and be transparent about the decisions they're making.

Especially in a remote working world, it is essential for leaders to prioritize the social health of their employees. By implementing these suggestions and tips, leaders can start the process of building innovative teams that value each employee and, in turn, have a positive effect on hiring, promotions, and overall success in the workplace. McKinsey and Company recently added to this conversation on sustaining and strengthening inclusion in the remote environment. Authors Ellsworth et al. (2020) touched on practical tips for leaders similar to Stefanie's advice, which include demonstrating vulnerability and empathy, asking about people's needs and tailoring actions accordingly, challenge person assumptions and seek to understand others’ experiences, build space for diverse perspectives and encourage participation, make time for structured remote team building and networking, be intentional about mentoring and developing all team members, and encouraging team members to set individual inclusion commitments. In addition, the article highlights that an inclusive environment cannot be achieved solely through the formal process of identifying and addressing unconscious bias and unintended consequences. Creating an inclusive environment calls on change from leaders and peers who make a conscious effort to practice inclusion daily.

Reading the closing pages of the book, I also noticed my similarity to Stefanie's story as I am going straight into a Ph.D. program after getting my master's degree. My eyes are being open to the injustices of the world and especially in the workplace. This book is a great read for someone entering the conversation on diversity and inclusion with the hunger to bring change into organizations. While this book is targeted to those in human resources, diversity leader's CEOs, and others in positions of leadership, the lessons and action steps are applicable to everyone in the workplace.


References
Carr, E. W., Reece, A., Kellerman, G. R., & Robichaux , A. (2019, December 16). The Value of
Belonging at Work. https://hbr.org/2019/12/the-value-of-....

Ellsworth, D., Imose, R., Madner, S., & Broek, R. van den. (2020, October 2). Sustaining and
strengthening inclusion in our new remote environment. McKinsey & Company.
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-fun...
strengthening-inclusion-in-our-new-remote-environment.

Johnson, S. K. (2020). Inclusify the power of uniqueness and belonging to build innovative
teams. Harper Business.

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Employees want to either stand out or fit in, as a function of basic human instinct. Employers tend to extremes in their treatment of employees. This is the dilemma and purpose of this book for leaders and supervisors to better understand their workforce to get the most out of these work relationships. The catalyst around these ideals is to including that workforce. Author Stefanie Johnson draws on her own extensive research and first-hand interviews to unpack the biases in the work place and how leaders can do better at mitigating their negative effects while recognizing they exist and doing better. This is a great book for our times and quite readable!

[Rodrigo Ramos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muito interessante e eficaz a forma como a autora separa 'tipos' de líderes que acham que estão sendo justos com suas pessoas. Melhor ainda a forma como ela sugere que esses mesmos líderes avancem para um outro nível de inclusão, até chegar a ser um líder Inclusificador.

[Ba · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book on inclusion in the workplace and how to foster it from a leadership position. Offered a good blend of data, anecdotes, and steps to be taken for different management styles.

[Salvo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uniqueness + Belonging = Inclusion

Confirmation Bias
Warren Buffet "What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact."

Six leaders that miss out on uniqueness and belonging:
1) Meritocracy Manager: Wants to hire the "best people for the job" but does little to appreciate the unique qualities of the employee
2) Culture Crusader: Focuses on creating a team of like minded people but forgoes the benefits of incorporating different thoughts
3) Team Player: A subset of Culture Crusaders (mostly women, POC, WOC, and LGBTQ) who work so hard to assimilate with the group that they lose touch with the value their own and others' diverse perspectives add to the team dynamic
4) White Knight: Takes a paternalistic approach to women, POC, WOC, and LGBTQ and tres to "save" them.
5) Shepard: A subset of White Knights, Shepherds are women, POC, WOC, and LGBTQ, who offer in-group support but in doing so cause people to question their motives, resulting in a less cohesive team.
6) Optimist: See value in uniqueness and belonging but is not committed to actively creating change and so maintains the status quo through inertia.

Encourage Uniqueness:
-Support: Publicly support diversity. Do not pretend to ignore difference
-Empathize: Get to know your people to you can understand the needs of team members
-Learn: have a hunger to learn from others' unique perspective and try to hire people with diverging opinions
-Be Fair: It is essential for employees to feel that they are being treated fairly. This means also giving people what they need to succeed.

To Create Belonging:
-Be Transparent: Be aggressively transparent about their practices, so people know how things work in the organization
-Empower: Empower team members to make their own decisions
-Align: Align allies into the diversity and inclusion conversation
-Motivate: Motivate their teams by building spirit and infusing diversity, inclusion, and belonging into the organization's values

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing.
There is no doubt that uniqueness and belonging in teams are important. I want to be on teams where people can be themselves, be unique, and belong. Celebrating uniqueness while fostering a sense of belonging to create an innovative, engaged, and productive team is ideal. We all want to work with people who are fair, empathize, motivate, empower, and learn from all members of the team.

I took the quiz and found that Inclusifyer was my highest rating, so I was really interested in reading this book.

Alas, the focus on groups and group bias spoiled many of the book’s good points of the book for me. For the author, diversity means dividing people up to quantify the “diversity” by counting how many females, how many persons of a certain race, how many persons of ethnicity, how many persons of the LGBTQ, how many persons of political orientation, and how many persons with disabilities. This is the opposite of valuing uniqueness. It is grouping and labeling.

Further, the author conflates that belonging and uniqueness are somehow inversely related to merit. This assertion is unsubstantiated and unconvincing.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essentially, talk to people and listen to differing perspectives. Worry about optics. Don’t expect people to acknowledge their bias or want to make change when they do. Guilt doesn’t work. Change isn’t grassroots in an organization; you have to have the brass on board.

[Ethan Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inclusivity is powerful, but to benefit we need to acknowledge and overcome our unconscious biases. Have you ever worked for a place where you had to hide certain aspects of your personality to fit in?

Inclusive organizations (with diverse employees) are six times as likely to be innovative, six times as likely to anticipate change and respond effectively, and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets.

This book declares six managerial types have to work on becoming Inclusifyers: the Meritocracy Manager, the Culture Crusaders, the Team Players, the White Knights, the Shepherds, and the Optimists.

1. Meritocracy Manager is a type that’s especially prone to dropping the ball when it comes to diversity.
2. Culture Crusaders often end up with a homogeneous workforce, but they too can be Inclusifyers.
3. Team Players work hard to be in charge, but they can fall short in helping others. Strategies: SELF and TEAM. SELF stands for support, empathy, learning, and fairness, while TEAM stands for transparency, empowerment, alignment, and motivation.
4. White Knights often mean well, but their actions can undermine diversity efforts. Fairness can be achieved by cleaning up office housework. This means getting rid of low-value assignments like getting coffee, cleaning up after meetings, party planning.
5. Shepherds can seem to be playing favorites, but with the right strategy, they can become great Inclusifyers.
6. Optimists want diversity, but their actions tend to fall short.

Being an Inclusifyer involves a two-fold strategy: celebrating uniqueness while fostering a sense of belonging. If you can do this throughout your workforce, you’ll be well on your way.

[Kiara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heard about this book through the Wharton Human Capital Club and so very pleased I bought a copy and read it. Truly useful, practical, evidence-based and human filled with leadership learnings that any leader, at any level and function in a modern organisation can adopt to become an inclusifyer and truly transform their workplace for the individuals in their teams.

When I started the book, I expected I would identify most with the Culture Crusader type with a bit of Meritocracy Manager, based on my own career experiences in management consulting. But as I read further, I discovered I have moved in my Inclusify journey to being a serious Shepherd now. Really looking forward to applying some of the practical insights from this book in my own post-MBA leadership journey and truly wish I’d read this at the beginning of my MBA - I think it would have made for much more rewarding leadership learnings in group work if I could have trialled these strategies!

Highly recommend for all leaders.

[Jason W Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really great book both because of the extensive research as well as for the excellent presentation of the information. The author's writing style is conversational and draws the reader in almost as if you are chatting with a friend. Chapter 2 - The ABCs of Breaking Bias was particularly relevant for me and my team at this moment. We have been holding forums in the workplace to discuss systemic racism and will be doing an entire session focused on bias. Chapter 2 of this book will be the outline for that discussion. I gave a copy to my managers as well and to a person they all really enjoyed the analysis of different management types as they relate to inclusion. We were all very enlightened and learned a lot from that data -- especially the discussion of the meritocracy manager and how we got where we are in our thinking about merit. We'll be talking about the lessons from this book for a long time and I can say that real change is happening here because of it.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking and extremely well written exploration of inclusiveness. I recommend reading as it helps us understand it is not about accepting difference but embracing difference.

It made me recall conversations with executives on how they were inclusive because they accepted people for their difference and were focused on the best person for the job. Rather than understanding that we only get better by the differences we bring into our lives and it is those differences that make someone the best person to have on your team.

It also explores the concept of “cultural fit” and success is when you find people with that “fit”. Rather than truly realising having different perspectives and embracing them actually grows culture to even loftier heights.

Too often people think this is about everyone being the same, when it is about truly everyone being different and being themselves.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Table of Contents
Introduction ix

Chapter 1 The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging 1

Chapter 2 The ABCs of Breaking Bias 15

Chapter 3 Three Lessons to Put You on the Path to Inclusifying 29

Chapter 4 Meritocracy Manager: How Can Merit Be Bad? 45

Chapter 5 Leadership Strategies for Meritocracy Managers 59

Chapter 6 Culture Crusader: The Curse of Crusading While Homogeneous 71

Chapter 7 Leadership Strategies for Culture Crusaders 85

Chapter 8 Team Player: Taking the "Me" Out of "Team" 99

Chapter 9 Leadership Strategies for Team Players 113

Chapter 10 White Knight: When He Doesn't Save the Day 129

Chapter 11 Leadership Strategies for White Knights 141

Chapter 12 Shepherd: Being Transparent with Your Flock 153

Chapter 13 Leadership Strategies for Shepherds 165

Chapter 14 Optimist: Positivity Without Action Does Not Get Results 177

Chapter 15 Leadership Strategies for Optimists 191

Chapter 16 My Inclusify Journey 205

Acknowledgments 217

Notes 219

Index 243

[Ali Safwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's a concept that should be painfully obvious... Yet it needed to be explained in a book. And a really good one at that!

Although inclusion and diversity may seem like things only HR people and upper management need to worry about, everyone could benefit from learning more about the subtle way sexism can exist in the workplace - and how an office can be a place for everyone, not just one type of person.

You'll like this book if:

🧑‍🔧 You've struggled with biases around the workplace and haven't felt that you've been heard enough.

🧑‍🔧 You like learning new things that help you understand the corporate world better. Such as the concept of benevolent sexism.

🧑‍🔧 You're in a position to enact real change around your organization towards making it a more inclusive.

Be warned though, Inclusify can often be a boring book and far from a page turner. Still worth picking this one up in my opinion.

[Natasha Orslene · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book Inclusify by Stefanie K. Johnson was PHENOMENAL. I picked up this book because it was one of Adam Grant's recommended reading list of upcoming books and I am so glad that I did.

Dr. Johnson talks about inclusion, diversity, belonging, and microaggressions in a very tangible and actionable way. There are leaders who seem well meaning, but their words and actions are actually not inclusive. Dr. Johnson identifies types of leaders who seem helpful, lays out how they are damaging, and then gives great advice and insight on what they can do to be better.

There are so many books about the lack of inclusion, equality, and equity, and this book stands out as a great call to action that not only engages the reader in what they do next, but also invites the reader to look within and fo the self development required to be a truly inclusive leader.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a white, male, middle class, heterosexual, Christian American I go through life thinking little of the tail winds that have helped me along the way. This work helped me to confront some of the uncomfortable truths about my leadership style. Discomfort is what causes us to look inward and to hopefully grow. The news was not all bad. I find that I have been doing some things regarding Inclusifying fairly well. But certainly I have some work to do, as I see more clearly how I fall into many of the follies Dr. Johnson defines. The most glaring is probably that of the Optimist. That is to say someone who believes that the culture will naturally evolve over time without actively pursuing change. The journey to change will be long, and I am sure I will need to reference the tools contained herein repeatedly.

[Jer · Rating 5 out of 5]

While some of the content may be familiar to those who have read similar books, I really appreciated how the author communicated. Maybe it was the structure or the various stories and how personal perspectives were interwoven (to include “mea culpa” moments with humanizing results), but this struck me as a book that anyone could benefit from if they had the reasonable goal of trying to improve their ability to understand the value of differences in people and teams.

Some books go so hard in one direction or with facts and figures that they sort-of remove the conversational, human element from what really matters: application. Not so with this author, whose business school background and various examples brought home (in very useful ways) the types of conversations and perspectives that arise in discussing a topic like leading inclusion.

I recommend it.

[A Clay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good portion of ISBE staff read this book as part of our all-agency equity book study. Coming from one organization that literally wouldn’t use the word equity to one that says it every other word was a great shift, so I was excited to join this book study. This book is incredibly accessible and has great takeaways. Some of it felt like it really only scratches the surface and doesn’t get super deep, but I think that led to the overall readability and makes it less intimidating to make a commitment to incorporate inclusifying actions into my work. Sometimes I wasn’t totally sure on the organization of the book and I had trouble keeping all of the different paradigms straight, but I could see myself referencing this book again and I feel encouraged that these concepts will be embraced by everyone in my agency.

[B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an ARC as a result of a Goodreads Giveaway. This book will be good for those who don't keep up with the academic journals, or who have not kept up with the academic journals for the past five or so years. Ultimately, the tone of the book was a bit too conversational for me, and as I keep up with the journals for work, this wasn't anything that was particularly groundbreaking, revolutionary, etc. All in all, it's a decently put together synthesis of the majority of common practices discussed within the academic journals for the past five years or so, written at about a 7th-8th grade reading level, so pretty much anyone can read it. Maybe get it and give it to that slightly dense boss you happen to have?

[Wesley Watt · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who the book would describe as an Optimist (thinks diversity is important but hasn’t taken much action to support it), I found Inclusify to be a great introduction to the field. I thought it was very well-organized and easy to read/follow along. It did not strike an aggressive, offensive tone, instead realizing that to change people’s minds you must guide them along the intellectual path you want them to take. It also focuses less on encouraging diversity and inclusion because it’s the right thing to do (a perfectly valid approach) and more on encouraging it due to its business advantages.

[Brian Stortors · Rating 4 out of 5]

Main Idea: Intentionally building a divers and inclusive workforce is good for the individual, good for the team, and is a proven factor benefiting the success of the organization.

One big quote: "as long as you have diverse perspectives, groups outperform individuals to a staggering degree."

Summary: Inclusify is a well-thought-out argument for building an inclusive workforce. The author, Stefanie Johnson draws upon her experience in academia, qualitative and quantitative research, and persuasive writing to impress upon the reader not only the importance of an inclusive work force, but also the overwhelming benefits. Johnson uses a variety of engaging vignettes to make her point and provides actionable advice to become an "inclusifier".

This book is a must read for anyone in a leadership position.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Johnson introduces the concept of "inclusifying," which she explains as (I'm paraphrasing) celebrating an individual's uniqueness while they also experience a sense of belonging. The book covers six archetypes of leaders that can miss out on one or both parts, and offers suggestions they can take on as an individual or a team to become inclusifyers. Dr. Johnson does a great job of demonstrating the benefits of inclusifying, and how having a diverse team with more women, POC, WOC, and LGBTQ individuals benefits employees, the team, and the company. Very applicable book for current times.

[Christa Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are many good points in this book about how we might think we are conscious about including everyone and working towards a more diverse work place but then there are lots of examples of leaders who aren't quite there yet. The book starts out telling why we should be striving for diversity then moves to specific leadership types who are on the path but need a little more work. She gives strategies and examples and has done the research. Important for leaders in all areas to be aware of these issues, especially those in the work place.

[Stanley Prescott · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible read for further elevating or starting the journey of inclusifying!

Self-awareness, self-checks, self-realization. Inclusify is a breath of fresh air when considering how to cultivate and lead inclusivity and diversity practices; small or large actions leading to ripples and wakes of change.

The read was well-paced and had lots of self-reference/call-back which enhanced my self-reflection while reading in addition to furthering my understanding of how to understand and grow as a leader.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like inclusify as a verb and the book's emphasis on including by recognizing the uniqueness of individuals. This book uses a lot of examples of gender inclusivity, fewer on other forms of diversity. For those that have been keeping up with women's issues, there didn't seem to be much new. However, the types of beliefs within organizations (ie meritocracy management, culture crusader, team player, white knight, shepherd and optimist) and their resulting actions is interesting. While the book covered these, it felt it then abruptly ended. What do we do now that we know all this?

[Emma Ioana · Rating 4 out of 5]

IMHO really, really useful. Especially if you’re a leader, manager, director or even an employee.

Or if you work in a team, in general.

Would’ve given it 5 stars if not for some exaggerations that didn’t quite gel with me.

Well structured, mainly science based and does not feature an accusatory tone (we love to see that).

Promotes a mutual understanding perspective and explains very well concepts such as “bias” and “privilege”.

Surprised me in a good way, as I initially thought it was too “woke” for me.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Local author, hello, support
2. Female local author - yup, read it
3. It was very thoughtful, lots to bring your own limitations, fallacies, incorrect assumptions to light in the privacy of your own home and brain.

Give it a read. Lots of ways to make work and the world a better place.
If you don't take a step toward learning how to inclusify and help others understand, it will be "170" years until we make it through pure chance.

Not a very long ready, worth the time.

[Nicole Devereaux · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic introduction to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace. Filled with plenty of case studies (successful and not) as well as useful Inclusifying practices (with a handy acronym), this would be an excellent choice for organizational book clubs. Her website even offers a free assessment for self awareness (each chapter gives specific suggestions based on your results).