Three Pillars of Inclusive Leadership: A Paradox Approach

Abstract

Although making members feel included is suggested to help teams and organizations to harness the benefits of diversity, little consensus has been reached in terms of what is involved in inclusive leadership. Grounding on mechanisms that often cause senses of difference/similarity and inclusion/exclusion, we theorize inclusive leadership as concerning including differences in information, identity, and status. We further apply a paradox perspective to elucidate potential paradoxical tensions in each of the three pillars of inclusive leadership. Specifically, leaders may enact potential tensions between encouraging information heterogeneity and developing shared mental models when including information differences; between fostering a superordinate identity and affirming subgroup identities when including identity differences; and between promoting equality and providing differential treatment when including status differences. Moreover, these three sets of paradoxes are often interlocked so that triggering one set of tensions is likely to enact other tensions. We offer strategies to manage these tensions. The conceptualization contributes a novel perspective to research on inclusive leadership, diversity management, and organizational paradoxes.