Is your school community inviting diversity and dissent within the system? As a leader, are you?

In order to create a team no one wants to leave, we must invite diversity and dissent.

This is a long game, not a one-and-done event. It is culture-building.

It’s hard to face critique, particularly when it feels personal. Leaders often pay lip service to invite dissent, critical thinking, and self-expression. Dissenting voices are often shamed or belittled, at times even called ‘crazy.’ But, the experts say diversity and dissent are essential for designing thriving communities and high-caliber organizations.

Systems in our culture are so often self-protecting. They lack transparency, drive the will of the top few, protect the organization, cover up mistakes, and abuse the vulnerable.

I’m moved to compassion.

This is a system-level problem. Leaders, you are positioned to shift this reality. Step forward. Design differently. Heed the call.

As leaders, particularly school leaders, you can create inclusive schools, welcoming spaces for diversity and dissent. How can you continually offer an open-hearted stance to diversity and event dissent?

Diverse Teams

As you design your team, consider how to create diversity: age, gender, ethnicity, religion, and education. Invite diverse applicants, celebrate differences on the team, and lean into each person’s strengths.

I know the applications aren’t pouring into your team. Go out and find these human beings and recruit them. Cultivate a pipeline. Identify potential earlier. Create opportunities to support people to ‘level up.’ Leverage your networks, personal and digital. Design accommodations for differences.

Invite Stories

Once you have diversity, invite individuals’ stories and perspectives forward. My favorite strategies to unlock stories are:

• Poetry as provocation
• A Protocol called ‘Connections’ from Center for Courage & Renewal
• Journal on a topic and then share
• Discussions in dyads and triads
• Ice breaker questions
• Welcoming Silence as a gift
• Explicitly inviting those who haven’t shared to step forward and those who have to listen

Amy Edmondson the Harvard professor and authority on creating healthy teams suggests,

“Often in meetings, I will ask people when we’re discussing an idea, “What did the dissenter say?” The first time you do that, somebody might say, “Well, everybody’s on board.” Then I’ll say, “Well, you guys aren’t listening very well, because there’s always another point of view somewhere and you need to go back and find out what the dissenting point of view is.”

Safe Self-Expression

We must prioritize safety. This is a boundary that sets us up for healthy dissent and diversity. For example, if members of the community are promoting homophobic, racist, and misogynistic viewpoints in disrespectful ways, we must have boundaries. Psychological safety is crucial for inviting variety and differing opinions forward.

Amy Edmondson teaches,

“Low levels of psychological safety can create a culture of silence. They can also create a Cassandra culture – an environment in which speaking up is belittled and warnings go unheeded.”

In a healthy team or community, self-expression, when respectful, is valued and even celebrated!

Recently, I was in a high-level board meeting for a Provincial Board. A member of the board, a person of color queried, “Are dissenting voices welcome?”

It was a crucial moment.

The Chair handled it brilliantly! The divergent perspectives were given more than lip service, they were given space. The Chairperson and the group held respect. It was a clear effort to value diversity. I was proud to be part of this dynamic.

Participative Decision-Making

Leaders, the way in which you can best create inclusion is by co-creating for thriving in your school community!

In my school experience, we co-created everything from a shared vision to solutions to supervision problems on the playground.

This participative decision-making is what McKinsey names as one of the ways leaders can create opportunities for the inclusion of diversity and dissent. It means,

“Encouraging and incorporating a broad set of ideas and input from all colleagues.”

Below is a graphic of the 17 practices of inclusion. This goes beyond fluff and into practical leadership strategies.

Which practices are you doing? Which ones need improvement?

I invite you to be intentional about creating inclusion for all types of diverse populations and even dissenting perspectives.

For the sake of the children,

Karine

PS If you enjoyed this post, please check out Making the Most of Your School Survey and the accompanying FREE toolkit.