Inclusive Leadership lessons from Person-Centred Counselling.
The more I read about Person-Centred counselling, the more I can see how relevant the theory is to inclusive leadership.
To give you a very brief introduction, Person-Centred counselling emerged in the late 1950s as a backlash against the traditional therapy of the time (which in a nutshell involved experts telling people what was wrong with them and how to fix it). The founder, Carl Rogers, noticed that it wasn’t so much the expertise and knowledge of the therapist that made any impact, but the relationship they had with the client. He drilled this down and observed six conditions exist when change happens. Three of these are about how the therapist behaves. I think they are relevant and necessary for inclusive leadership. In fact, Rogers refers to research on the limitations of Autocratic Leadership as evidence in his 1951 book, Client-Centred Therapy.
The first condition is empathic understanding. It’s about listening to and communicating that you understand the viewpoint and experience of the other person. One of the worst things a leader can do is show no comprehension of the feelings and thoughts of their team members. Demonstrating we are listening, interested and striving to understand them naturally helps people to feel more included at work. Leaders showing empathic understanding don’t shy away from the “baggage” that comes with human beings, they step towards it. By doing this, we show our colleagues they can “bring their whole selves to work” and this fosters a culture of belonging.
The second condition is Unconditional Positive Regard. We call it UPR for shorthand because even therapists love an acronym. The idea is you always hold the client in esteem, you prize them and do not judge them. You might not always like what they are saying or what they have done, but ultimately you believe they are working to be the best they can. It often makes people bulk and shudder at the very thought. “But how can I hold UPR for somebody in the team that is always late and underperforming?” And (I hear a lot), “how can I hold UPR for the senior managers that don’t use their position to push diversity and inclusion?” I would argue being non-judgemental is crucial in both these scenarios. Unconditional Positive Regard is about treating people with dignity. We can’t be inclusive leaders if we are selective about who gets to be treated that way. It isn’t easy (that is why it takes three years to train as a counsellor to do this!)
The final condition is congruence. It is integrity with bells on. Congruence is much debated and I won’t do it justice in a few words. But in short it means being present, noticing how you feel/ think, being “real” with the client, noticing what is your “sh*t” and what is theirs. Being real and genuine is something pretty much all models of inclusive leadership sign up to – authenticity is the word used most often. For me congruence is more than that, being present implies we aren’t making everything about us. We are with our team members, being real, being ourselves. I really buy into this as a key ingredient for inclusive leadership. By being congruent, you are showing your team members they can be themselves at work too.
As Rogers and others have further developed this theory, we have come to appreciate that the three conditions described here work together, interdependently and collaboratively. So, what do you think? Do the core conditions apply as sufficient and necessary ingredients for Inclusive Leadership? What others must we have in order to be inclusive?