The Five Inclusive Disciplines Series

The final guide in the acclaimed Five Inclusive Disciplines trilogy introduces an actionable 5-step framework for building truly equitable, high-performing teams and unlocking their collective power to deliver groundbreaking results.

In today’s fast-paced, interconnected world, breakthroughs don’t come from individuals—they come from teams. And not just any teams, but diverse and inclusive ones. With decades of experience and cutting-edge research, Andrés Tapia and Michel Buffet provide a revolutionary model that empowers teams to harness the full potential of diverse perspectives.

At the heart of the book are The 5 Disciplines, which guide teams to tap into their collective power:
Connecting – to build affiliationCaring – to nurture psychological safetySynchronizing – to harness collective intelligenceCultural Dexterity – to integrate diverse perspectivesPowersharing – to ensure equitable contributions
The result? Unparalleled creativity, engagement, and performance. Through insightful guidance, practical tools, and a proven framework, The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Teams shows how teams can unlock their collective power to achieve breakthrough results, transforming not only their organizations but also the future.

A comprehensive new model for creating inclusive organizations, illuminating the vital role that inclusion plays in developing solutions to the critical social, environmental, and leadership challenges we face.

Most organizational DE&I efforts are focused on changing individual behaviors. But unless you change the organizational structures—the practices, processes, and systems that surround and support individual behaviors—your change efforts will not take root. Structural inclusion makes behavioral inclusion stick.

Andrés Tapia and Fayruz Kirtzman have found that five disciplines encompass the structures, mindsets, behaviors, and accountabilities required for creating inclusive organizations that will have transformational impact not only on their culture and people but also on society and the planet:

1: Manage the Risk: know how to deal with the legal, reputational, and cultural risks of either doing the wrong thing, or not doing the right thing.
2: Explode the Awareness: make sure leaders and employees are deeply informed about, and publicly committed to, the value of DE&I.
3: Maximize the Talent Systems: ensure that leaders and managers display inclusive behaviors when they manage and optimize talent.
4: Master the Logistics: integrate DE&I into operations in ways that lead to improved efficiencies.
5: See the Marketplace: expand to new consumer market segments, enhance cross culturally competent customer service, and form effective partnerships with overlooked communities.

The authors provide assessment tools and case studies of organizations that have implemented each discipline, highlighting what worked and what tripped them up. And they take a wider view, showing how inclusive organizations practicing the five disciplines can address what they call society’s four vital tasks: diversify leadership, eradicate polarization, achieve justice, and save the planet. This is a complete guide to how to make your organization a systematic, process-oriented engineer of change for the full range of your stakeholders.

Diversity initiatives are falling short. This book shows leaders how to develop the skills needed to build sustainably inclusive organizations using a tested, research-based model developed by the global organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry.

According to the journal Human Resource Management, companies are spending over $8 billion a year on diversity programs. Yet today, the senior leadership teams at Fortune 500 companies are far from mirroring the diversity of its workforce and its customers. Andrés Tapia and Alina Polonskaia, senior leaders at Korn Ferry, argue that to build sustainable diversity and inclusion, organizations need to have inclusive leaders at all levels.

In this book, Tapia and Polonskaia draw on Korn Ferry’s massive database of 3 million leadership assessments to reveal the essential qualities of inclusive leaders. They discuss the personality traits these leaders share and detail how to develop what they call the five disciplines of inclusive leadership: building interpersonal trust, integrating diverse perspectives, optimizing talent, applying an adaptive mindset, and achieving transformation.

Tapia and Polonskaia also outline the competencies behind each discipline, describe individual and organizational exemplars of inclusive leadership, and show how the five disciplines enable leaders to unleash the power of all people and to build both structurally and behaviorally inclusive organizations. This book will help leaders foster the skills to deal with today’s complex challenges and create a more inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous future for all of us.