By Doug Van Dyke, Leadership Simplified, www.leadershipsimplified.com

If you are interested in creating a sense of connectedness in your organization, increased collaboration and enhanced diversity are nice places to start. The inclusive workplace climate that you can create will allow team members to work authentically, respect the organization, leverage talent, and increase productivity.

Here are seven best practices that can instill a collaborative climate and encourage a diverse workplace culture:

1. Lead by example. If leaders do not exhibit collaborative behavior and create natural diversity, how can they expect their direct reports to do so?
2. Maintain a suggestion box regarding ideas on how to increase collaboration and foster diversity. Give prizes for the ideas that are implemented.
3. Hold other leaders and team members accountable to high standards.
4. Seek to recruit and promote from a diverse pool of candidates. In this regard, consider using an initial selection process that is “blind.” In other words, conceal the ethnicity and gender of candidates as much as possible in order to mitigate selection bias.   
5. Provide meaningful training and development to leaders with regard to collaboration and diversity.
6. Mentor high-potential team members.
7. Seek to measure collaboration and diversity whenever and wherever possible!

Do you want to use this blog post in print or online? 

Please do so, as long as you do not alter the content or embedded links. Also, please include the following information: Doug Van Dyke is a Tampa Bay based leadership and collaboration consultant, executive coach, and strategic planner. To learn more about leadership development programs, coaching and consulting services, visit www.leadershipsimplified.com. 

© 2013 Leadership Simplified. All rights reserved.