Diversity & INCLUSION

As the world of work faces a period of transformation driven by the increase in racial and social awareness, it is becoming apparent that investment behind Diversity & Inclusion initiatives is now being demanded by clients in all industries.

Over René’s long-standing Executive and Non-Executive career, Diversity & Inclusion has been a prominent feature of his leadership philosophy. From Google, HSBC and Credit Suisse, René has advised and provided wise, pragmatic counsel to numerous leaders responsible for inclusion within their businesses.

Since the tragic death of George Floyd, René has seen a significant increase in demand for him to help businesses to address Inclusive Leadership. Dan Glaser, CEO of Marsh McLennan (MMC), decided to create a six-month Black Leadership Programme for their high-achieving Black colleagues. Given René’s experience of navigating the corporate ladder, MMC found René to be the natural role model, speaker and facilitator to ensure the successful delivery of this programme. By being a consistent and independent voice, René’s talks have been able to help them overcome significant barriers and reinforce the importance of developing Inclusion within the business.

Alongside this, René has been the trusted adviser for Ralph Hauter, CEO of Microsoft EMEA, where he initially facilitated a powerful discussion with their senior leaders on D&I. As this progressed, René has found himself to be their ‘go-to’ confidant. With René’s global experience as a diversity and inclusion speaker, his ability to understand the various cultural nuances involved in the make-up of Ralph’s geographically spread teams has proved to be a valuable asset.

Every day, we are seeing many well-intentioned leaders who have made public statements of intent to demonstrate their business’ commitment to social inclusion. This is driven by a bolder, younger generation of both employees and clients. Through René’s extensive mentoring and philanthropic efforts, he remains consistently ‘in touch’ with those being the catalyst and drivers of cultural change.

Inclusive Leadership is emerging as a unique and critical capability helping organisations adapt to diverse customers, markets, ideas and talent. For those working around a leader, such as a manager, direct report or peer, one of the most important traits for generating a sense of inclusiveness is a leader’s ability to empathize and become aware of their bias.

But to fully capitalize on their cognizance of bias, leaders also must express both humility and compassion. This document describes organizational practices that can help leaders become more inclusive and enhance the performance of their teams.

  • Build a trusting, high performing and inclusive environment where ALL people flourish and develop
  • Inspire and coach the Leadership Team to lead the cultural transformation
    Ensure all the Leadership Team acquire a reputation for authentic Inclusive Leadership
  • Better understand and appreciate the needs and benefits of a fully diverse and inclusive environment that provides a feeling of belonging for all colleagues
  • Establish measures that enable the tracking of ethnicity data for continuous improvement
  • The leadership team must live and breathe the vision and purpose of the organisation
  • The leadership team must take ownership and accountability for establishing an inclusive environment

Far too many companies have adopted a best practice and universal approach to dealing with their very specific and unique Diversity and Inclusion challenges. In our experience, this rarely works. Every business is both distinct and unique and therefore requires a bespoke solution.

Our unique Inclusive Leadership Executive Development Programme will cover leadership, culture and collaboration in an interactive fashion, and as importantly, enable all members of the Leadership team to play an active part in the workshops.

We will design and build a bespoke programme of interventions and workshops unique to the company, which will provide inspirational insights, shared ‘lived experience’ and compelling case studies that will fuel robust debate.

This will lift the attendees’ sights and inject them with the passion and spirit to enthuse all they work with. The programme will be suitable for both offline and online circumstances.

The best teams will need to have diverse personalities and backgrounds that provides balance, challenge and support. There may well be some gaps that will become obvious and require attention.

The Inclusive Leadership Executive Development Programme is designed to put collaboration at the heart of how the Leadership Team behaves.

“Diversity is a fact, Inclusion is a choice”René Carayol, Diversity & Inclusion Keynote Speaker