Course Highlights
This in-person inclusive leadership course for managers and supervisors will:
- Position inclusive leadership as a performance discipline that strengthens speed, decision quality, information flow, and talent growth.
- Teach the Five Bs model as a practical set of leadership behaviors managers can use across meetings, decisions, coaching, and development conversations.
- Link Belonging to the FOCUS framework so participants know what to create through Fairness, Options, Certainty, Understanding, and Significance.
- Help managers reduce silence, hesitation, rework, and missed risk signals by creating conditions where people contribute earlier.
- Clarify Boundaries with decision rights, standards, inputs, and follow-through expectations.
- Improve Balance in meetings by strengthening participation, attribution, and decision closure.
- Build Bravery by giving managers practical language for addressing interruptions, dismissive comments, credit stealing, and other damaging moments before they become normal.
- Strengthen talent development through evidence-based opportunity decisions that reduce comfort picks without lowering expectations.
- Establish shared routines that improve participation, clarity, and follow-through while protecting standards.
Course Overview
Inclusive leadership is often discussed as a values issue. It is that, but in day-to-day management it is also an execution issue. Teams move faster when people share information early, raise risks before they become problems, challenge weak assumptions, and understand who decides what. Teams slow down when employees stay quiet, when the same voices dominate, when decision rights are fuzzy, or when opportunities go to the familiar instead of the best evidence.
Inclusive Leadership: Accelerating Performance Across the Workplace gives managers a practical way to lead so more of the team’s judgment, skill, and experience shows up in the work. The course uses the Five Bs model: Belonging, Boundaries, Balance, Bravery, and Build. Each B connects to a common performance problem. Belonging addresses silence and hesitation. Boundaries address confusion about decisions and standards. Balance addresses uneven participation and lost contribution. Bravery addresses damaging moments that managers sometimes let pass. Build addresses access to stretch work, feedback, visibility, and growth.
This one-day onsite course is not about lowering standards, avoiding hard conversations, or turning every meeting into a long discussion. The program helps managers create clearer rules for contribution, decisions, accountability, and development. Participants practice practical routines for meetings, one-on-ones, decision making, reset language, and opportunity selection.
The session closes with an operating agreement that helps the team use the Five Bs after the workshop. That agreement captures cues, habits, meeting rules, decision practices, reset language, and development routines the group can use immediately.
The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).
Program Objectives
At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Explain inclusive leadership as an operating discipline for accelerating performance across the workplace.
- Apply the Five Bs model to common leadership situations across teams and functions.
- Apply the FOCUS framework to strengthen Fairness, Options, Certainty, Understanding, and Significance in day-to-day leadership moments.
- Clarify decision rights and standards with a Decision Rights and Standards Map so execution speeds up and rework drops.
- Improve meeting participation, attribution, and decision clarity with Airtime and Credit Rules.
- Address damaging moments early with Interrupt, Redirect, Reset language while keeping the work moving.
- Make fair opportunity decisions with the B-Check without lowering standards.
Workshop Modules
Introduction: The Five Bs and the Performance Case
Inclusive leadership earns its place when managers treat it as execution work, not tone work. Faster performance depends on earlier risk sharing, clearer decisions, broader contribution, and cleaner follow-through. This opening discussion sets the performance case for inclusive leadership, introduces the Five Bs, and previews the tool attached to each B so the class sees the full map before practicing the parts. Participants will identify one performance slowdown they see in their own environment and match it to the B that most likely explains it.
Belonging: Using the FOCUS Framework to Restore Contribution
Performance slows when people hold back, hedge, or wait too long to speak. This module frames Belonging as a measurable performance condition rather than a general feeling. The FOCUS framework gives managers a practical way to strengthen Belonging through Fairness, Options, Certainty, Understanding, and Significance. Learners will apply the FOCUS framework to one real situation and select one condition to strengthen, including what to say, what to change, and what to watch next.
Boundaries: Clarifying Decision Rights and Standards
Ambiguity creates confusion, back-channeling, uneven evaluation, and rework because only insiders understand what counts. In this part of the program, the class builds a Decision Rights and Standards Map so the team knows who decides, what inputs matter, what good looks like, and how follow-through will be confirmed. The map helps managers reduce guessing and make coaching more consistent. The group will complete a Decision Rights and Standards Map for one current workstream and select one follow-through habit that keeps the standard visible.
Balance: Running Meetings That Do Not Waste Talent
A meeting can invite contribution or shut it down in five minutes, and that pattern repeats until performance drops. This module installs Airtime and Credit Rules that keep participation broad, protect attribution, and prevent unclear endings that create rework later. The focus is practical: who speaks, who does not, whose ideas get built on, whose work gets credited, what decision was made, and how the decision will be communicated. Participants will set one airtime rule, one credit rule, and one decision-closure rule and apply them to an upcoming meeting.
Bravery: Correcting the Moment Without Turning It Into a Scene
Small behaviors can do large damage when they repeat: interruptions, dismissive comments, credit stealing, side remarks, and patterns that single someone out or shut someone down. This module teaches Interrupt, Redirect, Reset language that targets behavior and impact, protects the work standard, and keeps the conversation moving. Managers practice stepping in early without debating intent or turning the moment into a spectacle. The team will practice two interrupt lines and one reset line and decide when each one fits.
Build: Developing Talent Without Comfort Picks
Teams lose talent when growth opportunities depend on familiarity, availability, style match, or who happens to be most visible. This part of the course links development to three levers managers control: stretch work, feedback quality, and sponsorship that creates visibility. The B-Check gives managers a routine for keeping opportunity decisions evidence-based and standards-driven rather than habit-driven. The class will apply the B-Check to one upcoming opportunity decision and make one adjustment that improves fairness without lowering expectations.
Integration: Making the Five Bs the Team’s Way of Working
A model is useful only when a team uses it after the workshop. This final discussion connects the Bs so managers can choose the right tool quickly across one-on-ones, team meetings, decision points, development conversations, and cross-functional coordination. Participants will produce an operating agreement that lists FOCUS cues, decision rights habits, meeting rules, B-Check usage, and the reset language the team will use going forward. The goal is a small set of repeatable routines that improve contribution, clarity, and follow-through.
Target Audience
This workshop is designed for groups that want to:
- Accelerate performance by increasing participation, trust, and information flow.
- Grow talent through clear standards, fair decisions, and consistent management habits.
- Improve meeting effectiveness through better airtime, credit, and decision clarity.
- Reduce rework through clearer decision rights and standards.
- Widen access to opportunity while keeping standards intact.
- Help managers address damaging moments early and calmly.
- Create shared routines for inclusion that show up in daily work, not just in stated values.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this course about compliance training?
No. This course is about leadership behavior, performance, and team execution. It may support broader inclusion goals, but the workshop focuses on what managers can do in meetings, decisions, coaching, and development.
What are the Five Bs?
The Five Bs are Belonging, Boundaries, Balance, Bravery, and Build. Together, they give managers a practical way to improve contribution, clarity, meeting effectiveness, accountability, and talent growth.
Why does the course connect inclusion to performance?
Teams perform better when people share information earlier, raise concerns sooner, understand decision rights, receive fair credit, and have access to development. The course treats inclusion as a way to improve how work gets done.
Does inclusive leadership mean lowering standards?
No. The course strengthens standards by making them clearer and more consistent. Participants practice widening contribution and opportunity while keeping expectations visible and performance-based.
What is the FOCUS framework used for?
FOCUS helps managers strengthen Belonging through Fairness, Options, Certainty, Understanding, and Significance. It gives managers a way to identify what may be causing people to hold back and what condition needs attention.
How does the course improve meetings?
Participants practice Airtime and Credit Rules. These routines help managers broaden participation, protect attribution, close decisions clearly, and reduce the rework that follows vague meeting endings.
What does Bravery mean in this course?
Bravery means addressing damaging moments early and calmly. Participants practice language for interrupting, redirecting, and resetting behavior without derailing the work or turning the moment into a spectacle.
How does the course address opportunity decisions?
The Build module helps managers look at stretch work, feedback, and visibility. Participants use the B-Check to reduce comfort picks and make opportunity decisions using evidence and standards.
Who should attend this program?
The course is a strong fit for managers, supervisors, team leads, project leaders, and others responsible for meetings, decisions, coaching, feedback, and employee development.
What should participants be ready to do after the workshop?
Participants should be ready to apply the Five Bs to daily leadership moments, improve decision clarity, run better meetings, address damaging behavior earlier, and make opportunity decisions more consistently.