Daniela Felletti

How Diversity, Equity and Inclusion can help us grow

Companies still tend to ignore the benefits of investing in DEI – yet, every single business case and researches demonstrates it – and this is the main reason for being stuck in the compliance mode. By creating authentic and sustainable DEI initiatives organisations will foster higher employee engagement, innovation, performance, and a better understanding of their customers and suppliers. To do so, we need deep awakening in the importance of DEI and how it can help us grow. As a DEI speaker, I aim to help you explore the different perceptions of our brain and our unconscious towards others through sensorial, introspective and active listening activities. A profound and effective way to create meaningful connections, explore curiosity and awaken perceptions. My interventions are not limited to reflection, but aim to provide a call to action for continuous learning and leading change.

It is important to consider how our biases affect us and our decision-making processes in different ways:

• Our perception – how we see others and how we perceive reality.
• Our attitude – how we react to certain people.
• Our behaviors – how receptive/friendly we are to certain people.
• Our attention – what aspects of a person we pay the most attention to.
• Our listening skills – how actively we listen to what certain people say.
• Our micro-affirmations – how much we comfort certain people over others in certain situations.

Empowering Future Leaders

We have been talking about impostor syndrome in women and underrepresented groups as if it was innate in them. This approach tend to focus only on putting the responsibility of this lack of confidence or “ambition” into women’s back. Movements such as #IamRemarkable and extensive researches by LeanIn.org and many others have already showed us that it is systemic and that lack of confidence is not a women or underrepresented groups problem. It is systemic. Ambition penalty is real and it is conditioned to social norms imposed by dominant groups. Empowering Future Leaders is about deepening the understanding of bias behind mentoring, sponsoring and allyship. Backed by data and real stories, it will help individuals learn how all decision-makers can avoid groupthink, affinity, confirmation, maternal biases. Those bias are responsible for the main types of prejudices that are holding back the career of women and underrepresented groups. Awareness is not enough, qualitative actions are necessary to deconstruct bias in the workplace.
In this session, I will focus the talk on Bias behind hiring and career progression in terms of Mentoring, Sponsorship and Allyship.
An invitation to men to feel concerned and part of the solution, so we can empower future leaders without imposing the entire responsibility on the minorities.

You can expect:

• Storytelling
• Real situations backed on data
• Adapted to your industry and country
• Introspective exercises
• Actions to start mitigating your own bias

Inclusive Leadership - the essential asset for an innovative and sustainable organization

Inclusive leadership is essential to ensure that diversity of thought is respected, heard and acted upon. Inclusive leadership is about being acutely aware that even when a diverse think tank has been assembled, biases can push a group toward uniformity and the status quo. Focusing on building trust by establishing a set of core principles, for example, can encourage individuals to contribute without
fear. In an era where people are searching for meaning, many organizations find themselves in a paradoxical position: They are aware of the need for change due to loss of trust in their leadership, uncertainty, disruptive technologies… On the other hand, they are struggling to move away from old leadership models, when control, micromanagement and fear were the norm.

By implementing an inclusive leadership approach, companies will be able to retain and attract diverse talent, have more creative minds and drive innovation. Every research and case study involving diversity, equity, and inclusion will lead us to these same outcomes: innovation. Start your inclusive leadership journey now by joining the 21st Century Leaders movement! This session will explore the six signature traits a leader needs to develop to become inclusive according to Deloitte and Catalyst.

Key learnings:

• Learn what is inclusive leadership and why are 21st century leaders seeking to develop it
• The 3 types of empathy
• Building trust and embracing change in times of uncertainty
• The notion of power as a responsibility to serve the other