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Vail Centre sponsors Yale ‘inclusive management’ courses

VAIL — Inclusive leadership is a style of management which carefully includes the contributions of everyone within an organization. This includes a nod to diversity and an understanding of how embracing differences within the ecosystem of a workplace can lead to sound decision making and economic prosperity.

Prognosticating the importance of varied management practices doesn’t have to be some exercise of science fiction. Fortune 500 companies to community-based organizations are seeing diversity and inclusive leadership tactics as one approach to handling the unpredictable nature of today and tomorrow’s business landscape.

‘top 10’



From July 23 to July 26, the Vail Centre, a local nonprofit specializing in stackable credentials through certifications and continuing education, will host Yale University’s School of Management for a certificate program focusing on diversity and inclusive leadership.

“As a top 10 business school, Yale University’s School of Management is recognized globally for creating leaders for business and society. Yale’s certificate course on Diversity and Inclusive Leadership is a highly sought-after program where executives and their companies will benefit from improved innovation, growth and decision-making, especially top-team diversity and will help take organizations to a new level of performance.”Ross IversonCEO, Vail Centre

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“As a top 10 business school, Yale University’s School of Management is recognized globally for creating leaders for business and society,” said Ross Iverson, CEO of the Vail Centre. “Yale’s certificate course on Diversity and Inclusive Leadership is a highly sought-after program where executives and their companies will benefit from improved innovation, growth and decision-making, especially top-team diversity and will help take organizations to a new level of performance.”



Why this matters

Businesses realize that accounting for information offered by those of varying backgrounds is somewhat like throwing water on a fish — not only does it refresh a scenario but might altogether give an idea or a decision the context to successfully take off.

Take Expedia as an example. One of the world’s leading online travel agencies — valued at $16.2 billion in May of 2016 — Expedia has been an outspoken proponent of diversity in the workplace. The CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, immigrated to the United States when he was nine years old.

“It is really important for us to be global in nature and be open to diverse kinds of backgrounds and cultures,” Khosrowshahi said in an interview with the Geekwire podcast in 2016. “It is important for us commercially because we want to expand outside of the U.S. … It also allows us to attract a diverse employee populous. That is an incredibly important asset to us because we don’t own hotels or fly planes. The only assets we have are people. We’ve been able to attract a diverse workforce and it serves us.”

catalyst for the workforce

The Catalyst Research Center for Equity in Business Leadership, which examines and documents workforce demographics and their impact on employees companies, communities and society, offered hard statistics in a 2014 study of 1,512 employees from six different countries, including the U.S.

All participants — men and women — in the study were full-time employees, 22 years old or older and employed in companies with more than 50 employees. Participants were asked to offer their experiences of inclusion within work groups and about the leadership behaviors of their managers.

Inclusion equals effectiveness

They found the more included employees felt, the more likely they were to go above and beyond their required duties to help other coworkers and that employees wanted to be treated uniquely, yet with belonging, by their managers. The four leadership behaviors linked to inclusion were: empowerment, humility, courage and accountability.

“In all the countries studied, empowerment was the behavior that most reflected altruistic leadership — the leadership style linked to inclusion,” the study stated. “Humility, courage and accountability closely followed empowerment as key indicators of altruistic leadership within all six countries.”

The study also investigated how inclusion is linked to productive behaviors in a business — things such as helping colleagues, picking up responsibilities of absent colleagues and volunteering to assist one’s manager. The analysis showed that inclusion was linked to an employee’s self-reported innovation and a sense of team citizenship.

The program organized by the Vail Centre with Yale will focus on creating and leading inclusive cultures, building effective teams through trust and cohesion, understanding unconscious biases and learning how to lead organizational and transformational change.

“Learning how to build a team or environment of individuals who can see the implications of business decisions on the broader society around them is like shoring up a bet,” Iverson said. “Our program with Yale brings those valuable lessons to Colorado and our community in Eagle County.”

For more information, go to http://www.vailcentre.org.


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