Achieving Inclusion through Cultural Awareness
The benefits of diversity include faster problem-solving, better decision-making, increased innovation, employee engagement, and stronger financial performance. Yet diversity delivers its full potential only in genuinely inclusive environments.
Learn how to cultivate cultural awareness and competency to unlock diversity's benefits and build inclusive teams.
-
Discover how biases form naturally and strategies to mitigate their impact
-
Learn practical skills for empathy, conflict management, and trust-building across differences
-
Explore the journey from self-awareness to organizational inclusion for sustained results
-
From recognizing personal biases
-
To building psychological safety in teams
-
Championing inclusive practices organization-wide
-
And implementing lasting cultural change
-
-
Understand the 3 essential prerequisites organizations must address to foster true inclusion
Download White Paper
What is the difference between cultural awareness and cultural competency?
It’s important to distinguish cultural awareness from cultural competency, as they’re often confused.
Cultural awareness is recognizing and appreciating cultural nuances—your own and others’—forming the foundation of equitable environments. Cultural competency involves the active skills to communicate, interact, and lead effectively across differences, turning awareness into action that creates value.
"We are not born able to read or write... The same case can be made for learning cultural awareness and cultural competency."
With rising workplace diversity, leaders must navigate differences intentionally to avoid talent loss and conflict.
Focus on mindset and skills vs innate talent to drive inclusion.
Our brains are wired for survival through in-group bias, favoring those like us across age, background, or profession. This neural response creates affinities but also unconscious mistrust of differences. While 82% of teams have diverse talent, unchecked bias leads to distrust and missed opportunities without structured processes. Research shows effective training combines awareness (mindset) with competency skills (empathy, feedback acceptance) over time.
Organizations fail to actively build inclusion beyond hiring diverse talent.
Nearly three-quarters recognize diverse colleagues' potential, but far fewer see leaders actively seeking input from all backgrounds or providing support for inclusive initiatives. Many diverse employees feel undervalued, with 3 in 10 unable to agree it's easy to challenge biases or champion change—most believe more must be done to ease this journey.
Leaders can cultivate self-confidence and psychological safety to unlock inclusive cultures.
Leaders build inclusion by connecting daily work to shared purpose, fostering psychological safety for open dialogue, and teaching skills like empathetic communication. Self-confidence enables feedback acceptance and bias mitigation, while genuine interest drives lifelong cultural learning. Everyone has bias; leaders empower teams by reducing its harm through trust, diversity of thought, and protected motivation.
