Speaker 1: There are several things that inclusive leaders do that's really important in terms of building good relationships at work. Firstly they invest time getting to know people, so not at just a surface level, a cursory thing, but they really understand what's important to them, who's important to them in their lives. They talk to them about those things.

Speaker 2: A good leader actually needs to be aware of the fact that they need to build relationships with everybody in the team if they are going to be a team and sometimes you do see it where a leader will kind of, they think they're being efficient, will just kind of work with a subset of the team because they know them, they work together, they trust them, they're reliable, they're dependable. The other members of the team then think the leader has favourites. Their performance will go down. So even though I think I'm being efficient, if the perception is that I have favourites, their performance will go down. As interesting as that is actually the performance of my favourites will go down because they don't have to work so hard because they're my favourites.

Speaker 3: I want to hear your bright ideas people.

Speaker 4: Well personally Dave, I think we need to completely reconsider the audience we're trying to target. I think we got it wrong last time.

Speaker 3: Alright, we're not here to do a post-mortem, okay? Let's think positive. Ben's got some great ideas for a new online campaign, so why don't we kick off with that and just get the creative juices flowing, alright?

Speaker 5: Dave is really, really nice, really, really great. He's always just been very supportive. I mean obviously I'm new here and stuff and he's very much championing my ideas, which is great. Introducing me to a lot of people, sort of big people, which I think is good for my career.

Speaker 3: Would I say I'm an inclusive leader? Definitely. I say it all the time and I mean it. I want everyone to contribute to a discussion. I want to hear from everyone.

Speaker 5: The only thing I'd say about this environment when you're chucking out ideas is that there's very much a tendency for you to put out an idea and then boom, it's just like cut down or yes, that's great or that's terrible. There's seemingly no room for kind of discussion, you know, flipping an idea upside down, trying different things with it, which is a shame.

Speaker 4: Oh, Dave definitely has favourites. So we've got Ben at the moment who's just started, so he's the current favourite. He can do no wrong, but soon enough him and Ben are going to have a massive run in, as we all do, so that'll definitely change. Ben will kind of get the measure of him before long.

Speaker 6: Inclusive leaders invest time in getting to know the individual members of their team, understanding what makes them tick and what's important to them as an individual. They also proactively create an environment where there is mutual support and encourage team members to voice their concerns and say when something isn't right.

Speaker 1: That's really important in terms of relationship building, but it's also important for you as the manager as well. You need to know when things aren't going right and you need your team to be the eyes and the ears on the ground to tell you that.