How Managing Talent and Inclusion Go Hand-in-Hand

Mark Brown, senior vice president of talent and inclusion at Starbucks, knows what it’s like not to be seen in the workplace. 

“So many times throughout my career, the work I did got attributed to someone else, and someone else got recognized for it,” he said during a fireside chat with From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp at the organization’s conference in Seattle.

Being overlooked is a reality that people from marginalized groups often experience and it prevents them from advancing within a company, says Brown. That’s why Starbucks helps those in charge of promoting people realize that “leadership comes in many forms,” he said.

For example, when senior leaders get together to decide who could be moved into a VP role and what attributes they should have, someone might mention gravitas, according to Brown.

“What does gravitas mean?” he said. “We have to interrupt some of those conversations.”

Once team leaders get a new perspective on what terms like this mean, they might think of an employee that fits the definition but who they might not have considered before, according to Brown.

“We're focused on inclusion and belonging,” he said. “Diversity just gives a sense of, hey, who's not in the room? Who's not at the table? Are we doing things when we're recruiting or promoting people, that we're not including populations? Talent is equally distributed and populations’ opportunities aren’t. And so, we want to make sure that we're casting our net wide.”

But inclusive leadership goes beyond DEI, says Brown. “Inclusive leadership is just leadership,” he said. “If you have three people on your team, they’re all going to be at different development stages. And your role as a leader is to figure out where they are in those development stages, and then take them through a journey, which means you have to pivot to understand where they are to bring them through.”

The first step to inclusive leadership is getting to know your employees. Part of that is finding out what they like to do when they aren’t working, such as fishing, camping or gardening. However, “it’s really just having a conversation about, ‘How do we work together? How do I amplify your successes? How do I coach you?’” he said.

This is critical because “people have cultural experiences, they grew up in certain families, and they’re taught certain things,” Brown said.

For example, Brown said some leaders in the past advised him to “go out there and tell everybody what you did, and I just knew I wasn’t going to do it because it wasn’t core to who I am.”Instead, an inclusive leader will take the time to understand how a particular employee operates and engage them accordingly.

Some companies overlook the value of employee networks. He says having groups where the members have some shared experiences creates not only a sense of allyship, but also a way for leaders to better understand their team members and customers.

“We want to understand how all the identity groups we serve in our markets are feeling, what they’re seeing, and asking, ‘are there things in our systems and our processes that are getting in the way?’” Brown said.

“We want to represent the communities that we serve, and we want to innovate for all our different audiences. And if we don’t have more voices in the conversation and more backgrounds in the conversation, we can’t continue to create a sense of belonging and warmth in our stores, which is core to what we do.”

They don’t always get it right the first time, so the company engages its employee networks, or their partner networks, on business problems, says Brown.

He said Starbucks’ partner networks give the company additional feedback loops and mechanisms, which are more important than ever. “Our partner networks get an opportunity within our heritage months to celebrate culture, to really say, ‘Hey, this is who I am and this is how I bring my authentic self to work,” Brown said.

Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa.