Executive Leadership Program's Tony Kong Shares How Different Perspectives Help Build High-Functioning Teams
When it comes to developing diversity within an organization—everyone has something to say and contribute. That is the message Associate Professor Tony Kong shares with participants in his courses across the undergraduate, Executive MBA and the Leeds Executive Leadership Program. Kong encourages participants in the courses to keep their minds open as they consider how they can bring equity and inclusion principles back to their teams and company culture. “I believe everyone has a say as different perspectives will always contribute great insights.”
Bringing People Together
“Bringing people together is the spirit behind diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI),” said Kong. However, everyone’s personal understanding of what that means is different due to their lived experiences, knowledge, and identities. “That is why there are disagreements on what it means to people and how it should be practiced, despite the agreement that people are diverse and everyone wants to feel included.”
“I care about helping and developing people and believe that belonging and collaboration benefit the greater good,”
Kong’s research focuses on addressing how to enable people to be more prosocial (that is, promoting others’ interests and collective interests). “I care about helping and developing people and believe that belonging and collaboration benefit the greater good,” he said. “I care about this topic because I believe in its purpose of bringing everyone together. You need to be able to hear other perspectives to create a greater understanding.”
IDEO is a design company that Kong references in his executive leadership course as an example of a company that has built a culture where they care most about the different and unique ideas and perspectives their employees bring with them. “Companies that are successful in equity and inclusion know how to bring their employees’ different ideas and insights to the table,” Kong explained. “People should have common goals though.” Teams that can embrace places where one person’s weakness is another’s strength allows them to create more trust, empathy, and understanding with each other.
Impacts in the Workplace
Despite some organizations rolling back their DEI initiatives, Kong believes that businesses are receptive to learning and integrating that feedback. When those initiatives are thoughtful and leveraged effectively, it allows companies to not only foster learning and integration, but also to become better places where people can show up authentically and as their best self.
For organizations hoping to implement or refine their policies and practices, Kong recommends starting with what the company has in place currently and asking employees how they see and interpret inclusion. “It’s important to gather opinions on what people want for inclusion and equity and use that for culture building and the creation of norms and behaviors.”
Diverse views can lead to seemingly inconsistent results according to Kong. He encourages companies not to reject the entire premise and instead “identify the gaps and key metrics and address them. Companies need to see these gaps as an opportunity to learn and build a better culture.”
One key part of advancing equity and inclusion is implementing equity and inclusion for everyone in the organization. “Problems occur when DEI policy and practices are narrowly focused and thus many people have difficulty in relating to the policy and practices and identifying the relevance,” explained Kong. “If people can see and identify the self-relevance of these policies and practices, then they will care and lift everyone up.”
How Leaders can Build an Inclusive Team
“Kindness and empathy are important qualities that high-performing leaders have. Leaders need to show receptiveness to other ideas even if they make the same ultimate decisions.” Kong teaches the Freedom Framework in his leadership training session, which is a set of principles that encourages people to be more authentic, recognize the value of differences, bring their strengths forward, and the opportunity to both speak up or fade out as necessary while learning from mistakes.
These principles lend themselves to “recognizing moments as learning opportunities. Sometimes there are assumptions that people are knowledgeable or informed when that isn’t the case, so this represents learning, growing and forgiving,” Kong shared. These are things that all leaders can inspire within their teams.
A team that is inspired fosters a positive and healthy environment high in emotional intelligence where people show up and thrive, developing a sense of psychological safety in the process. A culture high in psychological safety allows people to challenge the status quo without fear of retribution, and to secure acceptance from others. Leaders hoping to reinforce this culture should inspire people to contribute and bring their authentic and best selves to work, as well as gather input from all levels when making decisions.
Tony Kong is an Associate Professor of Organizational Leadership and Information Analytics at Leeds. He teaches across programs at Leeds including the Executive MBA. You can learn directly from Tony Kong on building culture and inclusive work environments in the LEED: Executive Leadership Program taking place May 12-16, 2025 on the Boulder campus.