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You know that sour feeling you get when people ignore your participation – or don’t bring you into the conversation? This kind of behavior doesn’t just affect mental health and general productivity: it harms the level and effectiveness of deep thinking, creative brainstorming, and innovation.

Fortunately, leaders and their teams can take steps to create a culture of inclusivity and smarter collaboration – and see all the associated benefits in their organization and within themselves. Our decade-plus of research at Harvard and with hundreds of organizations has surfaced five major strategies:

• Understand people’s uniqueness and embrace those differences as an asset
• Measure inclusivity
• Build and nurture a learning culture
• Check your biases
• Role model authenticity and expect nothing less

For details on these approaches, check out Dr. Heidi K. Gardner and Csilla Ilkei’s new article for the Institute For Well-Being in Law (IWIL).