Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands.
Why Perpetual recommends it
Jennifer Brown’s How to Be an Inclusive Leader is one of the more practical, action-oriented books in the inclusion space, moving past the case for why inclusion matters into a genuinely usable framework for how leaders build it day to day. Brown maps a journey from unaware, to aware, to active, to advocate, and is honest that most leaders start further back on that journey than they assume.
The book is particularly strong on allyship as an ongoing practice rather than a one-off statement. Brown pushes leaders past performative support toward specific, repeatable behaviours: actively sponsoring underrepresented talent, interrupting bias in real time in meetings, and being willing to sit with discomfort rather than retreating to safer, more generic language.
Brown is also candid that inclusive leadership requires giving up some of the certainty leaders are used to having, admitting you don’t fully understand someone else’s experience is uncomfortable, but it’s the starting point for actually listening.
This maps closely onto our own belief that inclusion work is a leadership skill to be built deliberately, not a policy that gets set once and left alone.
- Inclusive leadership develops through stages: unaware, aware, active, advocate
- Allyship is an ongoing practice of specific behaviours, not a one-off statement
- Sponsoring underrepresented talent matters more than simply mentoring it
- Sitting with discomfort and uncertainty is part of doing this work well
A useful starting exercise is honestly placing yourself on Brown’s journey right now, and picking one specific active behaviour to practise this month rather than a general intention to do better.
We give this book four out of five stars.
