A good leader pays attention to their employees, to their own behaviors and to how they make employees feel about their work.

If you don’t have a concrete system and process to make people feel included and willing to take risks the you won’t be successful as a leader or an organization. Don’t be the kind of leader that is out of touch with your employees. You know the leader that thinks everyone loves working for then, but have no idea that they are either looking for new jobs, have retired in place, or just doing their jobs.

Start talking to your people about their lives. Find out who they are, and what they aspire to be and how you or other leaders in your organization can help them grow, be passionate about their work, and want to share their brilliance.

This is important, as you hire new people in your organization that may be different than the majority of your employees in some way; culture, race, age, gender, etc. Hiring a visibly diverse workforce is not enough. You have to get to know them or get to know their manager and make sure that their managers get to know them. Don’t assume you know what they’re thinking.

Find ways to bring employees from different backgrounds and functions together in ways that have impact. If people don’t interact in meaningful ways with each other, if there are no opportunities to solve problems with people from different backgrounds, departments and functions, your employees will stay stuck in silos. All of your good work to increase diversity could potentially go to waste.

Culture change has to be driven by your vision and leadership along with the rest of the senior management team and HR. Don’t just leave it to HR and forget about it.  Empower HR and meet with them regularly.

Too often, organizations rely on quarterly lunch and learns, off-the-shelf training or one-time, off-sites to affect change or build inclusion. All of those are useful, but in order to get results, you need to think of inclusion and culture as a whole ecosystem with many parts that are aligned and driven by the need to create and sustain the best workplace.

It is a continuous process. Based on sharing best practices with diversity and inclusion thought leaders, twenty-five years of work in the diversity and inclusion field, and interviews with executives, managers, and employees, I’ve synthesized this process into six steps that I call the “Six I Steps.”

The “Six I Steps” are insight, inclusive work culture, implementation of culture change, individualized convenience perks, immersion, and integration.

Step 1: Insight

Keith Chapman, the former vice president of Diageo, says that an organization built on employee insights will be inclusive and productive. “Insight can be only be gained by taking time with one’s team members — and also giving them an insight on you!”

An insightful diversity and inclusionist leader is willing to participate in an organizational assessment that includes customers, and that measures the impact executive leadership, and overall organizational culture have on employees and their motivation to do their best work. That means you have to pay attention to, trust employee responses, and be prepared to take action for change.

Don’t take analysis of the data personally. In order to get honest participation and objective results, don’t try to conduct your own assessment, or give it to human resources. Use an outside source and be involved in the process. Share your enthusiasm with the rest of the organization. Encourage them to participate.

An insightful leader take the time to listen to feedback whether it’s in person, on paper or in an email. An insightful leader takes that feedback seriously and where appropriate takes action, makes changes and lets the people in the organization know you heard them and keeps them posted on the changes being made.