Inclusive Mindset has five sub-competencies in 2026, up from the three Inclusion & Diversity had in 2025. Learn both lists, because items test the old labels as distractors for the new ones.
The five (2026)
- Connecting I&D to Organizational Performance
- Building the Infrastructure for an Inclusive and Diverse Culture
- Ensuring Impartiality & Fairness
- Cultivating an Inclusive and Diverse Culture
- Operating in a Global Environment
Navigating the Organization and Managing HR Initiatives belong to Leadership & Navigation. Ethical Agent belongs to Ethical Practice. Any of the three in an Inclusive Mindset list is wrong.
The three (2025)
Creating an Inclusive and Diverse Culture, Ensuring Equity Effectiveness, and Connecting I&D to Organizational Performance.
Note the two renames: 2025's "Creating" became 2026's Cultivating, and 2025's "Ensuring Equity Effectiveness" became 2026's Ensuring Impartiality & Fairness. Only Connecting I&D to Organizational Performance survives unchanged.
What each one covers
- Connecting I&D to Organizational Performance — linking inclusion work to business results.
- Building the Infrastructure — the structures behind the culture: sponsorship, ERGs, mentorship.
- Ensuring Impartiality & Fairness — equitable treatment and fair process.
- Cultivating an Inclusive and Diverse Culture — building and sustaining the culture itself.
- Operating in a Global Environment — the 2025 checklist descriptor is operating effectively in a workplace with a global focus to achieve organizational goals.
Picking one from a scenario
- A CFO demanding justification for inclusion spending in a cost-cutting cycle is a business-case challenge: Connecting I&D to Organizational Performance.
- Consistent promotion disparities between groups even though every manager follows the same written procedure is a question about the process: Ensuring Impartiality & Fairness, not Infrastructure.
Ask what the scenario is really challenging: the business case, the structures, the process, the culture, or global effectiveness.