When Inclusion Changes the Room

Sherif on courage, structure, and making space for every voice

Some leadership moments don’t look like leadership at all.

They look like someone quietly noticing that a room isn’t working,

and choosing to say something.

When Sherif spoke about this moment, what struck me wasn’t the tool he used or the outcome that followed. It was the orientation he had developed:

I realized this format is not working for everyone.

That sentence alone is leadership.

The rooms that reward silence

Many of us have been in those rooms.

Big meetings.

Loud voices.

Fast interruptions.

Decisions already half-made before the conversation begins.

Sherif called them

Sharks in the room.

In those spaces, people don’t disengage because they don’t care.

They disengage because they don’t feel safe to contribute.

Introverted engineers.

Thoughtful thinkers.

People who need a moment to reflect before speaking.

Their silence is often misread as agreement, or worse, as lack of ideas.

Radical inclusion begins when a leader recognizes that silence is often a signal, not a deficit.

Inclusion is not about niceness, it’s about structure

One of the most important insights from Sherif’s story is this:

He didn’t confront the problem by criticizing people.

He didn’t attack personalities.

He didn’t demand change.

He questioned the format.

This is not working for everyone.

That’s a radically inclusive move.

In my chapter on Radical Inclusion in my book, The Leadership Leap, I write about this exact distinction:

inclusive leadership doesn’t ask people to adapt endlessly — it adapts the system so more people can participate.

Sherif didn’t try to become louder.

He made the room safer.

Courage without aggression

What made this moment powerful was not just that Sherif spoke up,

it was how he did it.

The Leadership Landing program had given him language, timing, and structure to raise his concern without turning it into a personal attack. Instead of triggering defensiveness, the response he received was:

You’re right. We need to change this.

That’s not luck.

That’s what happens when courage is paired with clarity.

Radical inclusion doesn’t mean avoiding hard conversations.

It means having them in a way that keeps people in the room.

Structure as an act of care

When Sherif was asked to facilitate the next retrospective, he didn’t simply repeat what he had learned.

He adapted it.

He used a string of Liberating Structures, and customized it.

He invited people to reflect individually first.

He reframed the conversation to surface risk, failure, and fear before jumping to solutions.

By doing so, he changed the energy of the room.

People spoke up.

Introverted voices emerged.

Ideas surfaced that had been invisible before.

This is something I emphasize strongly in Radical Inclusion:

structure is not control — it’s care.

The right structure protects voices that would otherwise be drowned out.

“There are great introverted engineers”

Sherif said something that deserves to be repeated:

There are great introvert engineers. I’m one of them.

This matters.

Inclusive leadership isn’t about elevating one personality type over another.

It’s about recognizing that brilliance comes in many forms, and that systems often favor only a few.

When leaders design conversations only for the fastest speakers, they lose depth.

When they design for reflection as well, they gain insight.

Radical inclusion asks a simple but powerful question:

Who is this environment designed for, and who is it unintentionally excluding?

What actually changed

This moment wasn’t about facilitation skills.

It was about identity and courage.

Sherif had changed how he saw himself:

🖤 from someone adapting quietly

❤️‍🔥 to someone responsible for the health of the space

And that shift allowed him to act, not from ego, but from care for the collective.

He didn’t just improve a meeting.

He modeled a different kind of leadership.

The deeper lesson

Radical inclusion is not a slogan.

It’s not a value you hang on a wall.

It’s the willingness to:

💚 notice who isn’t being heard

💚 question formats instead of blaming people

💚 speak up without shaming

💚 and design spaces where more humanity can enter

Sherif’s story reminds us that leadership doesn’t always look bold.

Sometimes it looks like quietly saying:

This isn’t working for everyone, and we can do better.

That’s how inclusion changes rooms. 🐉