Inclusive Behaviors Assessment
The Inclusive Behaviors reference
Every term your report uses, in one place.
You do not need this to read your report. It is here for the moments when a word is doing more work than it looks like it is doing, and you would rather check than guess.
How this instrument is built
Six behaviors. Six elements inside each behavior. Thirty-six questions, one question per element.
Every question carries the same weight. Every behavior carries the same weight. No single behavior can carry your result, and no single question can move it far.
Your six behavior scores add up to your total, on a 100-point scale.
What each rating meant
Every question gave you six choices written specifically for that question, because a behavior at any given rung looks different in one element than it does in another. The wording changed from question to question. The ladder underneath it did not.
| Rating | What it names |
|---|---|
| 0 | Not yet started, below Notice |
| 1 | Early notice, entering Notice |
| 2 | Consistent notice, established at Notice |
| 3 | Practice |
| 4 | Approaching Embody, entering Embody |
| 5 | Embody |
Two choices for Notice, one for Practice, two for Embody.
What a 3 means
A 3 is not a C, and it is not sixty percent of anything. The scale is not a percentage and it was never scored as one.
A 3 is the name of a rung. It says you have changed your own behavior in that element, where other people can observe the change. You are not doing it from a distance and you are not doing it only in theory. That is a substantial thing to report about yourself, and on a great many elements it is the most common honest answer a careful person gives.
The rungs above 3 are not better versions of you. They describe the practice reaching other people, which costs more and costs longer.
The three levels
The levels add rather than replace one another. What is asked at Notice is still being asked at Practice, and what is asked at Practice is still being asked at Embody. What rises with the level is the cost.
Notice
Understanding your own patterns, gaps, and the role you play in them. This is work you can do without anybody knowing, and what it costs you is attention and honesty with yourself.
Practice
Changing your own behavior where other people can see it. It costs comfort rather than privacy, because being visible while you are still getting it wrong is the price of doing this in the open.
Embody
Your practice reaching other people. You show what the path forward looks like, you set a standard, and you hold to it. It costs the most, and it costs durably. Embody is not the summit, because the people who reach it are still being changed by what they learn.
This is why the levels are named Notice, Practice, and Embody rather than beginner, intermediate, and expert. Consistency changes. Nobody arrives.
The five bands
Your total score falls into one of five bands. The band names your position on the whole framework, and it is the least specific thing your report tells you. The differences between your six behavior scores carry more information than the total does.
Willing to Look
0 to 20You are at the beginning, where the work is looking honestly at your own patterns rather than changing them yet. Focus on one behavior rather than all six. This is a starting point, not a deficit.
Clear Sight
21 to 40You see your own patterns reliably, and that seeing is turning into early action. Focus on consistency: choose one or two elements in each behavior and work on them deliberately.
Deliberate Action
41 to 60Your behavior is changing where other people can see it, in many areas though not yet in all of them. Focus on the areas where you still see reliably without acting, because that gap is the shortest distance you have.
Beyond Yourself
61 to 80Your habits are reliable, and they are starting to reach people other than you. Focus on what makes them repeatable for somebody else, because that is what separates a private discipline from a standard.
Still a Student
81 to 100You set standards other people can rely on, across most of the framework. That is real, and it is why this band carries the name it does: the people furthest along in this work are the ones who stay students. The growth edge here is accuracy. Invite outside perspective, because self-report is least reliable exactly where the scores are highest.
A band is not a grade and it is not a rank. You are not compared against anyone.
The six behaviors
Six behaviors, six elements inside each. Here is what each one is for.
Purposefully Unbiased
Everyone carries bias. What changes outcomes is how quickly you catch yours, whether you correct the decision while it is still open, and whether the way you catch it ever reaches anyone else.
Intersectional Commitment
People are never one thing. Race, disability, gender, class, age, and sexuality overlap into experiences that differ in kind rather than in degree, and a commitment that handles one dimension at a time will miss most people.
Actively Inclusive
Inclusion is built in small daily acts that other people can observe: the language you choose, the credit you route, the harm you name when naming it is inconvenient. This is where intention becomes visible.
Human Agility
What you treat as normal was shaped by where you come from rather than by what is universal. Agility is moving across difference without asking other people to reshape themselves around your defaults.
Universal Participation
Access is a design decision, made long before anyone asks for it. This behavior asks whether you remove barriers before they are named, and whether you build for every body and every mind from the start.
Civic Courage
Belonging is personal, and it is also political, communal, and structural. Civic courage does not require a title or a platform. It requires an honest reckoning with what your voice costs you, and what you do anyway.
Belonging & the five terms
Your report reads your pattern against five terms as well as six behaviors. The terms describe what a behavior enacts, and they group the thirty-six elements a second way. These definitions govern everywhere they appear.
Belonging
Occurs when each person knows their bold, authentic self is welcomed, valued, and loved, where their unique identities joyfully prosper and thrive.
Inclusion
A behavior, through actions, norms, and processes, that nurtures a collective culture in which all individuals are empowered and supported to contribute, and in which ideas are heard and respected.
Diversity
Refers to the intersectional representation of identities, heritage, and backgrounds, incorporating our peers' various lived experiences, interests, and perspectives.
Equity
Ensures merit-based and fair outcomes by acknowledging potential roadblocks, removing the systemic barriers that decide who succeeds, and changing the conditions that keep producing unequal outcomes.
Accessibility
Provides everyone along the continuum of human ability with the adjustments they need to succeed and removes the physical, systemic, and technological barriers that prevent participation.
Justice
Means harm is prevented, named, and repaired, power is held accountable, those most affected are centered and shape the remedy, and the work is sustained until restitution is real, so fairness is not only promised, it is practiced.
Belonging is the result when Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Justice are functioning at their best. Nothing about the relationship between the five is computed, and no score is ever derived from them.
One note on the word itself. Belonging is used throughout your report only in the sense defined above. It never carries the ordinary sense of a thing sitting somewhere or a thing owned, and it is always described as something a person knows.
What this measures, & what it does not
It measures what you reported about yourself, on one day, in one sitting. Thirty-six questions asking how consistently you do specific things.
That is a real limit, and it has a useful consequence: the differences between your six behavior scores carry more information than your total does. Your report is written to read that pattern first.
It does not measure who you are. It is not a personality assessment, it is not a psychological or clinical instrument, and it does not describe a fixed trait. It measured habits, and habits change. That is the whole argument this framework makes.
It is not used to decide anything about you. Your results are not shared with an employer, and they are never used for hiring, promotion, or performance review. Self-report stops being honest the moment it decides something about a person, which would make the instrument worthless to you and to us.
You are not ranked. This assessment produces no percentiles, no averages, and no comparison to other respondents. There is no cohort you are being measured against, and your report contains none.
A low score is not a verdict. It names where a practice is thin right now, which is information you can act on. The most common reason people leave this work is shame after getting something wrong, and an instrument that produces retreat has failed at the only thing it was built to do.