Does Your Organization Suffer From These Symptoms of “Hidden Genius Constipation”? 1- People in your organization have great ideas for new products and services but they have no outlet to express them. Innovation stays in the realm of the product development team, or with your “regular” stars. No matter how diverse your workforce is, if people can’t show what they can…
Is there anyone in today’s business world who has not heard of transformational leadership, organizational culture change or talent optimization? Articles, books and white papers are published daily on those topics. We’ve heard a lot from the experts but we aren’t hearing enough from people in organizations who are the future innovators and hold the hidden genius. Without real diversity…
Diversity and Inclusion Starts With Hello September is coming fast as people return to work, school, and home. This is a great opportunity to strike up a conversation with new people and break out of social and work silos. There are three common threads through countless interviews and focus groups I’ve conducted in a wide range of organizations: 1- …
StartOut is the “must belong to” organization dedicated to creating great business leaders by fostering Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBTQ) entrepreneurs. It is the LGBTQ business life line. With 15,000 members and chapters in 6 cities StartOut is reaching out to expand and engage LGBT entrepreneurs across the US and the rest of the globe through the new…
Research shows that too often women are more worried about being liked than respected. This desire to be liked can take us to extremes and be detrimental to our success. Being liked is not bad and it is important as a leader. But when being liked makes us compromise our values and our personal dreams, we end up not…
I was working with a large Fortune 500 company considered to be one of the diversity and inclusion leaders. The CEO was championing diversity. He had all the right policies and procedures in place. Senior management was more diverse. Culture at that level was starting to change. A young African-American man pulled me aside to talk. He said he was the…
I was honored to be a special guest of Carole Copeland Thomas on her Conversations With Carole, on Understanding Intersections between race, diversity and LGBTQ. This is an important topic and everyone is included in real inclusion. If we support diversity and inclusion, then we can’t pick and choose which issues are real, or stay in our little comfort zones….
“I have a friend who keeps making offensive jokes about LGBT people and racist comments about Black people, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want my friend to be mad or hurt her feelings,” a colleague told me. My reply, “If you are really a diversity champion, if you support equal rights and opportunity for everyone, then you…
Sexual orientation is not a lifestyle. Another person told me they were not “prejudiced,” they just didn’t agree with the LGBT lifestyle. I asked them which part of the life style they disagreed with. Was it going to work, paying a rent or mortgage, having a family, eating dinner, going to the movies, wanting to feel safe, or what? He…
During a recent client meeting on inclusion, when the words LGBTQ came up, one of the meeting attendees remarked, “I’m not anti-gay but I just don’t believe that should have special rights.” My first thought, “Oh no, do we really have to have this conversation again?” Obviously we did. I told this woman that LGBT people want the same…
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