The “holiday season,” can be a time to build community, reinforce community and reconnect with people in your community that you’ve not seen for far too long. It can be a time for inclusion and creativity where we celebrate “Friendsgiving.” Unfortunately, it can also be a time when people feel left out and excluded because of financial reasons. I’ve known…
What Everyone Gets Wrong About the DEI Debate (including me) As a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) consultant and facilitator for over 30 years, I’ve seen many misunderstandings on both sides of the DEI debate. Let’s cut to the chase. Here are the misconceptions that hold us back: Here is What Attackers of DEI Get Wrong: (I’m talking about…
Inclusive leadership doesn’t just happen. It takes intention and culture. Real inclusive leadership is more than just having a strategy. You need people to lead. Inclusive leadership practices are necessary to build cultures that last. Peter Drucker, said “Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast.” Your organization’s culture determines whether it can sustain itself, retain employees, be a hub of innovation and…
I hated my first job. It was selling aluminum siding over the telephone. I didn’t even know what it was, how much aluminum siding actually cost. I didn’t know who owned the company or what happened once a live person showed up at the house of the perspective buyer. But I was good at it. Even with those factors,…
If you want to create and lead inclusive cultures that last, then as a leader, you have take leadership. Too many organizations are delegating culture development to the Human Resources Department and abdicating their leadership responsibility. When a new client, Soraya, (CEO of a mid-size company) told me that she wanted her organization known as a best place to work,…
I just returned from the Global HRD Congress in Mumbai where I received the Global Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Award and also led a panel on Diversity, Inclusion and Innovation. The conference was amazing. Not just because of the incredible people I met from over 100 countries, but also because of how included the conference organizers made us feel, and…
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…
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…
Ten Ways To Foster Amazing Innovation Through Diversity Leadership In this business era of speed, competition and globalization, innovation rules all. You never know where the next great product, process or profit builder will originate. Good Diversity Management and Culturally Intelligent Leadership can make the difference between repeatedly hearing mediocre ideas from the same people, or mining the hidden…
Beyond LGBTQ, Finding Commonalities In Our Multiple Identities Every one of us has multiple identities. Those multiple identities influence our thoughts, perceptions and behaviors every day in our lives at work, and in our communities. Our multiple-identities are like panels that make us each separate but connected beautiful diversity quilts The late Dr. Roosevelt Thomas stated Diversity is any collective mixture…
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