Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

We are pretty good at knowing what our point of view is (and we are pretty good at thinking highly of our point of view). We are also good at knowing when someone disagrees with our delightful point of view. We are not quite so good at understanding why they disagree with us. The value   [Read More...]

Via MBA@UNC MBA Online & Women 2.0

In my last post I talked about the value of diversity in your network of relationships and “The Social Origin of Good Ideas.” Here is another way to take a swing at this issue: Take a few minutes and conduct the following social network analysis. (These questions come from Achieving Success Through Social Capital by   [Read More...]

It is a hard thing to measure, but I consider the default stance toward difference one of the key markers of an inclusive organization, team or community. Think about the team that you are a part of. What is the collective stance or orientation toward difference? When the team is introduced to a person, a   [Read More...]

I find myself talking more and more about dealing with conflict. Some work teams and some leadership teams get stuck in conflict and have a really hard time agreeing on anything. But what I see much more often than that is teams that are not willing and/or able to disagree in a healthy, functional way.   [Read More...]

Be good to each other.

Still talking about privilege. In my last post I started to explore the impacts of privilege. Privilege does not require any bad intentions or hatred to pit groups against each other. Privilege makes it really easy for privileged folks to judge other groups based on stereotypes. Many, if not most privileged folks would vehemently deny   [Read More...]

More on privilege, and the uneven playing field. I have already posted a definition and some characteristics. There are also a number of posts and articles that provide examples of how privilege shows up: examples of white privilege examples of male privilege examples of Christian privilege examples of straight privilege Privilege unexamined and unchallenged, pits   [Read More...]

My last post included a basic definition of privilege. There are some basic characteristics of privilege that I think are also helpful in considering privilege. I do not remember where I came across them, but they should be credited to someone other than myself. They have proven to be pretty valuable for me. institutional domination:    [Read More...]

The first time that someone told me I had “privilege” I just about flipped my lid. They could have just as well been speaking another language, the idea made absolutely no sense to me. I was certainly not living a life of leisure, perched atop some inherited wealth. Privileged? Absolutely not, I had worked hard.   [Read More...]