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

Some good reading and good resources related to issues of Diversity and Inclusion:

Diversity Helps Your Business – But Not The Way You Think

This Forbes article from Katherine Phillips sheds new light on the value of difference in the group / organizational context. Phillips summarizes research she recently published with Katie Liljenquist showing that:

…members of a social majority are more likely to voice unique perspectives and critically review task-relevant information when there is more social diversity present than when there is not. Moreover, this is true even when the people who are “different” don’t express any unique perspectives themselves. Our research suggests that the mere presence of social diversity makes people with independent points of view more willing to voice those points of view, and others more willing to listen.”

Using a little imagination to beat racism

This post on the Research Digest Blog also summarizes some interesting research, specifically on countering bias and prejudice.

…the participants who imagined a positive encounter subsequently showed more positive attitudes, explicit and implicit, compared with the control group. This shows that it is specifically imagining a positive encounter with an out-group member that is beneficial, not just thinking generally about that out-group.

“Given that direct intergroup contact is a highly effective means of reducing prejudice, these findings suggest that imagined contact is an exciting alternative to direct contact that can be used in contexts where face-to-face contact is not possible,” the researchers said.

Rejecting the Default Culture

Culture is powerful. I have written a fair amount about culture here and will probably write a fair amount more. I recently came across this post from Dan Oestreich and love it! This is a must read in my opinon. I have personally read it several times now.

To fully “drive fear out of the workplace,” it is essential for everyone to be involved in actively rejecting this antiquated culture that divides the world into messengers who get shot and leaders who don’t listen. Both are stereotypes reflecting our fears of one another and our need for self-protection. “Actively rejecting” means moving into action and personally behaving in ways that contradict these negative background beliefs.

The courage to speak up and the courage to listen are the way out, and they require us to “stay in the tension” of the moment, the anxiety, stepping past all of it, particularly the fear that our sincere engagement with others will cause damage, distress, and repercussions or that we will simply experience humiliation and anger because nothing will be done about the obvious organizational problems we chose to bring forward. If we have two enemies in this work it is precisely the fear of repercussions and the belief that nothing can change.

The Situation of Biased Perceptions

And over at one my favorite sites, The Situationist, is an article by Emily Aronson and Ushma Patel about the work of Emily Pronin (who I am a big fan of. I am fascinated by assumptions and how stereotype and bias can influence our thinking, often without our own awareness of it, and Pronin does a lot of work in this area.

In many studies, Pronin and collaborators have found that people tend to assume bias in others’ actions but are slow to acknowledge how bias shapes their own views. Even when participants are told of this phenomenon, most will still claim to be less partisan than their peers.

What causes this dichotomy? According to Pronin’s research, it is due to a basic aspect of cognition: People have access to their own thoughts and feelings, but not the thoughts and feelings of others. As a result, people tend to look inward to thoughts and feelings when judging their own bias, even while looking outward to actions for judging the bias of others. Because biases generally operate unconsciously, looking inward blinds people to their own biases, Pronin said.

“We know the thoughts, feelings and intentions behind our actions, and that knowledge can lead us to believe we are acting impartially. But because we don’t have access to this information in other people’s heads, we tend to assume they are biased when their actions look biased,” Pronin explained.

Articles and Resources from the Workforce Diversity Network

This is one is a tad bit self-promotional, as a couple of my blog posts just got added, but…there is other good stuff here as well!  Emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, collaboration, diversity of thought, generational diversity…a lot of good stuff from a lot of good minds.

Enjoy.