April 26th, 2012
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…]
April 19th, 2012
Who you are connected to matters in a whole bunch of ways. New research into the nature and the role of networks of relationships has demonstrated that there are correlations between our physical fitness and the physical fitness of those around us; our likelihood of divorce has similar correlations; and even the vitality of our [Read More…]
April 12th, 2012
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…]
April 5th, 2012
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…]
April 1st, 2012
March 30th, 2012
One last post about privilege. In a situation of discrimination or inequality there are four roles that you can play. You can be the target, you can be the perpetrator, you can be a bystander or you can be a leader. Privilege often times helps us find our way into the wrong role. I used [Read More…]
March 27th, 2012
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…]
March 21st, 2012
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…]
March 19th, 2012
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…]
March 14th, 2012
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…]