The thing about Talent

There is a lot of talk about talent.  There are books and conferences and blogs that focus solely on talent and I think that most of them miss the mark…by a long way.  There is always some interesting conversation around what talent is and like anything that is really important talent is hard to define   [Read More…]

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Picking fights with reality.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” -Anais Nin …a great quote and one that I refer to often in my work.  And it is true. We see things as we are…which also means we see things and situations and behaviors differently. Social stimuli (including the behavior of others)   [Read More…]

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An Amazing Admission of Bias?

Bias. Amazing. Really? I came across a post (thanks to Twitter as usual) recently about academic bias against conservatives. “John Tierney of The New York Times offers a really important report on the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s recent annual meeting. As Tierney writes, “Some of the world’s preeminent experts on bias discovered an   [Read More…]

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Diversity – A Hindrance? (guest post)

Diversity  – A Hindrance? During graduate school, I learned about the Homogeneous Unit Principle. Simply put, the theory states that people are most comfortable in groups of people like them. Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone, reinforces the idea of the Homogeneous Unit Principle. His extensive study and research found that people are increasingly isolated within   [Read More…]

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Breaking down “inclusion”

If you have visited this blog before you know that I see diversity and inclusion as incredibly misunderstood.  Most organizations have sloppy definitions of diversity and it gets even worse when they talk about inclusion.  I am not suggesting that everyone define or view inclusion the same way, but there does need to be some   [Read More…]

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Toward a general theory of Diversity and Inclusion…

a draft… Diversity 1.0 Diversity means difference. 1.1 Difference takes many forms. 1.2 Diversity in our social identities is paradoxical. 1.21 In some ways we are all alike. 1.22 There are various and many social groups we belong to which we share specific things with. 1.23 In some ways each one of us is completely   [Read More…]

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The Future of Diversity and Inclusion Work (part 5) New Way of Leadership

I am pretty critical when it comes to the topic of leadership.  I think that the defining issue of our time is a great absence of leadership. I see a lot of great things said and written about leadership…I do not see a lot of it actually showing up in our communities, our organizations and   [Read More…]

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Is the juice worth the squeeze?

In my experience, one of the greatest challenges in moving diversity and inclusion work forward is that it is horribly misunderstood.  People and organizations are all over the place when it comes to what diversity and inclusion actually are and there tends to be a lot of confusion and disagreement around why (or if) diversity   [Read More…]

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Courage and Leadership from a Birmingham Jail

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a lot of attention is generally paid to the I Have a Dream Speech, which is powerful and one of the great messages in the history of this country.  MLK Jr. wrote and said a lot of things during his life, and I still consider his Letter from Birmingham   [Read More…]

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Stuff.

Well I am coming off of my social media holiday which started way back on Dec. 2oth.  It was good.  There were a few quick “log ins” here and there, but for the most part I avoided the world of social media for about 3 weeks…and it was good.  And it is good to be   [Read More…]

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