Tag: diversity
Tribes and Teams
“Before the rise of the nation-state, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them.” —Robert Reich When I conduct teambuilding sessions, I often start by administering a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) so that I can understand the different personality styles on the team. The idea is to identify and leverage differences to achieve optimal performance. The MBTI has a continuum Read More
Stories and Songs
Research indicates that the best way to raise funds for a group is to share a story about one individual member. Narrative is powerful and empowering, yet it strikes me how different each of our stories can be: The scope of our hope, the depth of our love, the beauty of our grace, and our experience of justice vary greatly by simple circumstance; for example, being born on one side of a wall or the other.
Imagination and Identification
One of my favorite writers is Philip Roth. I loved all of his books, but American Pastoral tops the list. The book seems eerily relevant now. In American Pastoral, Roth follows the life of a successful Jewish businessman and high school star athlete from Newark, New Jersey, whose upper middle class life is ruined by the domestic social and political turmoil of the 1960s when American went “berserk.”
Vision and Values
As an executive coach I often facilitate life-line and development planning workshops. The life-line exercise encourages people to share the significant events and important people in their life and how those people and events helped to shape their values. I challenge participants to be as open and transparent as they can be, and I ask them to risk sharing what may be outside their comfort zone. In spite of these guidelines, most people stay in Read More
Inequality
The featured image of this post is a picture of the downtown area of NYC—home of Wall Street. It’s a beautiful sight with majestic buildings, but there is a story unfolding that is as ugly as the buildings are beautiful. In those spectacular buildings, and in others around the world, evil lurks. Here are some facts: The highest percentage of ultra high net worth people (greater than $30 million) lives in NYC. Unfortunately, almost 50%