Posts by Site Admin
Beginner's Mind
As mentioned above, working with difference is simple but not easy. A very useful way of approaching our experience with difference is to apply the insights from another activity that is simple but not easy – mindfulness. Sharon Salzberg, one, of the preeminent Western teachers and writers in this space, suggests that this idea of…
Read MoreResponding to Difference: A Few Basics
Working with Diversity and Inclusion is simple, not easy. As always, it starts with us. Here are a couple of behaviours and reflections that may prove useful. The behaviours are often simple; for example – use reversability. If you say something about a woman and refer to her gender as part of what you say,…
Read MorePiloting Through Chaos: Leaders Transforming the World for the Better
Kaospilot is an extraordinary “Education Design Agency” based in Aarhus, Denmark, that provides “high engagement and impact for collaboration, creativity and new leadership.” A hybrid business and design school, Kaospilot provides multi-sided education in leadership and entrepreneurship, with programs designed not only to shape students to fit the future, but to help them create it.…
Read MoreHow to Tell If Your Organisation Is Serious About Diversity and Inclusion
First – the why. Why would someone in the dominant power structure want to change the system? As a leader, as a practitioner – anyone wanting to create more equitable and inclusive organisations – you need to be able to answer one question: what’s in it for me WIIFM)? If the business case was sufficient,…
Read MoreCreating Positive Change: Anger and Compassion
When dealing with large scale issues – climate change, systemic injustice, or changing an organisation’s culture – we can sometime feel powerless. A natural response is righteous anger, as in the sense that “those people – the people in power — just don’t get it. They are (or the system is) the problem.” At such…
Read MoreWant to Have a Positive Workplace Culture?
Focus on the HOW as well as the WHAT How we work together is something we don’t tend to be taught much about. A lot of our learning along the way is more about what we do rather than how we do it – especially in terms of working well with others, management, and leadership.…
Read MoreWorking Together – October 2019
Working Together from Duncan Smith, ADC Associates Welcome to this monthly newsletter, in which we explore topics relating to leadership and organisational culture, global diversity and inclusion, gender, culture, bias, and more. In this issue: Creating positive change: anger and compassion Want to have a positive workplace culture? Focus on the how as well as…
Read MoreWorking Together – September 2019
Working Together from Duncan Smith, ADC Associates Welcome to this monthly newsletter, in which we explore topics relating to leadership and organisational culture, global diversity and inclusion, gender, culture, bias, and more. In this issue: Both/And 1: Working with Polarities Both/And 2: Gender and Men Herman Melville on Globalisation, Culture, and Race I hope you…
Read MoreWorking with Polarities
It’s been said that the world is divided into people who think they’re right. In what seems to be a time of increasing polarisation, it’s easy and natural to see polarities in oppositional terms – as adversarial. It is therefore increasingly important in these times to see polarities as complementary and interdependent (thanks to Ilene Wasserman –…
Read MoreHerman Melville's Perspective
It can be useful – even comforting – to remember that current issues, and their solutions, have been with us for some time. As a reminder that globalisation — and resistance to it – is more than a recent phenomenon, see the entertaining summary of Hermann Melville’s views at https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/07/18/born-200-years-ago-herman-melville-was-globalisations-first-great-bard Plenty of 20th and 21st century research and experience tells…
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