Diversity Beyond Lip Service: A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias

By: La'Wana Harris

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Synopsis: The ugly truth about diversity is that some people worry they must give up their power for others to have a chance. La'Wana Harris's Inclusion Coaching method helps people realize that sharing power isn't the same as losing it. The elephant in the room with diversity work is that people with privilege must use it to allow others equal access to power. This is often why diversity efforts falter—people believe in diversity until they feel that they have to give something up. How do we talk them through this shift?La'Wana Harris introduces Inclusion Coaching, a new tool based on cutting-edge research that identifies the stages of preparation, implementation, and “self-work” necessary to help individuals, teams, and organizations build a sustainable culture of inclusion. Harris's six-stage COMMIT model—Commit to courageous action, Open your eyes and ears, Move beyond lip service, Make room for controversy and conflict, Invite new perspectives, and Tell the truth even when it hurts—provides a proven process for making people aware of their own conscious and unconscious biases and concrete steps to make inclusion an embedded reality. Harris offers managers and diversity coaches new models to empower everyone from employees to CEOs to “do” inclusion and address deep-rooted biases that are often invisible. She addresses the growing need to challenge bias and build authentic cultures where everyone can feel a sense of belonging.