there’s never been a greater need for
smart and thoughtful leaders good
decisions don’t stand a chance
in these times of polarization
alternative facts and fake news but
there is a solution to this problem and
it lies in a type of intelligence called
inclusive intelligence which is formed
through diversity it turns out that
diversity actually makes you smarter
diversities been a defining element of
my entire life
I had a transformative experience when I
was 5 years old living in the deep south
with my family during the darkest days
of the civil rights movement my mother
took my sisters and I along with her one
day as she went on her visiting nurse
duties giving shots to poor families
throughout the community I remember
pulling up in front of what could only
be described as a shack in the middle of
a field and watching as several black
children ran out to greet us they took
us inside and we sat down to play with
their only toy which was a board game in
pristine condition that experience
rocked me to my core but it wasn’t until
later when I was in school and learned
about the history of our country I put
two and two together and figured out
that what I was looking at that day was
the vestiges of slavery that turned my
soul inside out I decided to go to law
school and my first job after law school
was as a federal civil rights prosecutor
with the US Department of Justice it was
there that I prosecuted hate crimes
police brutality and I even had a
slavery case after I left the Department
of Justice I became deeply passionate
about advocating for diversity and
teaching people about this new paradigm
called inclusion which is necessary to
unlock all of the benefits
diversity and those benefits are
tremendous you may not realize this but
researchers have discovered that diverse
teams of people outperform homogeneous
groups they’re more innovative more
productive and companies with greater
diversity are more profitable now when I
share this with you you probably think
and rightly so that when you bring
people together from different social
identities and backgrounds they’ll have
new and different information and
perspectives to share with the group and
if those are incorporated into into the
groups of work then that could lead to
these findings that diverse teams
outperform homogeneous groups but it’s
more than that researchers have
discovered a second hidden reason why
diverse teams of people outperform
homogeneous groups in a research study
published in 2006 the researchers
enlisted the help of nearly 200 people
who had shown up for jury duty at the
local courthouse and because they were
trying to find out whether race made a
difference in decision-making groups
they divided everyone up into mock jury
panels half of which were diverse
meaning they consisted of both black and
white people the other half of the jury
panels were homogeneous consisting of
all white people they showed everyone a
half an hour Court TV case involving a
criminal matter and then put them into
deliberation rooms videotaping their
conversations so that the researchers
could go back frame by frame and count
instances of behavior to compare the two
groups and what they found was yes in
fact the diverse jury panels
outperformed the homogeneous jury panels
but it was more because they were
working harder cognitively than the the
all-white jury panels which fell into
sort of a groupthink mentality and they
got a little bit lazy in
processing of the information so you can
see from this screen capture from the
study the differences in performance
between the two groups first of all
notice that the diverse jury panels
deliberated longer they spent 30 percent
more time talking about the facts of the
case they actually talked about more of
the facts in the case than the all-white
jury panels they made fewer mistakes
with respect to the evidence they made
fewer uncorrupted inaccurate statements
and they cited more of the missing
evidence that they would have liked to
have seen presented in the case now as a
former federal civil rights prosecutor
this is really disturbing to think that
just the racial makeup of the group
could result in these kinds of
disparities in performance if you were
the criminal defendant in this case
which jury panel would you rather have
decide your fate so the question is how
smart are you that’s your chair in the
middle the red chair who’s sitting in
the chairs around you who are you
putting in those chairs if it’s a very
homogeneous group people who are quite a
bit like you in terms of social
identities and backgrounds and
perspectives you’re not doing yourself
any favors in fact you’ve created an
echo chamber if you want to build your
own inclusive intelligence you’ll want
to put different people in those chairs
people who are going to challenge your
thinking and make you think harder and
think smarter another way to build your
inclusive intelligence is to look into
your blind spots each of us has multiple
intersecting identities many of which
are listed on the screen some of those
identities though are a little bit more
important than others one of those
identities that’s important to me is my
occupation
with respect to those important
identities they inform and form our
worldview were much more apt to pay
attention to information that has to do
with an important identity which for me
is my occupation so I’m paying more
attention to information that impacts
this identity pulling it through and
factoring it into my thinking more
readily than I am with respect to some
other identities for example an identity
that I don’t think about at all during
my day is my race as a white person in
our society I don’t think about being
white I don’t think about my race and so
what that means is instead of it being a
lens that informs my thinking it’s back
here in my blind spot I’m not attending
to this identity I’m not seeing through
that lens necessarily and the point of
this is is that when you’ve got blind
spots you can make mistakes in your
thinking and that’s what happened to the
American Red Cross last year when it
sent out its swim safety poster which
was posted at swimming pools all across
the country
a woman in Colorado took a very close
look at this poster and noticed that
every child of color depicted in the
poster was doing something naughty and
breaking the rules whereas every white
child in the poster was playing by the
rules and being cool now I don’t think
for a second that the American Red Cross
did this intentionally or on purpose in
fact it turns out that all of the
executives at the American Red Cross are
white and I believe like me they have
raced back here in their blind spot and
they just didn’t see what this poster
depicted another example involves the
Regional Transportation district in
Denver
Colorado a couple of years ago there was
an election to the Board of Directors
and the two new board members elected
that year were people with disabilities
including the woman in the photograph
who has visual impairments
unfortunately the ongoing board members
at RTD and the staff planned a board
bonding day that included a trip to the
go-kart race track immediately these two
brand-new people were standing on the
sidelines as everyone else participated
and they were excluded again I don’t
believe for a minute that that was done
intentionally in fact I believe that the
planning committee had disability back
here in their blind spot they just
weren’t attending to it clearly if
anyone had had this lens front and
center a different decision would have
been made now you don’t need to have a
disability in order to have this lens up
for yourself right you can pull these
blind spots forward and that’s going to
help you develop your inclusive
intelligence and that’s what my
husband’s been doing as a man in a
male-dominated industry he’s decided
that gender is an identity that he just
doesn’t think about on a daily basis
it’s just not an important identity so
he’s been practicing pulling that lens
forward and looking through it more
deliberately and intentionally and he’s
been having some big aha moments as a
result in fact he was at a big meeting
where everyone was just divided up into
smaller discussion groups and he went
across the room to join a circle of
people that he had been randomly
assigned to when a female staffer walked
up to the group and asked the woman in
the group to take the notes because he
had this lens up he recognized that
gender my core inequity for the first
time in his life because of core
when women are asked to do what’s called
the housework of work it puts them in a
one down position
she can’t participate in the
conversation at the same level as
everyone else while she’s also trying to
take the notes and they may not view her
as their equal in the conversation even
if it’s only unconsciously because she’s
attending to this ministerial or
secretarial duty but because he was
pulling this lens forward he saw this
inequity and now he’s got a new plan
he’ll volunteer to take the notes or at
the very least make sure that this task
is shared more equitably so that it
doesn’t always fall to the woman so the
question is what will you do to build
your inclusive intelligence so that you
makes smarter better decisions one thing
that you can do is pull these blind
spots forward and look through these
lenses that will help you make smarter
decisions also surrounding yourself with
people who are different from you
they’ll bring new and different
information to your thinking and they’ll
force you out of your comfort zone and
make you think harder and work smarter
because the challenges that we’re facing
aren’t getting any easier they’re
becoming more and more complex will you
be blindsided by those difficult
problems or will you have the inclusive
intelligence to meet them head-on
the key to making good decisions is
diversity because it’s diversity that
makes you smarter
you
you
smart and thoughtful leaders good
decisions don’t stand a chance
in these times of polarization
alternative facts and fake news but
there is a solution to this problem and
it lies in a type of intelligence called
inclusive intelligence which is formed
through diversity it turns out that
diversity actually makes you smarter
diversities been a defining element of
my entire life
I had a transformative experience when I
was 5 years old living in the deep south
with my family during the darkest days
of the civil rights movement my mother
took my sisters and I along with her one
day as she went on her visiting nurse
duties giving shots to poor families
throughout the community I remember
pulling up in front of what could only
be described as a shack in the middle of
a field and watching as several black
children ran out to greet us they took
us inside and we sat down to play with
their only toy which was a board game in
pristine condition that experience
rocked me to my core but it wasn’t until
later when I was in school and learned
about the history of our country I put
two and two together and figured out
that what I was looking at that day was
the vestiges of slavery that turned my
soul inside out I decided to go to law
school and my first job after law school
was as a federal civil rights prosecutor
with the US Department of Justice it was
there that I prosecuted hate crimes
police brutality and I even had a
slavery case after I left the Department
of Justice I became deeply passionate
about advocating for diversity and
teaching people about this new paradigm
called inclusion which is necessary to
unlock all of the benefits
diversity and those benefits are
tremendous you may not realize this but
researchers have discovered that diverse
teams of people outperform homogeneous
groups they’re more innovative more
productive and companies with greater
diversity are more profitable now when I
share this with you you probably think
and rightly so that when you bring
people together from different social
identities and backgrounds they’ll have
new and different information and
perspectives to share with the group and
if those are incorporated into into the
groups of work then that could lead to
these findings that diverse teams
outperform homogeneous groups but it’s
more than that researchers have
discovered a second hidden reason why
diverse teams of people outperform
homogeneous groups in a research study
published in 2006 the researchers
enlisted the help of nearly 200 people
who had shown up for jury duty at the
local courthouse and because they were
trying to find out whether race made a
difference in decision-making groups
they divided everyone up into mock jury
panels half of which were diverse
meaning they consisted of both black and
white people the other half of the jury
panels were homogeneous consisting of
all white people they showed everyone a
half an hour Court TV case involving a
criminal matter and then put them into
deliberation rooms videotaping their
conversations so that the researchers
could go back frame by frame and count
instances of behavior to compare the two
groups and what they found was yes in
fact the diverse jury panels
outperformed the homogeneous jury panels
but it was more because they were
working harder cognitively than the the
all-white jury panels which fell into
sort of a groupthink mentality and they
got a little bit lazy in
processing of the information so you can
see from this screen capture from the
study the differences in performance
between the two groups first of all
notice that the diverse jury panels
deliberated longer they spent 30 percent
more time talking about the facts of the
case they actually talked about more of
the facts in the case than the all-white
jury panels they made fewer mistakes
with respect to the evidence they made
fewer uncorrupted inaccurate statements
and they cited more of the missing
evidence that they would have liked to
have seen presented in the case now as a
former federal civil rights prosecutor
this is really disturbing to think that
just the racial makeup of the group
could result in these kinds of
disparities in performance if you were
the criminal defendant in this case
which jury panel would you rather have
decide your fate so the question is how
smart are you that’s your chair in the
middle the red chair who’s sitting in
the chairs around you who are you
putting in those chairs if it’s a very
homogeneous group people who are quite a
bit like you in terms of social
identities and backgrounds and
perspectives you’re not doing yourself
any favors in fact you’ve created an
echo chamber if you want to build your
own inclusive intelligence you’ll want
to put different people in those chairs
people who are going to challenge your
thinking and make you think harder and
think smarter another way to build your
inclusive intelligence is to look into
your blind spots each of us has multiple
intersecting identities many of which
are listed on the screen some of those
identities though are a little bit more
important than others one of those
identities that’s important to me is my
occupation
with respect to those important
identities they inform and form our
worldview were much more apt to pay
attention to information that has to do
with an important identity which for me
is my occupation so I’m paying more
attention to information that impacts
this identity pulling it through and
factoring it into my thinking more
readily than I am with respect to some
other identities for example an identity
that I don’t think about at all during
my day is my race as a white person in
our society I don’t think about being
white I don’t think about my race and so
what that means is instead of it being a
lens that informs my thinking it’s back
here in my blind spot I’m not attending
to this identity I’m not seeing through
that lens necessarily and the point of
this is is that when you’ve got blind
spots you can make mistakes in your
thinking and that’s what happened to the
American Red Cross last year when it
sent out its swim safety poster which
was posted at swimming pools all across
the country
a woman in Colorado took a very close
look at this poster and noticed that
every child of color depicted in the
poster was doing something naughty and
breaking the rules whereas every white
child in the poster was playing by the
rules and being cool now I don’t think
for a second that the American Red Cross
did this intentionally or on purpose in
fact it turns out that all of the
executives at the American Red Cross are
white and I believe like me they have
raced back here in their blind spot and
they just didn’t see what this poster
depicted another example involves the
Regional Transportation district in
Denver
Colorado a couple of years ago there was
an election to the Board of Directors
and the two new board members elected
that year were people with disabilities
including the woman in the photograph
who has visual impairments
unfortunately the ongoing board members
at RTD and the staff planned a board
bonding day that included a trip to the
go-kart race track immediately these two
brand-new people were standing on the
sidelines as everyone else participated
and they were excluded again I don’t
believe for a minute that that was done
intentionally in fact I believe that the
planning committee had disability back
here in their blind spot they just
weren’t attending to it clearly if
anyone had had this lens front and
center a different decision would have
been made now you don’t need to have a
disability in order to have this lens up
for yourself right you can pull these
blind spots forward and that’s going to
help you develop your inclusive
intelligence and that’s what my
husband’s been doing as a man in a
male-dominated industry he’s decided
that gender is an identity that he just
doesn’t think about on a daily basis
it’s just not an important identity so
he’s been practicing pulling that lens
forward and looking through it more
deliberately and intentionally and he’s
been having some big aha moments as a
result in fact he was at a big meeting
where everyone was just divided up into
smaller discussion groups and he went
across the room to join a circle of
people that he had been randomly
assigned to when a female staffer walked
up to the group and asked the woman in
the group to take the notes because he
had this lens up he recognized that
gender my core inequity for the first
time in his life because of core
when women are asked to do what’s called
the housework of work it puts them in a
one down position
she can’t participate in the
conversation at the same level as
everyone else while she’s also trying to
take the notes and they may not view her
as their equal in the conversation even
if it’s only unconsciously because she’s
attending to this ministerial or
secretarial duty but because he was
pulling this lens forward he saw this
inequity and now he’s got a new plan
he’ll volunteer to take the notes or at
the very least make sure that this task
is shared more equitably so that it
doesn’t always fall to the woman so the
question is what will you do to build
your inclusive intelligence so that you
makes smarter better decisions one thing
that you can do is pull these blind
spots forward and look through these
lenses that will help you make smarter
decisions also surrounding yourself with
people who are different from you
they’ll bring new and different
information to your thinking and they’ll
force you out of your comfort zone and
make you think harder and work smarter
because the challenges that we’re facing
aren’t getting any easier they’re
becoming more and more complex will you
be blindsided by those difficult
problems or will you have the inclusive
intelligence to meet them head-on
the key to making good decisions is
diversity because it’s diversity that
makes you smarter
you
you
Please follow and like us: