Leadership

Some organizations talk about privilege and have developed a common and shared language around what it is as part of their diversity initiatives. Other organizations don’t yet have a common understanding. We can think about privilege as: “Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do. Access to privilege doesn’t determine one’s outcomes,

You’ve acknowledged to yourself that you recoil from giving critical feedback to employees. Whether this stems from a desire to avoid workplace conflict, a lack of confidence in your communication style or concerns over doubting your opinion post-feedback, you would like to improve for your own sake, and for the sake of your employees. After all, they are relying on you as their manager to guide their work performance in order to succeed at their career goals. How to proceed?

When I have asked managers why they hesitate to give constructive feedback to their employees, I hear things like: I’m worried she’ll get upset I’m afraid to hurt our relationship I don’t think he can take it and will argue I don’t want to start a conflict What do all of these excuses have in common? Fear. We fear the other’s reaction. Notice how in each of these explanations, the burden is put on the other person. “She’ll …

Previously, I discussed why we might be reluctant to give others feedback and gave some ideas for approaching feedback in a positive way for positive results. This week, I’d like to talk about the downside of not giving feedback and why it’s such an imperative if you want to maintain effective working relationships. What is implicit bias? There is a lot of talk about implicit bias these days. We are grappling to understand what it is and how it impacts …