If you had any hesitation at all about addressing these questions … or if you’d like to know how to uncover unconscious bias and help keep your own team, department or company out of million-dollar lawsuits … read on.
The Four Levels of Diversity Competence
Understanding the potential cost of diversity incompetence leads us to a critical question – the kind of question that many people in the organization, in my experience, lack the courage to ask. That question is:
“Exactly how diversity-competent is your organization?”
The practical answer to that question may surprise you. The truth is that your organization is only as competent as the “weakest diversity link” in your operation.
Look at it this way. If your organization were to run into a problem as serious as the problems you will read about in this book … Where in your organization would that problem be most likely to emerge? My experience is that the problem would be most likely to arise with a person who does not even realize how far behind the curve he or she is on diversity issues.
In fact, the most expensive diversity crises, whether we are measuring in terms of dollars or in terms of other resources, tend to arise because of an insidious phenomenon called hidden bias. This kind of bias is hidden in the subconscious mind that allows well-meaning people to make catastrophic errors that adversely affect their organizations, and their own careers, for years or decades.
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