Leading Consciously: Recent Episodes
Jean Latting
Jean interviews Minal Bopaiah, author of Equity: How to Design Organizations Where Everyone Thrives. She has much to say about the long and complicated path for DEI.
Key highlights:
- why equity is not the same as equality,
- how ableism is the most entrenched source of oppression, and
- three obstacles to discussing systemic racism:
- progress and personalization narrative,
- belief in rugged individualism, and
- the separate lives, separate fates narrative
Minal shows how the US benefits from other countries' publically funded education systems by recruiting their skilled workers, despite often opposing similar "socialized" education at home. This practice contributed to the "model minority" stereotype.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
This week Jean interviews Dr. Myrtle Bell, author of Diversity in Organizations. Dr. Bell talks about the value of diversity, the resistance to it, and how to overcome the resistance without the use of quotas.
She says, “I really believe that people don't know what they don't know,” and “sometimes empowerment is just being able to decide not to do something; that means you're strong enough to say, I'm not doing this.”
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Lisa Fain is the head of the Center for Mentoring Excellence. She spoke with Jean about the growth potential for mentors and mentees when they truly speak with, listen to, and respect each other’s personhood.
Nobody owns difference. Everybody owns difference.
Lisa says: "Relationships involve getting to know one another. It involves real curiosity. Seeing you as a human being with whom I want to have a relationship, that starts to create some accountability for change and that gets super exciting."
People think the mentor's job is to be the sage on the stage. A good mentor is a guide on the side.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Hamza Khan’s book, Leadership Reinvented, offers a roadmap to productivity, resilience, and constant change. In this podcast, he and Jean Latting engage in an animated conversation about leadership, resilience, belonging, and burnout.
He speaks of his own experience.
He offers much to contemplate, including his own experience as a Muslim erroneously placed on the do-not-fly list. Ironically, as an entrepreneur with 2 million views of his TED talk, his clients included Homeland Security and the Canadian Air Force.
I consider myself fortunate that I found a very accessible keyhole issue with which to explore systemic oppression: occupational burnout.
What are the system level reasons why I burned out? Sure enough, a lack of fairness in the workplace, unsustainable workload, insufficient uncommunicated values, insufficient reward, lack of control, poor/toxic community.
Fundamentally, what's at the heart of broken systems of systemic oppression? It's people who are propping up the status quo. And the status quo isn't the avoidance of a decision. It's a continuous past decision.
We eventually arrive at the dark core of personality, which is human beings' hardwired capacity to accept, neglect, or provoke the disutility of others, in order to maximize their own utility.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
This week Jean interviews Amri Johnson, CEO of Inclusion Wins, "a global cooperative of product and service providers focused on people-related solutions for organizations of all sizes." He is the author of Reconstructing Inclusion: Making DEI Accessible, Actionable, and Sustainable.Amri Johnson has a few provocative things to say about the current state of efforts toward diversity, equity, and inclusion."Contact theory basically said, when you bring people together as equals, and I'm not talking about economically, but as under the Constitution equals, and you bring them together to solve a common problem or to address a common goal, and you give them time, and so you have them connect with each other over time, and you have some sort of institutional support, prejudice gets reduced significantly.
"And that research, along with many hundreds of psychologists telling the courts that segregation harmed Black and White kids, it wasn't just about harming the Black kids. They came together around it, and that science was the other piece to go beyond the moral abhorrence of segregation, and separate but equal."And so what we did, where we had the opportunity to actually create more contact, we didn't solidify the contact, we just kept hammering at what White people are doing wrong, kind of collectively, and I think it took us from the potential for something transformational to something that was reductionist and, you know, it was getting major blowback."He also has much to say about the importance of dialogue, acceptance of personal responsibility, and the need to get out of the victim mentality.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Who are you? And how do you want to be known?One can be Black, male, heterosexual, cis-gendered, liberal, college graduate, athletic, married. Which matters to you?Which will cause you to be judged by others who don’t know you?What would your DNA test think you are? How do you self-identify?Our identities affect our allyship with those who are being marginalized because of one or more of their identities.What would cause you to stand up on their behalf?Watch or read Jean’s interview with Bärí Williams, lawyer, tech expert, and author of Diversity in the Workplace: Eye-opening Interviews to jumpstart conversations about Identity, privilege, and Bias.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Speak up! But how? "You don’t know my boss."Daniel Oestreich knows the dilemma well: he coaches people and groups on how to speak their truth with dignity and curiosity.Dan says: "The word I like these days is dignity, that we should be treating each other in a way that reinforces dignity of whoever you are." What does dignity look like? And what are the temptations that take us away from dignity in our relationship building work?Dan lists 10 characterizations of dignity, including identity, inclusion, and safety, that are paramount in being able to speak your truth; he draws from a book by Donna Hicks, who worked on reconciliation with Desmond Tutu (author; Dignity: Its essential role in resolving conflict).
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
If you lived close to the equator, how might your skin color protect you from harmful radiation? And if you lived far from the equator, would this protection be as critical?
What about Vitamin D? How might your closeness to the equator and the lightness or darkness of your skin affect how much you are able to absorb?
Nina Jablonski proposes these two factors – susceptibility to harmful radiation and absorption of Vitamin D – as the simple explanation for why people have different skin colors, a product of evolutionary adaptation.
Leonard Jeffries Jr, former chair of CUNY’s Black Studies Department in the 1990s, referred to Blacks as “sun people” and Whites as “ice people.”
He said many other things that were deemed a lot more inflammatory, getting fired from his position as a result, AND he was correct in this statement.
Interesting tidbit: his nephew Hakeem Jeffries is a US Congressman and Democratic minority leader.
So why is there so much value judgment on skin color? That’s a harder question, taking us into the historical evolution of the slave trade and emerging science of epigenetics.
Watch this week's interview for some fascinating observations.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
This is a remarkable podcast with a remarkable woman. Dr. Menah Pratt-Clarke is Vice President for Strategic Affairs and Diversity at Virginia Tech. Her parents earned PhDs in the 1960s and had to navigate racism and sexism in academia.
Dr. Pratt learned how to follow the whisper of the spirit, work within and without the system, address racism and sexism head-on, and promote impactful diversity initiatives.
In the podcast, she tells how she did it.
And how she manages to live a life with no regrets.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
In today’s world, leadership is not about telling people what to do. Moral leadership is required.But how does one learn moral leadership? Can it be taught? And more important, can it be learned? Follow this week’s podcast with a conversation between Jean Latting and Rod McCowan, who trains leaders to consider moral principles when making decisions.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Health disparities between Black and Whites, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic groups are not news. Sherra Aguirre speaks with Jean about the leadership role she took on in her community to promote changing the typical African American diet. In concert with other community leaders, the goal was to stave off common health issues such as heart disease, even without medical intervention.In the process, she marries, divorces, completes her education, learns on the fly how to run a profitable business, and finds mentors and helpers all the way.What does it take for a leader to learn how to move the needle? How did she learn how to improve herself first? What is the impact of meditation, grit, mentoring, and a commitment to continuous self-improvement on success?
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
This week Jean interviews Victor Varnado. Born with albinism, he didn’t know he was any different from his Black family until around age 4. Bullied at school for his light skin and poor eyesight, he learned to use his humor as a weapon. From there he worked in entertainment, became a cartoonist for The New Yorker, and wrote The Anti-Racism Activity Book for kids (available through antiracism.online). Victor chose to beat the odds stacked against him in life by using his comedic skills to pursue his dreams. This approach could have backfired. In today’s cancel culture, some people are genuinely perplexed as to when humor is appropriate. Victor has an unusual take on how to decide whether a joke is funny or offensive, and used that distinction to build his success today and plunge into topics that others stay away from.Listen to this interview to learn about the interplay between humor, pain, and pursuing your dreams.
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Moral dilemma: Suppose you completely disagree with someone on a principle that you are morally sure of. What next?
One person will find it easy to listen to their point of view even while disagreeing. Another person will try to pinpoint exactly what they are disagreeing about A third person will break off the relationship and stop talking. In this conversation, Jean questions Ilana Redstone about the tenets of The Certainty Trap which, Ilana says, we all are subject to. The Certainty Trap happens when we have moral principles we are 100% sure of and shut out any objections to the contrary. We find it difficult to work with, much less live with, anyone who opposes our certain beliefs.
Ilana says that our certainty works against us in the long run and harms our society.
What does leadership look like when the mission is fighting against sex trafficking? What does it look like when a woman with a corporate background, masters in clinical psychology, and megachurch pastor takes on sex traffickers?
Elizabeth Melendez Fisher Good was burned out. She moved away from Chicago to get away from the pressure, take a breather, sit on the beach… and ended up with a mission to address sex trafficking.
How did she attract so many true believers? How did she get people to commit their faith, time, and philanthropic donations to this mission? Where did she learn her passionate leadership skills? How did she heal her own trauma? And how can she love the people who cause so much pain?
Leadership #SexTrafficking
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Joanna Cea and Jess Rimington wrote Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work, which invites us to reimagine work and reimagine capitalism. They believe it is possible for organizations and communities to set up structures where decision-making is shared, and the well-being of people is considered, along with profits and efficiencies.What are beloved economies? What are loveless economies?What happens when businesses embrace an ethic of listening, loving, and true inclusiveness?Follow the interview for a view of future economies that serve everyone.#LeadingConsciously #Business #Economy #Ethic
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Dr. Melissa Ochoa has a few things to say about the word Latinx; mainly, she doesn’t like it. For one thing, it doesn’t work in Spanish. Hear what she proposes instead.#Leading Consciously #Latin #Hispanic #Latinamerica #Latino #Latinos
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
After George Floyd’s murder, nonprofits across the country realized they needed to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some actually meant it.
Ronald McDonald House Houston was determined to make a difference, not just for their staff but for their families across the world who needed a safe space.
What does it mean to truly commit to DEI practices? What are the alternatives? How does a nonprofit organization find the will to take the long view?
On November 26, 2022, three members of Ronald McDonald House Houston (RMH) who were instrumental in implementing its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative presented their results to date at the 29th annual Power Tools for Nonprofits Conference, sponsored by CenterPoint Energy, United Way, and the University of Houston Downtown.
Presenters were Cristina Vetrano (CEO), Philip Tenenbaum (Board member), Cheronda Rutherford (chair of DEI staff committee), and Jean Latting (consultant).
leadership #Dei #ronaldmcdonaldhouse #RonaldMcDonaldHouseCharities
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
Today Jean speaks with Helen Stagg, CEO of Change Happens in Houston. Helen’s well-honed yet intuitive leadership style is to lead with love and connection.
What is the leadership style of your team? How can you improve on it? How have your childhood and experience shaped the leader that you are?
leadingconsciously #leadership #leaders
Conversations with forward-thinking leaders about patterns that keep us stuck and how the leaders are breaking the mold. Personal reflections on provocative topics and how to level up despite yourself. Get unstuck, change your story, become more effective. Join us.
The ability to lead consciously can open your eyes.
Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.
What is the drama triangle?
Stephen B. Karpman’s drama triangle represents a pattern of dysfunctional relationships.
In one corner is the oppressor; in another, the victim; and in the third, the rescuer. But the roles change, just like that. And each person believes they have a valid reason for being where they are.
The dynamics of the drama triangle may apply to both personal and workplace situations, where they can drag down the whole system.
How do we understand the various roles, their interplay, and their effect on the whole? Why do people switch roles regardless of where they started?
Listen to various explanations and strategies to keep you and your organization from being stuck.
Our guest blogger this week is Gig Mensah, a South Africa-based journalist. She writes about Afrophobia, fear of Africans, and expresses her regret that many African Americans do not more closely align themselves with Africa.
How did Afrophobia get started, what are the signs it actually exists, and, especially, what can we do about it? Gig offers her thought-provoking answers to these questions.
Gig Mensah is a social justice and environmental journalist.
This week’s guest blogger, Francine Derby, writes about her personal journey away from the culture of overwork. The presence of both a strong work ethic and a limiting psychiatric diagnosis add to the mix.
What is the effect of overwork on workers’ well-being? Think about your own life. Are you consumed by work? Do you postpone time for yourself and family? Are you able to detach from work when on vacation? And how can you produce excellence without burning out?
Francine has a lot to say about it.
What would you do if someone described you with the R-word: racist, racially insensitive, racially naïve, exclusionary, oblivious? How do you imagine you would react? How would you want to react?
This week’s blog follows the honest and difficult journey begun by Amy Porterfield, an online course marketing guru and top ranked podcaster, designated one of the “top 50 social media power influencers” by Forbes. According to her website, Amy has a following of 250,000+ people and a seven-figure business.
We see how she wrestles with her commitment to justice, her missteps, and along the way, the model of a very public apology. We follow her growing awareness of the part she plays, and our emotional response.
What do people think about critical race theory, and why was there such anger about it on The View?
What does it mean to move on? What has to be done before that can happen?
Jean’s blog is about the interplay between victims and perpetrators, whether they be descendants of those who owned slaves or were slaves, Germans or Israelis after the Holocaust, or oppressors or descendants of indigenous people.
Why is it so difficult to be accountable or to hold others accountable? And why is it so complicated to get any one side to acknowledge the pain caused to the other?
What happens to people when they accrue power? Do they believe they now have the right to roll over their staff?
Think about a time when you were marginalized by a superior… or worse, when you did the marginalizing. You’re a good person. How does this happen? And what can you do to change it?
The workplace provides many opportunities for power imbalances. Listen to Jean’s blog to learn what happens to people in power and how to address it.
What did it take to make ordinary Germans into killers? Were there unusual circumstances, or could this still happen?
The need to answer this question has occupied some of the best minds in the world for over 75 years. Understanding it is crucial to forestalling a repeat. Part of this answer requires us to look within; how might we be persuaded to commit atrocities?
This panel discussion, How Did Ordinary Citizens Become Murderers?, from the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum provides many insights; answers are much harder to come by.
You’re living a good life: working at a meaningful job, paying your bills, contributing to your community. When disaster strikes – as it inevitably does – what is your response? Do you wait for someone to fix it? Do you dwell on the unfairness of it all? What do you need to move ahead?
Angela Blanchard is an expert in disaster recovery, having cut her teeth on the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She thrives in chaotic situations that would daunt most of us. How did she learn this and what wisdom can she provide us?
resilience #leadingconsciously #disasterrecovery #growth
Growing up with ADHD, what you hear are: “you lost your keys again?” “where’s the project I assigned you last week?” “How could you forget to feed the dog?” Rarely do you hear: “wow, that was a genius presentation!” or “I knew I could count on you to come up with a creative solution.”
Being neurodivergent in an organization can be stressful when administrators see only the challenges, not the gifts.
Listen to one young lawyer’s struggle to be accepted for who she is, why the diagnosis of ADHD often reveals a racial divide, and how to make differences work for everyone.
Racism isn’t always obvious. How do you respond to subtle, perhaps unintentional slights?
On one hand, calling out all offensive actions as racist (even if they might be) dilutes the power of the word and turns off the people you’re trying to reach. On the other hand, silence could be interpreted as acceptance or letting people off the hook. It’s not a straightforward decision. How might you determine what to do each time you’re confronted with the choice?
Jean wrote this blog to clarify the dilemma for herself. Along the way, she makes some discoveries about motivation and effectiveness and finds herself disagreeing with some very articulate writers.
The topic begs for open dialogue and questions from all sides. Listen the audio and join the discussion.
This week Jean interviews Peter Michaelson, whose most recent book is "Our Deadly Flaw: Healing the Inner Conflict that Cripples Us and Subverts Society." His website is WhyWeSuffer.com.
What if you had no inner critic telling you you’re just not good enough?
What if you learned to silence your inner critic? What if your inner passivity didn’t allow your inner critic to rule? What could you accomplish?
Hear Peter's answers to these questions.
jean interviews Alison Taylor and Brian Harward of the NYU Stern School of Business on the viability of operating ethically in business. Ethical behavior in corporations goes beyond compliance with laws to include anticorruption, sustainability, human rights, culture and behavior, and employee and stakeholder engagement.
Can businesses thrive while operating ethically? Will shareholders accept reduced profits to increase ethical decisions in support of equitable practices?
If incentives are offered to operate ethically, how can we prevent them from being treated as bribes (which induces the pretense of ethical behavior) rather than rewards (in recognition of actual ethical behavior)? If they become viewed as bribes, are we encouraging window dressing rather than true values commitment to environmental and social responsibility?
And which way are we trending now – toward greater or less ethical behavior by corporations?
Business #leadingconsciously #ethics
What is the relationship of Indigenous peoples to the land, and how does it differ from the Europeans who settled it?
What really happened in the boarding schools?
What would be lost if Indigenous people were completely assimilated into White society? And would they ever be accepted even then?
In this week’s vlog, Jean gains answers to these questions from Dina Gilio-Whitaker, a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos and an independent educator in American Indian environmental policy and other issues. Dr. Gilio-Whitaker is the author of two books and is herself a Native American.
Listen to this fascinating conversation.
indigenouspeople #leadingconsciously #identity #IndigenousPeoplesDay
Words mean different things in different contexts. How are you to know if the words you are using form a connection – or hinder it?
Harnessing our internal strength in battle, we will combat American authoritarianism. Peter Michaelson posits you cannot fight power without finding your own.
In this week’s interview, Jean speaks with Virginie Ladisch, an expert in truth-seeking and civic engagement at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). As initiators of change, the ICTJ works with victims and survivors of massive human rights violations to hold those responsible to account, reform and build democratic institutions, and prevent the recurrence of violence or repression.
What are the results? How can Virginie handle the stories of atrocities without giving up? How does she remain optimistic? What were her experiences to lead her in this direction? And what level of courage does it take for victims and survivors to speak up? #LeadingConsciously #SocialJustice #HumanRights
Jean interviews Brian Lassiter about quality management, the need to hardwire equity and inclusion into business practices, and the skill of asking questions well.
Brian talks about the Baldrige framework and how it has revolutionized American business.
What is the process for understanding and formalizing successful processes? How do you fit diversity, inclusion, and equity into those processes?
And most important, how do you learn to ask questions that provide information instead of defensiveness?
Communication #SocialJustice #Workplace #LeadingConsciously
People ask: what is the point of reparations for past injustice? They don’t undo the past. People today were not slave owners. So what’s the rationale?
Kamilah Moore is chair of the California Reparations Task Force. She and Jean talk about "standing in the shoes of…," racial terror, the wealth gap, cultural appropriation, and generational debt. How can the Task Force address reparations to cover the legacy of injustice and stolen opportunities involved?
Kamilah Moore is a reparatory justice scholar and an attorney with a specialization in entertainment and intellectual property transactions.
While studying abroad at the University of Amsterdam, Moore wrote a master thesis exploring the intersections between international law and reparatory justice for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and their legacies.
RaceConscious #RacialJustice #Allyship #LeadingCosciously
What happens to a people’s identity when conquerors rename everything after themselves? How does the original owner’s history disappear?
How does this renaming appeal to the descendants of the conquerors? If the subjugated people are invisible, why should anyone bother to preserve them?
Dr. Bonnie McGill is on a mission to make indigenous people visible again.
Identity #DiversityandInclusion #Diversity #BridgingDifferences
Do you wonder to what extent our parents’ and grandparents’ history affects our mental health? How much of what we treat as mental illness is a result of the trauma they experienced? And whose fault is it? Or maybe it’s no one’s fault.
This time Jean interviews Jasmin Joseph, a writer, researcher, and aspiring producer, on intergenerational trauma and how it impacts mental health. Jasmin has written about generational trauma and her own experiences with it as the child of American Black and Caribbean Black parents.
MentalHealth #Trauma #GenerationalTrauma #InnerChild
Dr. Kira Banks works to remove the emotional power of oppression from being internalized, using a form of therapy called Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT).
"Internalized oppression," she believes, becomes a part of you. Better to conceptualize it as "appropriated," because then you can put it down. Through ACT, people learn to separate their feelings about their oppression from their actual selves.
This time Jean interviews Dr. Kira about her work. Are you interested in how this works?
When a White man teaches in a Black school, he sees things that others may not. Dave DeJohn has insights on the school-to-prison pipeline, equality vs equity, and how to discipline effectively. What has he been able to accomplish? What does his research show? Listen to Jean’s discussion with Dave. His novel approach to disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline and his ability to understand multiple cultures brings him to this interview.
André Marcel Harris is an advocate for people with sickle cell disease and for men who are survivors of sexual assault, having lived experience in both.
In this interview, Jean asks André about his experience and his ability to thrive where others might have given up. They discuss how addressing social inequities that make it so much harder for people to access help requires awareness and sensitive disease management.
A barrier to racial understanding is the fear of being exposed as a racist. What if we could find a safe place to have these uncomfortable conversations? The purpose of this deep and revealing interview was to build trust, examine hard truths about the past and present, and share the lived experiences of those who participated.
What is it like for children to grow up in an atmosphere of caring and acceptance? Dr. Larry Brendtro has worked with Indigenous children and has written many books based on Indigenous principles of child-rearing. He founded Resilience Resources based on his work with troubled and Indigenous youth. In this interview, Jean and Larry navigate what can be learned from the Native American approach to child-rearing.
Peter Michaelson has written eight books on depth psychology and inner conflict, how to
surface your emotions, and how to accept responsibility for your reactions. Do you feel you have to sit on your feelings? Being passive or angry is not only counterproductive but reinforces your negative self-talk. Listen as Peter explains how to throw off self-doubt and self-sabotage so you can realistically navigate a difficult world and break out of this cycle.
Danielle Murphy, LCSW SEP, is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who understands the body language of stress and how to bypass the spoken narrative to address it. Is it possible to move beyond anguished hypervigilance or suppression so we can face our obstacles and enjoy our lives? Danielle says yes, and she can help us learn how.
What is internalized oppression? What is it like for a member of a marginalized group to be rejected by their own people? How does activism foster a sense of liberation and negate internalized oppression? Activists Brandon Mack and Jean answer all these questions.
Do you know what the difference is between “I’m hungry” and “I haven’t eaten since 8 am”?
How do you interpret Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw from the competition? Was she hurting the team? Supporting them by not holding them back? And how much of the criticism can be attributed to her being a Black woman?
Dr. Barry Regan discusses high context vs low context communication.
Understanding high and low context is essential to having important conversations.
How do visionaries convince funding sources to support organizational infrastructure so services may be sustained?
Jean interviews Angela Blanchard, who helped take Neighborhood Centers Inc. (now BakerRipley) from a small neighborhood settlement house to a multi-location service provider. How? By building on the community’s strengths instead of seeing only its problems.
Find more about Angela's story.
This time, Jean interviews Carol Stewart, who has a Masters in Counseling Psychology; her specialty is introverted leadership. What do you do if you’re an introvert who has to speak in public? What do you do if you don’t speak up for fear of saying the wrong thing? How do you change your thinking so you can be more confident about being heard?
Learn more about it.
Jean interviews Dr. Thomas Keith. His recent book, The Bro Code, identifies ways in which men are raised that impede their development and relationships with others.
He says: “Men in American culture have intersectional identities, all of which play a role in the way some boys are raised to be men. The common denominator is that girls and women are less important and should be subordinate to men."
How does misogyny affect men too? And what is the "don't get caught" rule? Find out more by listening to this episode.
Being a different thinker, inclusive culture, pride month, and Juneteenth are some of the topics you can hear about in this week's blog post. In this conversation, Jean talks with Charles Shaw, global director for diversity and inclusion at Facebook. Charles’s dissertation was about exploring the generational identity and professional lives of African American women. His research uncovered a surprising discovery.
After one year of posting, Jean interviews four amazing members of the Pathfinders and DEI survey communities. Each is a well-respected leader in their organization. Each is committed to fostering racial and social justice in their spheres of influence.
We salute all who participated in this vlog and hope you enjoy and benefit from what they offer.
Dr. Jean Kantambu Latting interviews Sunita Sehmi about her new book, The Power of Belonging. She talks about her childhood, her experience of not belonging, and the importance of finding a home in the workplace.
How much do you know about your own culture? Dr. Jean Kantambu Latting speaks with Barry Regan, an intercultural communications educator. You can learn more about it in this interview.
Intercultural // Diversity // Equity // Social Justice
This is a story of community, commitment, and perseverance. It illustrates what happens when a small band of committed people is able to mobilize hundreds of volunteers for a cause they deeply believe in.
How much do you know about bullying? How can it be prevented? Dr. Jean Kantambu Latting interviews Wendy Harpur, who has written on LinkedIn about bullying. Find the answer to these questions in this interview.
Bullying // Diversity // Equity // Social Justice
In today's episode, Cindy discusses the concept of spiral dynamics.
In Cindy’s words, spiral dynamics “is a model of human development.” In Jean’s, it is “a theory about the past, present, and future of humankind.”
Give it a listen and let us know your thoughts!
In this episode, we have Cindy Wigglesworth, the founder and president of Deep Change, Inc. as our guest on our blog. Cindy developed a skills assessment for spiritual intelligence. She and Jean Kantambu Latting discuss spiritual intelligence and its benefits.
This is a two-part discussion. Stay tuned for part 2!
Cherry Steinwender went from picking cotton and cleaning houses to co-founding the Center for the Healing of Racism. And, by the way, along the way she met and married a man who spoke only German. Would you like to know more? Listen to the full episode.
In Part 1, Mark Hays described how a challenging childhood fostered in him the desire to serve as an ally to foster racial justice. If you haven’t looked at Part 1 yet, I suggest you do so. It paves the way for this, the second part of the conversation.
Here are excerpts by Mark from the conversation.
On being a White male as an advocate for persons of color: “I pretty much learned that my shelf life on having a friend who is a White male might be four or five months.”
On diversity: “Diversity has been a shell game.”
On his role: “I want to be the guardian angel giving people safety. If I wasn't going to do this after all I learned from Mary [Harlan]and the faith and trust she had in me, that would just be a ridiculous thing.”
On chronic unease: “It's maintaining that sense of chronic unease to make sure we're doing everything we can do to not have those kinds of organizations that hurt people. And so that's become my theme for how I describe what I do.”
I met Mark Hays many moons ago at the Center for the Healing of Racism. Mark is an organizational consultant specializing in leadership, change management, relationship and engagement, and inclusion and equity work. He holds a master’s degree in education/counseling and completed 30 hours towards a master’s in history from Texas Southern University. He has been an advocate for racial and social justice since childhood.
“I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas; I didn't know about my heritage, ethnicity, until years after my parents had passed. To get to the baseball park we had to drive through the part of town that was African American; as we got close to the railroad tracks, my father would roll the windows up and tell me to lay down on the on the floorboard. He said, this is an area that people can hurt you, they'll do things to you. They didn't teach hate, they taught fear.”
Dr. Barbara Love speaks about the power of transformation, the pitfalls of helping others, and the plantation’s money box.
This week I had a wonderful conversation with Dr. Barbara Love: consultant, coach, author, lecturer, climate change activist, organizational transformation specialist, personal transformation specialist, and Professor Emerita from the University of Massachusetts College of Education and Social Justice Education.
Her liberatory consciousness model is compelling, yet simple. Her Framework to Develop a Liberatory Consciousness aptly charts a journey for those seeking a roadmap.
The components are awareness, analysis, accountability, and action. Although you may be tempted to treat them as steps, Dr. Love describes them as cyclical.
She says: “The awareness component of a liberatory consciousness involves developing the capacity to notice, to give attention to our daily lives, our language, our behaviors, and even our thoughts. It means making the decision to live our lives from a waking position.”
There’s much more in this engaging conversation: about how we oppress ourselves, the pitfalls of helping others, befriending the head of the local KKK, and the plantation’s money box.
In my blog #9, I wrote about Amy Porterfield, an online marketing guru and a top-flight podcaster. Amy went through a very public and painful learning experience following the murder of George Floyd. I invited her to this interview for her perspective on the journey from obliviousness to learning and growth. Here she demonstrates recovery from mistakes as we navigate the path of racial understanding.
The situation was made even more painful because of her status and sense of personal responsibility. Amy has been designated by Forbes as one of the top 50 social media power influencers. According to her website, Amy has a following of 250,000 people and a seven-figure business.
I was a witness to the situation because she sends out regular emails about online course development, and I am one of her followers. I watched the drama unfold, email by email. In blog #9, I wrote about the situation from my perspective reading those emails.
This is my interview with Amy where she reveals her side of the story.
How do you inspire your White friends while writing 30 days of love letters for your Black friends?
If you are Amy Hageman, you start with Day Zero.
Amy, like many of us, was shaken by the brazen murder of George Floyd. She felt comfortable enough to post on Facebook. Yet her ending comment, “This is all I have to say about the matter,” did not sit well with her Black friends.
So to challenge herself and walk the path for her White friends, she pledged to write something on Facebook every day for 30 days. Not only did she accomplish her purpose, but she also grew and learned with each post.