The Person You Mean to Be

Key Concepts

What it means to be a good person

“We redefine what it means to be a good person as someone who is trying to be better, as opposed to someone who is allowing themselves to believe in the illusion that they are always a good person.” (p. 8)

Four phases to being a “builder”

• “Activating a growth mindset of being a good-ish work-in-progress, not a premade good person; 

• “Seeing the ordinary privilege we hold and putting it to good use on behalf of others; 

• “Opting for willful awareness, though our minds and lives make willful ignorance more likely; and

• “Engaging the people and systems around us.” (p. 20)

Building psychological safety and having a growth mindset are critical for being able to lead change

“Low psychological safety teams foster fixed mindsets and are less likely to perform well. When a team’s psychological safety is high, however, it is easy to imagine how growth mindsets, and performance, will flourish.” (p. 30)

“Edmondson finds that the most important influence on psychological safety is one’s manager.” (p. 30)

Privilege is about headwinds and tailwinds

“Antiracist educator and author Debby Irving uses an often-cited headwinds and tailwinds metaphor to explain the invisibility of these systemic, group-level differences. Headwinds are the challenges—some big, some small, some visible, some invisible—that make life harder for some people, but not for all people.” (p. 64)

“The invisibility of headwinds and tailwinds leads us to vilify people facing headwinds. It is no coincidence that the groups facing great headwinds in our society are also the most negatively stereotyped.” (p. 65)

It’s hard for people to recognize privilege because we don’t learn about systems of oppression in school and because of bounded awareness 

“Loewen found that only about half of the books listed racism or a similar term in the index. Only three discussed what might have caused racism. In addition, most of the books ‘present slavery virtually as uncaused, a tragedy, rather than a wrong perpetrated by some people on others. Somehow we ended up with four million slaves in America but no owners. This is part of a pattern in our textbooks: anything bad in American history happened anonymously.’” (p. 79)

“Some research suggests that money has similar bounded awareness effects, leading us to focus more on ourselves than on others. Let us consider how power and money reinforce our meritocracy belief. The more power we have and the more money we have, the less likely we are to see our own privilege in the system. The more power we have and the more money we have, the more likely we are to cling to the meritocracy belief and the more likely we are to believe that the poor and powerless do not deserve power and money.” (p. 99)

It’s hard to see our ordinary privileges when society is built around our identities

“People who can walk are less likely to think about their legs than people who cannot walk. White people are less likely to think about their race. Straight people are less likely to think about their sexual orientation. The upwardly mobile are less likely to think about their economic mobility. Christians are less likely to think about their Christian identity. Native English speakers in the United States are less likely to think about their first language.” (p. 112)

“Rather, the society in which we live is structured around these identities. Those whose identities do not vary from the norm are lulled into thinking that their experience is universal. People with other identities are reminded of their difference from the norm on a regular basis.” (p. 112)

We don’t stand up when we don’t recognize our psychological standing

“Most of us do not get involved in issues that do not (seem to) affect us directly, where we lack what psychologists Dale Miller and his colleagues call “psychological standing.” Psychological standing is the feeling that it is “legit” for us to get involved. We do not feel like it is our place to say or do something, even when we are just as outraged about an issue as someone who is directly affected. It is not that we lack confidence or fear punishment. The risk feels great.” (p. 123)

Approaches about simply “managing diversity” or about “tolerance” prevent organizations from realizing the benefits of diversity

“Business school professor Martin Davidson explains in his book The End of Diversity as We Know It that managing diversity suggests there is a problem to be solved.15 The alternate approach is leveraging difference, where there is an opportunity to be seized. When organizations opt for managing diversity rather than leveraging difference, they engage in different activities and reap different outcomes as a result. The tolerance mode is defensive and narrow.” (p. 155)

“In his book Racism Without Racists, sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explains how color-blindness sets the stage for ‘color-blind racism,’ ways of thinking that rely on non-race-related justifications for the vast differences in life outcomes between races.19 He writes that ‘at the heart of color-blindness . . . lies a myth: the idea that race has all but disappeared as a factor shaping the life chances of all Americans.’” (p. 157)

“Diversity Is About the Gateways; Inclusion Is About the Pathways”

“Inclusion is what happens before and after the official decisions in which people are formally brought into a group. Think of diversity as the gateways to schools, organizations, and communities, and inclusion as the pathways leading up to and after that gateway. In other words, gateways are the decision points when we track the diversity numbers, such as admissions, hiring, promotions, and salary decisions. Pathways are the moments that shape those outcomes, but they are not tracked by a formal statistic.” (p. 170)

“Arguments in favor of diversity usually hinge on the power of diverse voices. If we do not hear the voices, we lose these benefits. These are the day-to-day behaviors that are creating more, or less, inclusion.” (p. 176)

Quotables

“Black and Hispanic job applicants are more likely to apply for jobs when black or Hispanic representatives are depicted in company recruitment materials. It also matters how those representatives are portrayed. In one study, black undergraduates were more likely to apply for jobs portraying black company employees, especially if the employees were in supervisory positions. If you are underrepresented, you are more likely to look for representation clues, however superficial, and take them into account.” (p. 27)

“Organizational scholar Miguel Unzueta further notes that perceptions of diversity are fluid. What we perceive as diversity does not necessarily line up with the actual numbers because “diversity is what you want it to be.” People will perceive a group as more diverse if they tend toward a more hierarchical view of the world. They will perceive a group as more diverse if they are feeling motivated to protect their own group. Members of minority groups will perceive more diversity if their own group is represented, versus if other minority groups are represented.” (p. 39)

“The business case for diversity should be part of our motivation for moving from believer to builder, not all of it. For many of us, the moral case for diversity is the most robust and reliable of all.” (p. 56)

“The White Men’s Leadership Study, conducted by Greatheart Leader Labs, asked 670 leaders from eight leading companies to rate the diversity and inclusion effectiveness of white male leaders in their organization. Almost half of the white male respondents felt that white male leaders in their organizations were effective on these issues. The majority of respondents who are not white males disagreed.” (p. 120)

“Research shows that the more we care about something, the more likely we are to willfully ignore negative relevant information about it. Management researchers Kristine Ehrich and Julie Irwin found that we underseek ethical attribute information about products we consume. Care a lot about child labor and love your sneakers? Then you are especially unlikely to check on the manufacturing practices of the sneaker manufacturer. They also find that we are more likely to underseek that information when we care deeply about that particular attribute. In other words, the more we care about something, the less we want to know, lest we be burdened with troublesome knowledge.” (p. 135)

“At the core, positive stereotypes are like all stereotypes: they get in the way of seeing people as individuals.” (p. 159)

“Overclaiming credit is something many of us do. Undercrediting people from groups facing bias is also something many of us do. Together, these two patterns are dangerous to inclusion. We do not listen to the contributions from people around us and then we claim their contributions as our own. This makes others less likely to listen to those people.” (p. 181)

“Our media can be all mirror, no window.” (p. 190)

“The language of the workplace also carries many narratives. Journalist Jessica Bennett decoded some of the sexist language in her useful (and funny) book Feminist Fight Club. To figure out “is that description sexist?” she recommends the “law of reversibility” as follows: “Step 1: Reverse the gender of your subject. Step 2: See if it sounds funny. Step 3: Repeat.” Consider when we describe women as emotional, crazy, bossy, or aggressive. Would you use those same terms to describe a man? The law extends to other identity dimensions, such as when we describe African Americans as well-spoken, articulate, clean, or qualified. Would you use those same terms to describe a white person?” (p. 202)