Old Recruiting Excuses No Longer Fit Today’s World
Those old reasons not to hire employees due to gender, race or creed in order to homogenize a business can no longer be used with credibility. The best way to attract and keep the “best” workers, and customers too, is to have a workplace that reflects the world as it is today not as it was. “Strength lies in differences, not in similarities” ― Stephen R. Covey (businessman and author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.) Said another way, diversity is a competitive advantage.
Our communities are increasingly becoming a “multi” place to live: multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural. When the best recruits are selected and then included in the fabric of the business, their differences won’t inhibit growth or make things difficult as once thought. A company can thrive when everyone is expected to participate and contribute. Assimilating multi points of view works. A diverse staff adds value.
“We believe great leadership is by definition inclusive. In an inclusive organization, everyone is responsible and empowered to lead. It’s up to each of us to act as an agent of positive and sustainable change that will lead our organizations forward…” The Forum on Workplace Inclusion
Pastor Curry-Lasley: We Slip Sometimes
Reverend Sheriolyn Curry Lasley, Senior Pastor, Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church, Phoenix, AZ
What do you do when you are a great speaker and something happens that for the ordinary person would be embarrassing? Well, something potentially mortifying occurred when Positively Powerful Spiritual Leader Reverend Sheriolyn Curry Lasley was delivering a speech. Use these tips that she demonstrated at that time of the great slip incident.
- Calm down. Be confident.
- Take it in stride with humor and a smile. Being humorous is one of the characteristics of a great speaker.
- Be yourself. Don’t take it so seriously. Be authentic. Stuff happens.
- And sometimes we slip. When you can handle a slip with a laugh and a quick recovery, you’ll win an audience over even faster than by delivering a word perfect speech.
We Slip Sometimes from Positively Powerful-Triad West on Vimeo. Recorded at the 2013 Positively Powerful Woman Awards Conversation On Leadership Summit.
What Is Democracy?
From a very early age, we learned that in order to participate in any game (sports, cards, chess or checkers etc), we needed to know how to play the game. Know the rules, know the boundaries and know how to keep score. We understood that we could not win every time we played and that was OK.
Democracy, for the United States, is thought to be the fundamental reason for this country’s existence, with its freedoms but, it has a “game” that hardly any of us truly understands.
A few months back, we had the opportunity attend a conference at Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Arizona State University (CSRD – ASU) where our understanding of Democracy and what it meant was challenged. What follows is a short film that illustrates the diversity of thought on the question, “What is Democracy?”.
This short is eligible for the People’s Choice Award which is determined by public vote. Click here if you would like to vote for this film.
Don’t Underestimate The Value of Happiness
The quest for happiness is no joke. Happiness is real and when you are in the experience of happiness you are lost for words. There is not a way to describe happiness or being happy, you just say it when it happens. “I’m so Happy” and you say it to anyone who will listen and they instinctively know what it is that you are feeling, so much so that they become infected and experience happiness themselves.
We know that you can’t buy happiness and that there are no guarantees on when, how often and for how long happiness will last. It is a place that you find yourself, like stumbling into a restaurant that you didn’t know was there. It is being lost in unexpected joy.
Each day, some of us awaken, prepared to endure another lackluster day without ever asking ourselves “Why am I doing this”.
Really, why are we doing this.
