Addressing a Critical Situation of Bias

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Optimizing Diversity on Teams

30 ratings

University of Pennsylvania

Optimizing Diversity on Teams

30 ratings

Course 3 of 5 in the Specialization Culture-Driven Team Building

By drawing on social science perspectives, this course enables you to learn what diversity is, and how to use it to maximize team performance, innovation and creativity. You also learn how to draw out the collective wisdom of diverse teams, handle conflict and establish common ground rules through real-world cases and peer-to-peer discussions. In addition, you discover how to overcome common biases faced in diverse teams. Systems of power, reward and rhetoric are discussed to help you create prosperous teams where differences flourish.

From the lesson

Team Diversity Basics

In the first module, you will learn the essentials of why diversity matters for teams, and why it can be difficult to build diverse teams. We will overview basic concepts of difference, bias, and conflict that will serve as a foundation for later modules.

Personal Introduction1:40

Diversity Matters and So Do Our Biases4:33

Intro of Torian Richardson3:58

Diversity and Inclusion Issues on International Teams3:02

Strategies for Adapting to a New Team Culture2:52

Cases of Strategic Focus on Diversity and Inclusion3:05

Addressing a Critical Situation of Bias2:11

Cultivating the Right Mindset to Manage Diversity and Inclusion Issues2:46

Interview with Andrés Castro Samayoa4:17

Interview with Ann Tiao13:47

Intro of Harvey Floyd II1:13

Strategies for Reducing Bias5:51

Questions that Help You Create a Diverse and Inclusive Team4:43

Frameworks for Managing Difficult Conversations4:52

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Aviva Legatt
Affiliated Faculty
Organizational Dynamics
Derek Newberry, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Organizational Dynamics

I actually worked with an organization, a transportation company, just recently.

And one of the challenges that we had was that particular jobs that were given out,

people felt as if there were some racial and cultural bias.

Because of some of the people that may have been there.

And that was very challenging, because part of it was true.

And one of the challenges for me as a leader was,

how do we address this in a positive way without it staying derogatory?

So bringing all the stakeholders to the table and really finding common ground,

which was, we all want opportunity, right.

And how do we divvy out, or measure who gets that opportunity was

the common ground that we were really trying to overcome.

Now, I didn't come up with the actual idea, nor did I implement it.

This actually came from the people who had the challenge.

They built that and then they kind of presented it to the whole organization, or

that division at the time.

And then we were able to implement that in a training program.

So everybody who is involved was actually a part of creating the solution.

Basically it was, well, who had the opportunities in that past and

how much opportunity did they have?

And then we looked at kind of that over time, versus performance over time.

And then we looked at, well, who didn't have opportunities?

And what were their performance metrics outside of that particular task, or

that particular job that someone wanted to do?

And those four things, kind of came up with a measuring system to say, well,

to make it fair, everybody should be within this range.

And if you're not, those people need to have those opportunities so they can be

within, I think it was between a four and a seven on a scale of one to ten, right.

Sounds very simple but the process was what was most important.

That everybody was involved with actually creating that solution.

Creating that base line was important.

So it was implemented during my tenure in which I was there.

But that took about six weeks to kind of develop, because it was an urgent issue.

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