Joe Gerstandt

What specifically do you mean when you use the word “inclusion?” It has become one of the most popular words relative to the modern workplace, yet in most organizations it remains a vague, ambiguous idea; and vague, ambiguous targets are incredibly hard to hit. If inclusion is the product you are trying to deliver, then you should be able to speak to its characteristics. This message brings a powerful new clarity to the concept of inclusion, what it is, why it matters and how it happens. The audience will leave this message with a strong foundation upon which to build impactful and sustainable diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Inclusive leadership requires more than a statement of commitment, it is an active practice. This session introduces you to that practice. Anchored in a practical model of what inclusion is, Joe will introduce you to a set of competencies and commitments to ensure that your leadership is, in fact, inclusive. You will leave this session with work to do and tools to use, things that you can act on immediately.

While the word “authenticity,” gets casually thrown around as if it is a simple, safe, and common thing, the truth is a bit more complicated. Authenticity, properly understood, is hard fought and often involves a fair amount of real and / or perceived risk. As a result, authenticity is often lacking in our places of work, in our personal and professional lives. Which is unfortunate, because authenticity is a pretty righteous thing. This session explores authenticity, what it matters on the individual and organizational level, and how to put authenticity to work for you.

Your organization likely says wonderful things about inclusion, but can anyone explain what it actually is? If inclusion is our product (and it should be our first product), we should know its characteristics. This session will equip you to guide your organization in designing an inclusive employee experience, actionable for, and specific to your organization. This is how we make it real.

Key takeaways:
• Understand the necessity of having great clarity regarding what it means to be fully included in their organization.
• Understand the foundational concepts relative to the experience of being included (psychological safety, trust, empathy, etc.).
• Understand a design process and participate in several short writing exercises toward clarifying what inclusion means.
• Learn how to take the process back to your organization and design an inclusive employee experience.

Much of what is said and done in the name of diversity and inclusion today is, unfortunately, based on an antiquated and flawed paradigm. We stubbornly cling to the idea that there are generally two groups of people in the world; there are “good people,” who are open-minded, nonjudgmental and free of bias, and then there are “bad people,” who are closed-minded, judgmental and dripping with bias. This conveniently leaves most of us completely out of the conversation regarding bias; as long as I am a “good person,” I don’t have any work to do, beyond helping to point out the bad ones…who clearly need to be “fixed.”

We know enough today about human beings, specifically the human brain, to know that there is no such thing as a nonjudgmental human being. We are naturally and even automatically judgmental, there is no hatred or fear required. Bias is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, it is simply a true thing, and only becomes a problem when we convince ourselves it is not there. Having an accurate understanding of what bias is and where it comes from, allows us to do something about it, to make sure that we are mitigating its impact on our decisions and interactions.

This is an interactive, information-rich and incredibly actionable message.

Key takeaways:
• Understand what bias, and unconscious (or implicit) bias are.
• Be introduced to research from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience regarding the source and impacts of unconscious (or implicit) bias.
• Understand why bias is a natural aspect of the human experience.
• Understand and explore the ways that unconscious (or implicit) bias can undermine individual and group performance in the workplace.
• Leave with individual action items that they can immediately incorporate into their work.
• Be prepared to identify collective opportunities for taking action to reduce the impact of unconscious (or implicit) bias.
• Leave with resources to support additional learning, sharing and action relative to mitigating the impact of unconscious (or implicit) bias.

Inclusion has, in the past decade, become an incredibly popular word in the workplace. It is not at all difficult to find leaders, organizations and communities quick to tell you how incredibly inclusive they are. What remains difficult to find is the leader who can explain what that actually means. Inclusion remains, in most organizations, a vague, abstract concept. It is no wonder so many organizations struggle to determine how to get there and what to measure along the way.

If you sincerely want to move toward a more inclusive employee experience (for your benefit and theirs), then clarity is one of your very best friends. Joe shows leaders how to build diversity and inclusion efforts that succeed, starting with a strong foundation of clear, concise, common language and logic.

Key takeaways:
• Greater clarity about what inclusion means and how it informs individual, group, and organizational performance.
• Identify fundamental barriers to inclusion.
• Take actionable models and definitions back to your organization to better inform your inclusion efforts.

We have traditionally organized work from the perspective of what the organization needs or what management needs. This approach frequently results in practices that actually stymie performance. Cubicle farms anyone?

What if you built your organization and organized work based on what employees need to perform at their best? Fortunately for us, we have a much better understanding of human performance and what drives it today than ever before.

Drawing on insights from fields such as social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, organizational behavior, and behavioral economics, this session looks for opportunities to redesign aspects of our work with the humans in mind.

There are, in fact, lots of opportunities at work to replace what we think should work with what actually will work. For some strange reason, we continue to be surprised that a couple of people dominate the conversation during a meeting or that we have “silo issues.” Pretty predictable, also pretty easy to solve when approached in the right way.

Key takeaways:
• Challenge some of the fundamentally flawed assumptions we make about human beings.
• Examine examples of how behavioral design can be used to deliver better individual and shared outcomes at work.
• Be introduced to a basic model of human behavior to use in designing work.
• Direction to additional resources on human behavior, performance, and behavioral design.

We still seem to love the idea of the lone, possibly eccentric, mythical genius who drives innovation from their lab, their garage, or an exotic mountain top, but innovation almost always has social origins. Innovation often emerges from the intersection of different things, different world views, different industries or professions, different ways of thinking. If we are as serious about innovation as we claim to be, then we must be better at mixing diverse things together in inclusive containers.

Thanks to the research of Scott Page, Ron Burt and others, we know that there are very direct lines between cognitive diversity (diversity of thought) and superior decision-making and problem solving.

Having greater diversity of thought involved in a conversation also can make it more difficult, so knowing how to do it well becomes a pretty big opportunity for advantage.

Key takeaways:
• Introduce the concept of cognitive diversity, what it is, and why it matters.
• Review research and examples of how cognitive diversity makes a difference.
• Consider individual and group practices for more effectively leveraging diversity of thought toward greater innovation, improved decision-making and problem-solving.

While everyone has been busy fighting the “war for talent,” much has changed regarding how we do work. With every passing year, we do less work by ourselves and more of it with others, yet our language and efforts around talent are still focused on the individual level. If we do still care about talent, a very timely question is; do you know what makes a talented team?

Thanks to both academic and field research, we can identify many of the key practices critical to a team actually aggregating the talent and resources that they have access to. While so much of our efforts around talent are focused on individual abilities and
competencies, at the group level those things really do not matter much, but how the team works together takes on great importance.

Key takeaways:
• Introduce the concept of psychological safety.
• Learn what it means to “do conflict well” and why it matters.
• Leave with a menu of group practices to drive more