Talking Better Together by Noticing Bias

Are you aware of how you react when you interact with people who differ from you?  Do your reactions differ depending on their race or gender? How might your reactions be influencing your behavior with them? According to neuroscientists at New York University, our biases influence how we “see” people’s faces. These visual biases unfortunately tend to conform to and confirm existing stereotypes of them. These biases then influence our behavior. In this recent study, … Read more…

Talking Better Together by Engaging Difference

Perhaps the most serious collateral damage from this year’s can’t-wait-until-it’s-over election season might be our ability to bridge differences. The ability to bridge differences and converse constructively is essential to the survival of our organizations and communities, our democracy, and, most likely, the world as we know it. By “constructive,” I mean conversing in ways that strengthen our capacity to get good things done together. Although survival for our long-ago ancestors depended on being part … Read more…

Talking Better Together by Being Compassionate

At a meeting of 20 scientists and 6 lab technicians in a research and development company, one of the technicians, Sharon, unexpectedly bursts into tears. She describes how “pulled apart” she feels by all the competing needs and priorities of the scientists, and she wails, “I am so frustrated that I can’t do the quality of work I want to do because there is just too much of it, and there is no way to … Read more…