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Regardless of what level we achieve, we are responsible for leading a diverse group of
people. Now sometimes we think and every time we ask, when you think about diversity, what's
the first thing that comes to mind and the first thing at the top of the list is differences
and then under that list comes race and religion and age and gender and so on and so on and
so forth and cultural.
When you think about an onion, an onion whether a purple onion, a white onion, a yellow onion
or a green onion or what have you, there are some common characteristics about it and lets
take the most common characteristic and may be the least significant, I am not sure but
that's the skin of the onion. If you hold an onion in your hand and you do a sample
thing like this what happens, the skin of the onion automatically peels away and you
get to start that outer shell that inner outer shell of the onion but more specifically if
you slice that onion across the middle, you will see concentric rings and those concentric
rings represent who we are and as you start to look at us as people, as human beings,
one of the things that you will see is that at the core of those concentric rings are
us and our personalities if you will whether we are an introvert or an extrovert that is
kind of at the core of it and then as you start to go outside, ring after ring after
ring, the next dimension is called that personal dimension and in that dimension it is called
race, age, gender, ethnicity, physical ability or disability, also *** orientation, all
of those are in that personal ring, sometimes called the rage dimension but the key issue
is that there are concentric rings and concentric dimensions that go out and as we really look
at ourselves, every single one of us is represented in every single segment of every single one
of those dimensions, those rings are that of onion and as we step back and we look at
it realistically, awareness is the huge key. As we look at it realistically we actually
find that we have far more similarities than we do have differences. However, we let that
least significant part of that onion be the barrier as to whether we get to the concentric
rings or not. So that was the basis on which we developed our model for diversity training
and that's the basis that actually brought about the five keys, awareness first, awareness
of who we are and what we bring to the table and as a leader, it is very important for
me to recognized that I do not care what my organization looks like on the outside or
from the outside, it's a diverse entity and I really have to be adept at understanding
those diversities to be a good leader.