May 13, 2020

When the Other Becomes Apart From, with Sara Taylor

Episode 45:

Sara Taylor earned a master’s degree in Diversity and Organizational Development from the University of Minnesota. She served as a leadership and diversity specialist at the University of Minnesota for five years and as director of diversity and inclusion for Ramsey County, Minnesota for three years.

Sara is the founder and president of deepSEE Consulting and has worked with companies as large as Coca-Cola, General Mills, 3M Company, AARP, and numerous others. She has a new book, “Filter Shift: How Effective People See the World,” that explores how our unconscious is actually making choices and decisions for us, all without our knowing — and how to change that.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

  • Why everyone is naturally predisposed to automatically identify who is a part of their “group” and who is “apart from”
  • Why those that we see as “apart from” can instill discomfort and even fear, and why that sense of discomfort or fear plays a role in how we see the “other”
  • How polarization, the second stage of development, limits people to painting groups in broad brush strokes with all members sharing the same traits and qualities
  • Why our internal filters completely define our experiences of others, especially for those in the first three stages
  • Why the social context of an environment and fear combine to determine whether we classify someone as “part of” or “other”
  • Sara shares a story of a Jewish woman killed in a mass shooting and discusses the shooter’s stage of development and inability to see his victim as a complete person
  • Why you should take a look at the Anti-Defamation League’s H.E.A.T. (Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism, Terror) Map
  • Why the staggering increase of hate-based violence from 2015-2020 is based on our society’s increased polarization and fear
  • Why fear often quickly turns into anger, and why anger is almost universally the primary driver in incidents of violence
  • Why the COVID-19 pandemic is increasing social fear, resulting in an 85% increase in gun sales during the month of March 2020
  • What steps we can take if we begin to feel polarization or fear to help break out of those feelings

Additional resources: