September 30, 2020

The Perils of Polarization, with Sara Taylor

Episode 62:

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:

  • How the office of the President of the United States has issued an executive order banning diversity and inclusion training for all federal agencies and employees
  • How the census is predicting that the US will be a majority-minority country by the year 2044, and why diversity and inclusion training is more important than ever
  • How research shows that homogenous teams have mediocre performance, while diverse teams represent the lowest and highest performing teams
  • How cultural competence determines whether diverse teams are in the lowest or highest performing brackets, and why diversity and inclusion training is critical
  • Why polarization, the second stage of cultural competence, is based on fear and on a win/lose mentality
  • How a pair of segments on FOX News featuring Chrisotopher Rufo and his so-called “critical race theory research” led to this executive order from the President’s office
  • How Christopher Rufo stoked race-based fear and polarization with his segments, and why turning to solid research is vitally important to make fact-based policy decisions
  • How the research that Christopher Rufo cited is based on misconstrued information, and how the claims he made come from a place of polarization
  • Why the claims Rufo makes about diversity and inclusion training being unAmerican aren’t backed by facts or reality
  • Why viewing the world through a lens of polarization is a choice we make, and why moving beyond the polarization stage is also a choice we can make

Additional resources: