The Diversity Consultant: What Happened?

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From the course by University of Virginia

Ethical Leadership Through Giving Voice to Values

43 ratings

University of Virginia

Ethical Leadership Through Giving Voice to Values

43 ratings

This course offers an action-oriented introduction to Giving Voice to Values (or GVV), an exciting new approach to values-driven leadership development in the workplace, in business education and in life. GVV is not about persuading people to be more ethical, but instead it starts from the premise that most of us already want to act on our values, but that we also want to feel that we have a reasonable chance of doing so effectively. Through positive, real life examples, pre-scripting, rehearsal and peer coaching, GVV builds the skill, the confidence and likelihood that we will act on our values more often and more successfully. Based on research and practice, with over 1,000 pilots in educational settings and companies on all seven continents, GVV helps answer the questions: “What if I were going to act on my values? What would I say and do? How could I be most effective?” You will come away from this course with an expanded toolkit, as well as practice, in a variety of methods and techniques for voicing and enacting your own values and principles. You will develop and practice leadership skills in "peer coaching” with other learners. Through cases and stories based on recognizable workplace, classroom and life values conflicts, you will apply the GVV techniques and “re-frames”, expanding your repertoire for possible action as well as identifying and rehearsing responses that are likely to be most effective. Through this practice, you will gain greater confidence and competence in voicing and enacting your values effectively.

From the lesson

Recognizing and Learning From Your Success and Failures

What are some of your own individual successes and failures at effectively voicing and acting on your values? What conditions made it easier for you to speak and act, and which conditions made it more difficult? We will spend week two of the course recognizing and reflecting on your responses to these questions so that you can gain some insights into your own strengths, abilities, and personal styles that empower you to act on your values. You'll do so by continuing to explore the pillars of GVV by taking an in depth look at Choice, Normalization, and Self-Knowledge and Alignment. Often people do not act on their values because they felt as though they had no choice. We learn that we often have more options than we believe we do. The Normalization pillar helps us perceive values conflicts as a normal everyday part of our lives. The Self-Knowledge and Alignment pillar helps us understand how to identify and use our strengths and abilities to effectively act on our values. Finally, we will hear a story about Ceilia and how she framed a challenge that played to her strengths to address a values conflict in her work. By the end of this module, you'll be able to identify and consider your own strengths and preferences for values expression in your career and your broader life.

The Diversity Consultant5:14

The Diversity Consultant: What Happened?3:42

Reconsidering Your Starting Assumptions5:41

Meet the Instructors

Mary Gentile
Creator/Director, Giving Voice To Values and Professor of Practice
Darden School of Business

So welcome back.

So, as you thought about Cecilia,

the management consultant's challenge,

did you come up with any ideas about things that you

might say and do if you were in those circumstances?

And perhaps more to the point,

thinking about the personality of Cecilia as we described it, you know,

she was more of a dialogue kind of person rather than a confrontational debating,

argumentative kind of person,

did you come up with a script and action plan that might work for her?

Well let me tell you what she actually did.

So, Cecelia told the story,

tells me the story and she says in that moment when

this senior manager had been so agitated,

her first reaction was to pull back – she was somewhat fearful – but then

she took a minute and she paused and she was trying basically to buy time,

but she was also being more true to herself and so she

asked a question rather than trying to argue with him.

And she said, "So,

when you hired this individual and then you had to let him go,

you said you paid a price.

What price did you pay in the organization?"

And she really wanted to know.

It was a genuine question.

But the manager's response really surprised her and took her aback.

He had been leaning forward,

he'd been agitated, and when she asked that question,

his whole body kind of relaxed and his face loosened up and he leaned back in

his chair and he tilted his head and sort of smiled a little quizzically and he said,

"You know, I've been telling that story for a couple of years now ever since

this happened and no one has ever asked me what price I paid before.

They always listen to my story and nod understandingly and assume I paid a price."

And he said, "But now that you ask the question,

I realize I didn't pay a price,

but you know I really thought I had."

So, Cecilia was kind of surprised at this response and,

you know, her first reaction in her head was to think "gotcha!"

You know, that she'd caught him.

But then she realized he hadn't been dissembling,

he hadn't been trying to fool her or deceive her,

he really believed he'd paid a price.

And so she realized that,

you know, the price he'd paid, if any at all,

was really just one he'd imagined or maybe one that he had exacted from himself.

And so, when she asked that question in a

non-confrontational and in a learning stance

where she really wanted to hear what he had to say,

she wasn't trying to argue with him that he was wrong,

that became the basis for them to finally have a real conversation and to start

connecting about what the challenges might truly

be in the organization and how they might address them.

And so, what Cecilia learned from this is that knowing who she was,

knowing what her strengths were,

but also her preferred communication style,

the way she was most effective enabled her to

actually find a way rather than believing that being the kind of person I am,

I can never address these issues,

she realized I just need to find a way to frame the challenge that plays to my strengths,

and that's what she did in this circumstance.

So I'm curious, was your response for Cecilia anything near what she actually did?

Does it surprise you what she did and how it worked out?

And also reflect upon yourself.

Have you ever had a similar kind of experience

where you were surprised at the positive impact that you had?

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