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    Overcoming Bias and Racism in Your Workplace: A Primer for Minorities in the Business World
    Overcoming Bias and Racism in Your Workplace: A Primer for Minorities in the Business World
    Overcoming Bias and Racism in Your Workplace: A Primer for Minorities in the Business World
    Ebook162 pages2 hours

    Overcoming Bias and Racism in Your Workplace: A Primer for Minorities in the Business World

    By Gregory L. Harris

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    About this ebook

    Imagine a society where bias, prejudice, and past discrimination’s impact on employees doesn’t exist. Not reality.

    Overcoming Bias and Racism in Your Workplace helps everyone deal with the real world as it is.

    Bias and Racism in our country won’t just slip away. It takes a combined effort to change patterns of beliefs and practices that have been fostered and entrenched for some centuries. Each person deals with these realities every day in their workspace to one degree or another.

    Each individual can take a stand and make a way—converting one person at a time if necessary—while thriving in their job, career, and profession. We can accomplish that goal while being successful in our day-to-day work responsibilities. Not as a new burden, but in ways that make all of us better.

    In a society dealing with overt racism in its daily atmosphere, Gregory L. Harris has written Overcoming Bias and Racism in Your Workplace with the intended goal to help you not just survive, but thrive, whether just starting out in a job, or in the middle of your career.

    Information on how to accomplish your goals while maintaining who you are and who you want to be are between the pages of this book. It is a primer for steps in your business and relationships that will make a difference.

    All that’s needed is you!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGL Associates
    Release dateFeb 4, 2017
    ISBN9781386827702
    Overcoming Bias and Racism in Your Workplace: A Primer for Minorities in the Business World

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      Book preview

      Overcoming Bias and Racism in Your Workplace - Gregory L. Harris

      Chapter 2:

      Understanding What Makes Them Tick (and makes you successful)

      Whether a business is a company owned division, private or public company, each has a history which defines its characteristics and personality.  Management (Them) leads and makes basic decisions based on the derivatives of this history. Your understanding of these things can lay the groundwork for positioning and advancement of your interest and in your career. It can also help you in avoiding the pitfalls that can put you down. The goal is to understand the following:

      1) What the history and the personality of the business is?

      2) Why the history and established processes make people do the things they do (See Chapter 3)?

      First, let’s look at why you are where you are.

      Who the hell are you? What business are you in? You need to start with an understanding of your identity and desires as you step into the job or career of your choosing.      

      To thine own self be true. Are you simply going to fit into the business with their expectations are or are you going to use what you know about who you are and your expectations (long and short) in order to drive your career and who YOU want to be. Are you going to fit in, or drive to accomplish your aspirations and desires, and can you do both?

      Think of the best image of yourself and who you want to be. Use that image to decide what sort of place you would want to work for. What type of people, industry, or market interest you?  What would you do that would be fulfilling to your purpose? If you have gone through professional training or education, it becomes easier. You still have many considerations and challenges to meet before you may be totally happy and successful with whatever opportunities you may have. 

      If you are in a business, but not in the marketplace you desire, can you develop management skills, or financial skills, or something that matches your long term goals? For instance, if you are in quality control but really like working with customers, propose a change in career to customer service. Tout your skills and desires and go for it. Create opportunities that allow you to build on your strengths and interests for future success.  

      Sounds kinda All-American doesn’t it? But that's what Americans have learned to expect, and you have the right to those expectations. So right off the bat, let's make sure we are not doing things that are non-congruent with what we desire. Let's make sure the person we are chooses positions wisely to realize those All-American expectations of working in a job you enjoy happily, with opportunities for success for you and your family.

      I have a friend who is a stockbroker. We both started in business around the same time. In his job he learned to execute the pitch regardless of his target’s financial health, to make the sale, get the deal, win the business for the company (and of course, he got all the Black clients and cold calls).

      After a while I could tell that things were not the same. He seemed unhappy and lost much of his natural zest. 

      I could look in his eyes and knew that he wasn't telling the truth sometimes on the simplest of issues. It became a nature of his business, and a terrible one at, that set into his persona. I watched over the years as my friend became a sham of the promising person he had once been. Successful? Yes. Happy? No. Nurturing self? I don't think so.

      The point of the story is simple. You need to make sure that whatever you're doing is something that can make you happy. It should also give you opportunities to fulfill your purpose! At the end of the day, we want happiness and fulfillment. We can learn and teach how to deal with the 'Man', but we also don’t want to set ourselves up for failure by choosing to chase the wrong things.

      What is it you want to be affiliated with? The best in sales? The best in marketing? The best in accounting? The best at giving back to the community? Fortune 500, mid-tier, or not for profit? 

      You need to understand what efforts you really want to support personally, as well as where you really want to work. Do you want a corporate culture or do you want a Mom and Pop family feel?  Do you want to work for a company that's sixteen hours a day on the go, or you want to work a company thirty hours a week with as much time as possible with your non- work interests and time to do volunteer work?  Or so you desire somewhere in between?

      This issue is about searching, hoping for an employer who gives you things you want. That is not always an option, so be aware! It may be better if you find a company or occupation that gives the chance for you to succeed and find happiness and fulfillment. If you’re a driver and a go-getter, a small church is not your thing. Likewise, if you’re an expressive avant-garde, a demure German manufacturer of elevator parts is not going to start your engine. If you are currently employed, the same considerations apply. Don’t be stuck somewhere that makes you miserable or takes away your desire to perform and succeed! Request a move to an area that allows you growth and exposure in the direction you desire.

      When I was a team manager at IBM in Indianapolis I wanted to go back to the East Coast. But I was due a promotion to the regional offices in Detroit as was the process. My team was doing great and I cut a Quid Pro Quo deal to go to Washington, D.C. in exchange for nine more months in Indianapolis. I enjoyed the time with my team and moved to D.C. with the support from my management and their blessings. 

      In the past, our predecessors may have hated the job, but needed the money.

      My advice now. Don’t waste time hating.

      Hating your job only wears you and your family out, not your employer.

      My first job out of college was with a small local bank's executive training program in Baltimore.  My first station outside corporate was a branch in Mondawmin Mall on Baltimore's North Side, in the hood. Management, was a middle aged white manager from the suburbs (afraid of black people and loud noises). Customer service was one sister in admin and me, all behind bulletproof glass. Our team consisted of thirteen tellers; all female, all single, one white girl, and all were under the age of twenty- five, with one older lady who was probably in her mid-fifties.

      Needless to say it was a nightmare. Management was not strong enough to consistently enforce rules, see the games being played, or understand the customer base and issues. The branch averaged two robberies per year and on the first of the month we processed every retirement, government, and food stamp check received in the hood. Tellers fought and stole each other's boyfriends, came in high after breaks, and came up short on registers - all the time. My boss had no effectiveness, the admin was sleeping with our largest depositor, and I had to manage the tellers. 

      Looking back now, I think John (the manager) was probably sent there to flounder so he would quit and leave the business.  When John could he took it out on me but I made sure that wasn’t very often. Needless to say, I was miserable and I also recognized that with my completion of this program as the first minority, this was probably the future branch where I would be dealing with. The only good thing was being able to enjoy my people outside of the bank with the positive sides of being in the hood- culture, food, music, positive interactions with people who looked like me.  

      My misery was high that summer. One teller was suspected of embezzlement. Two tellers had boyfriends fighting in the lobby every other day. One afternoon I took a break and went out to collect on a loan at a local laundromat. The owner was not in and it was hot, so I decided to relax for a minute and sit outside the 'mat' and have a soda. 

      There was an aged and withered Black man sitting on the bench. I asked him if I could share the bench and if he would like a soda. He said Sure son. When I sat he looked at me and said right out, What’s on your mind son? I answered slowly, You’ve been around some hard times, probably harder than me. What do you do when you hate your job, your boss is a pussy with everyone, and you don’t feel like you're getting anything done?

      He looked at me, eyes crinkling into a smile, weathered hands picking at some chewing tobacco I hadn’t even noticed. The smiling eyes changed to a toothless grin, he chuckled, then became solemn. 

      Son, mark my words. You chose the time, get your shit together, go back to the bank, tell them to kiss your ass, punch the white guy in the chest and go find another job! Be happy. A man deserves to be happy if nothing at all.

      I never saw him again. Didn’t know how he knew I worked at the bank, but I was out of that job in forty-five days, my way. And he was right. I was much happier.                                                 

      If I had been able to do the research I would do now, I may have found out their poor EEOC record and the fact they were a small bank looking to be bought by a bigger player. As a minority management training participant, with no peers, they improved their numbers and helped position for the acquisition that did happen four months later.  Hmmm… was I being used?

      When I made that change I did use my network. I worked through a friend of my high school principal and went to a large bank, with a real management program and her blessing as a board member. It was a good job and I was recruiting for them when I met an IBM recruiter and the rest became good history for me. 

      TAKE AWAYS

      Remember -do not set yourself up for failure by choosing to pursue something not fit for you or of no interest. 

      Find, if possible, something that mirrors and utilizes your profession, training, skills and or desires. Something that flows in the direction you believe you want to go, and Go With It.

      To Thine Own Self Be True!!

      Chapter 3:

      Business Issues

      In this chapter, we will discuss business issues. Although the majority of onerous things we end up dealing with as minorities are often people issues, every company has a history and a current strategy. The foundation of the business and perhaps any biases therein may also be based on its history and strategy.

      The company personality, its history and the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) relative to them, provide business opportunities for you to understand and use. Remember, some of the basic drivers of people issues and behavior in the real world come from how people are driven by the business

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