Respectful Workplace Blog

With the purpose of creating a community of diverse perspectives and encouraging a fresh dialogue on respect, the Respectful Workplace blog team is pleased to announce a new monthly feature written by a guest blogger. This month our contributor is Ruth Ramos, a Cleveland, Ohio based consultant.

The Beginning of Healing

Probably the most popular topic today is the presidential election, or more specifically, the candidates. As a diversity consultant, it has been amazing to watch the diversity issues that have come up as a result of this election – race, gender and age being the most discussed. I sit and listen to what the media says and what others around the dinner table are discussing and I am amazed that in the 21st century, we still have such strong prejudices and stereotypes about these issues.

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One of the ongoing features that I am hoping to add to this blog involves highlighting organizations and individuals who are getting respect ‘right’. But in researching this angle, I have found very few positive examples of respect in the workplace. As I scour the search engines, I keep ending up with results that either emphasize issues of disrespect or outline specific policies intended to increase workplace respect. There is very little online that champions those who are already practicing respectful behaviors in the workplace.

So how do we know what respect in the workplace should look like?

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Last week I attended a lecture by Eddie Moore, Jr. at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, titled Inclusion, Equity, Privilege: Is Corporate America Making Progress in the 21st Century and held in conjunction with the current exhibition RACE: Are We So Different?

To begin his discussion, Moore appealed to the audience to find common ground in order to productively discuss race, whether in the workplace or in our personal lives, while acknowledging that each of us had had different life experiences. Moore led us through an exercise to find that starting place as a group.

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Every day brings a myriad of opportunities to increase our awareness, wisdom and, ultimately, effectiveness. The problem is that most of us walk right past these opportunities because of a little glitch in our mental “software.”

Years ago, a friend of mine, who is a behavioral psychologist, shared an insight that has stuck with me. While presenting to a local group of Training and Organizational Development professionals, he asked a very simple question:

“What is the strongest need that human beings consistently act upon?”

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Recently, I posted about how we are much more alike than we are different, especially in terms of shared values. But now, science is confirming that even across racial lines, there are more similarities among us than differences.

A new exhibition, RACE: Are We So Different, which opened last week at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, explores the origins of race. Humans, as explained in the exhibition, are all basically the same, once the layers of skin are pulled back. Skin color variants in humans evolved only as protection from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

If race really is just skin deep then why does the subject stir such heated debates and cause tempers to flare?

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