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Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility
Your Guide to Navigating the Complexity of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB)
Become an exceptional leader who embraces cultural humility and builds bridges to create a truly inclusive organization.
Do you desire to get better at leading DEIB efforts? Do you want to become an exceptional leader? Have you noticed that people in minoritized groups leave your organization at a faster rate than your White employees? Do you recognize that not all team members feel a sense of inclusion and belonging in your organization? Are you ready to do something about it?
We find ourselves at a time in history that demands more of us as leaders. You may view the work of DEIB as complex, even overwhelming. The first step is developing a posture of cultural humility. Good This will impact every aspect of your life, both professionally and personally.
You want to be an exceptional leader at an exceptional organization. Dear White Leader provides the step-by-step DEIB guidance you’ve been looking for.
Become an exceptional leader who embraces cultural humility and builds bridges to create a truly inclusive organization.
Do you desire to get better at leading DEIB efforts? Do you want to become an exceptional leader? Have you noticed that people in minoritized groups leave your organization at a faster rate than your White employees? Do you recognize that not all team members feel a sense of inclusion and belonging in your organization? Are you ready to do something about it?
We find ourselves at a time in history that demands more of us as leaders. You may view the work of DEIB as complex, even overwhelming. The first step is developing a posture of cultural humility. Good This will impact every aspect of your life, both professionally and personally.
You want to be an exceptional leader at an exceptional organization. Dear White Leader provides the step-by-step DEIB guidance you’ve been looking for.
174 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 31, 2024
7 people are currently reading
25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 8, 2024
Joel provides an excellent road map for leaders to move toward building a more inclusive organization. His personal experiences and expertise in the field of DEIB combine to guide readers through the steps toward gaining cultural humility and empowering them to create change within their organization. This is a must-read for those who desire to become exceptional leaders of diverse teams!
January 1, 2025
Book was a bit basic for me but I hope more white leaders decide to read this
January 29, 2026
Dr. Joel Pérez’s Dear White Leader: Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility is a timely, deeply grounded, and profoundly practical invitation for leaders to move beyond cultural competency and into the lifelong posture of cultural humility. As a former Chief Diversity Officer, a fellow PCC leadership and inclusion coach, and someone who has spent years designing global inclusion and leadership development strategies, his advice comes from an informed center, and is both resonant and urgently needed.
At its core, Dr. Pérez reminds us that cultural humility begins with curiosity — the willingness to examine long-held beliefs that may need to change, and the courage to ask whether our leadership and organizational cultures truly provide the kind of safety that compels psychological safety for everyone. This is not performative work. It is inner work. It is leadership work.
What makes this book especially powerful is how Dr. Pérez connects cultural humility to the discipline of coaching. He offers questions that are deceptively simple yet transformational: What do you believe the real issue is? What would make our meeting a success for you? He emphasizes that curiosity is not just a mindset — it is a practice that requires deep listening, presence, and the ability to ask questions that evoke awareness. In many ways, this is about tuning our brains to listen not to respond or defend, but to actually hear, understand, and learn. Period.
Dr. Pérez also provides leaders with an exceptional toolkit of assessments and frameworks that elevate the book from philosophy into action. His own Cultural Humility Assessment, along with tools like the Implicit Association Test, the Circle of Trust exercise around affinity bias, and the Intercultural Development Inventory, offer concrete pathways for leaders seeking to bridge cultural differences and create meaningful development roadmaps.
One of the most important reminders in the book is what to do when someone points out our privilege — something many of us hold in different ways. Dr. Pérez urges leaders to stay curious in that moment, to resist defensiveness, and to relax the impulse to be right or prove a point. That ability to remain open — especially in discomfort — is where real transformation begins.
He also expands our understanding of culture itself, reminding us that it is far more than race or ethnicity. Culture encompasses faith, values, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual identity and orientation, and so much more. He challenges us to ask: How much do we truly know about the expansive identities of the people we work with? Are we relying only on what we see, or are we committed to knowing one another below the surface?
Throughout, Dr. Pérez underscores that everybody wants to feel that their ideas matter — to feel considered, valued, and safe to challenge the status quo. Exceptional leaders, he writes, must become comfortable with complexity. He references human practices such as noticing, breathing, laughing, wondering, experimenting, and loving — grounding leadership not just in strategy, but in humanity. And importantly, he connects all of this back to mission, vision, and values, something I deeply agree with as someone who helped Gap Inc. generate inclusive, values-based leadership behaviors company-wide.
The book’s emphasis on measurement and coalition-building is another standout. Cultural humility is not a one-off initiative — it requires frameworks to monitor progress, track impact, and guide sustainable change. Dr. Pérez introduces key dimensions of diversity and the characteristics needed to lead this work effectively, while acknowledging the discomfort that comes with hard conversations.
One quote that stayed with me, from Lily Zhang, captures the heart of the book: the goal of DEIB is to "build workplaces that work for everybody." And Dr. Pérez reminds us that this requires seeking to understand — not simply convincing others from a righteous stance, but engaging from true curiosity.
He opens and closes with a beautiful analogy of redwood trees weathering storms together, wrapping their shallow roots together to stay firm— a reminder that this journey requires connection, networks, and collective resilience. I appreciated the reminder of expanding psychological safety through four components: learner safety, challenger safety, collaborator safety, and inclusion safety. These are the conditions that allow people not only to belong, but to thrive.
Dear White Leader is a book I highly recommend to white leaders and non-white leaders alike — especially in a time when cultural humility is not optional, but essential. Dr. Pérez has given us both a mirror and a map: a call to lead with greater awareness, deeper listening, and the kind of curiosity that can transform workplaces into environments where everyone can contribute fully and freely.
This is leadership for the world we need now.
At its core, Dr. Pérez reminds us that cultural humility begins with curiosity — the willingness to examine long-held beliefs that may need to change, and the courage to ask whether our leadership and organizational cultures truly provide the kind of safety that compels psychological safety for everyone. This is not performative work. It is inner work. It is leadership work.
What makes this book especially powerful is how Dr. Pérez connects cultural humility to the discipline of coaching. He offers questions that are deceptively simple yet transformational: What do you believe the real issue is? What would make our meeting a success for you? He emphasizes that curiosity is not just a mindset — it is a practice that requires deep listening, presence, and the ability to ask questions that evoke awareness. In many ways, this is about tuning our brains to listen not to respond or defend, but to actually hear, understand, and learn. Period.
Dr. Pérez also provides leaders with an exceptional toolkit of assessments and frameworks that elevate the book from philosophy into action. His own Cultural Humility Assessment, along with tools like the Implicit Association Test, the Circle of Trust exercise around affinity bias, and the Intercultural Development Inventory, offer concrete pathways for leaders seeking to bridge cultural differences and create meaningful development roadmaps.
One of the most important reminders in the book is what to do when someone points out our privilege — something many of us hold in different ways. Dr. Pérez urges leaders to stay curious in that moment, to resist defensiveness, and to relax the impulse to be right or prove a point. That ability to remain open — especially in discomfort — is where real transformation begins.
He also expands our understanding of culture itself, reminding us that it is far more than race or ethnicity. Culture encompasses faith, values, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual identity and orientation, and so much more. He challenges us to ask: How much do we truly know about the expansive identities of the people we work with? Are we relying only on what we see, or are we committed to knowing one another below the surface?
Throughout, Dr. Pérez underscores that everybody wants to feel that their ideas matter — to feel considered, valued, and safe to challenge the status quo. Exceptional leaders, he writes, must become comfortable with complexity. He references human practices such as noticing, breathing, laughing, wondering, experimenting, and loving — grounding leadership not just in strategy, but in humanity. And importantly, he connects all of this back to mission, vision, and values, something I deeply agree with as someone who helped Gap Inc. generate inclusive, values-based leadership behaviors company-wide.
The book’s emphasis on measurement and coalition-building is another standout. Cultural humility is not a one-off initiative — it requires frameworks to monitor progress, track impact, and guide sustainable change. Dr. Pérez introduces key dimensions of diversity and the characteristics needed to lead this work effectively, while acknowledging the discomfort that comes with hard conversations.
One quote that stayed with me, from Lily Zhang, captures the heart of the book: the goal of DEIB is to "build workplaces that work for everybody." And Dr. Pérez reminds us that this requires seeking to understand — not simply convincing others from a righteous stance, but engaging from true curiosity.
He opens and closes with a beautiful analogy of redwood trees weathering storms together, wrapping their shallow roots together to stay firm— a reminder that this journey requires connection, networks, and collective resilience. I appreciated the reminder of expanding psychological safety through four components: learner safety, challenger safety, collaborator safety, and inclusion safety. These are the conditions that allow people not only to belong, but to thrive.
Dear White Leader is a book I highly recommend to white leaders and non-white leaders alike — especially in a time when cultural humility is not optional, but essential. Dr. Pérez has given us both a mirror and a map: a call to lead with greater awareness, deeper listening, and the kind of curiosity that can transform workplaces into environments where everyone can contribute fully and freely.
This is leadership for the world we need now.
August 28, 2024
Both theoretical and practical resources for leaders
When a book is titled: Dear White Leader, white leaders like myself may want to take notice! So I read the book.
It is not really the responsibility of leaders of color to fix a system that they did not build or break. However Dr. Joel Pérez puts together a practical guide that will be a resource for leaders who understand that communities and organizations are better and more likely to achieve what they should if systems are in place that welcome diversity, build equity, nurture inclusion and bring all kinds of people to belong.
Joel does not just set up diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) as an end in itself. He makes the case very well that cultural humility is a tool that will be part of becoming an excellent leader in the 21st century. In addition to making the case for why DEIB is a good thing, he puts some tools together that will help leaders work toward that ideal.
While I have used some of the cultural principles and even the Intercultural Diversity Inventory as I have mentored leaders, I found the way that all these are put together to be helpful to see leaders improve incrementally and transformationally.
Joel uses his practical experience as an organizational leader and a consultant to provide the reader with steps to build on these values and be the kind of transformational leader that organizations need in today’s environment. Each chapter ends with a “Take Action” section that provides the opportunity to think about the concepts presented in that chapter, reflect and apply those principles to the reader's specific situation and circumstances.
I have had the pleasure of working with Joel as he was a consultant for my employer. Joel used the tools that he describes in the book in clear and helpful ways to move that organization forward and set it on a trajectory toward cultural humility and to look more like the community that it serves. I have also seen Joel use his skills with a community organization, capitalizing on cultural humility as a tool to bring essential tools to a diverse community.
I highly recommend this book as a tool to improve your leadership skills in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. I also recommend Joel’s services as a consultant to help you move toward cultural humility.
When a book is titled: Dear White Leader, white leaders like myself may want to take notice! So I read the book.
It is not really the responsibility of leaders of color to fix a system that they did not build or break. However Dr. Joel Pérez puts together a practical guide that will be a resource for leaders who understand that communities and organizations are better and more likely to achieve what they should if systems are in place that welcome diversity, build equity, nurture inclusion and bring all kinds of people to belong.
Joel does not just set up diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) as an end in itself. He makes the case very well that cultural humility is a tool that will be part of becoming an excellent leader in the 21st century. In addition to making the case for why DEIB is a good thing, he puts some tools together that will help leaders work toward that ideal.
While I have used some of the cultural principles and even the Intercultural Diversity Inventory as I have mentored leaders, I found the way that all these are put together to be helpful to see leaders improve incrementally and transformationally.
Joel uses his practical experience as an organizational leader and a consultant to provide the reader with steps to build on these values and be the kind of transformational leader that organizations need in today’s environment. Each chapter ends with a “Take Action” section that provides the opportunity to think about the concepts presented in that chapter, reflect and apply those principles to the reader's specific situation and circumstances.
I have had the pleasure of working with Joel as he was a consultant for my employer. Joel used the tools that he describes in the book in clear and helpful ways to move that organization forward and set it on a trajectory toward cultural humility and to look more like the community that it serves. I have also seen Joel use his skills with a community organization, capitalizing on cultural humility as a tool to bring essential tools to a diverse community.
I highly recommend this book as a tool to improve your leadership skills in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. I also recommend Joel’s services as a consultant to help you move toward cultural humility.
January 12, 2025
Dr. Joel Perez provides relatable insights and challenges the reader to gain skills through introspection, observation, and understanding. By offering tools and assessment recommendations, this book is a great guide to creating your own roadmap to success. Much like starting a fitness routine, or healthy habit, this read helps with finding a starting point to condition and train yourself to understand what works best for you in your growth and positive change.
Before inquiring how I could work toward strengthening my awareness of cultural humility, my mind was like a closet that needed reorganizing and a little clutter clearing. I had everything I needed, but I was not using my favorite items all of the time or remembering they were there when it may have been useful to me. In my day to day middle management leadership position, I felt powerless and ineffective. Steps for action provided by Dr. Perez are extremely effective and worth investing in. His approach feels like a friend or a coach who is guiding you on a path toward success.
This book helped me reshape my approach. I now better understand the limitations of my situation and where I can leverage the power of being true to myself rather than following along with patterns I see in other leaders that do not seem to work for me or anyone else. Clear definitions and examples in this book set up the key take-away for me. In expanding my understanding around my own experiences and sense of belonging, I can now better contribute to a healthier culture for the people around me despite the negative and harmful aspects of leadership styles of other leaders within my organization. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to improve their working relationships with everyone in their organization and make positive contributions.
Before inquiring how I could work toward strengthening my awareness of cultural humility, my mind was like a closet that needed reorganizing and a little clutter clearing. I had everything I needed, but I was not using my favorite items all of the time or remembering they were there when it may have been useful to me. In my day to day middle management leadership position, I felt powerless and ineffective. Steps for action provided by Dr. Perez are extremely effective and worth investing in. His approach feels like a friend or a coach who is guiding you on a path toward success.
This book helped me reshape my approach. I now better understand the limitations of my situation and where I can leverage the power of being true to myself rather than following along with patterns I see in other leaders that do not seem to work for me or anyone else. Clear definitions and examples in this book set up the key take-away for me. In expanding my understanding around my own experiences and sense of belonging, I can now better contribute to a healthier culture for the people around me despite the negative and harmful aspects of leadership styles of other leaders within my organization. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to improve their working relationships with everyone in their organization and make positive contributions.
October 21, 2024
It says a lot about me and the polarizing climate that we all live in these days that I went into this book feeling, dare I say, a little bit defensive? As a white male in a leadership position I routinely benefit from a variety of privileges both recognized and unrecognized, and as the title might suggest, I knew I was sitting in the crosshairs of whatever this book had to say.
Let me reassure you, dear fellow white leader, that Dr. Perez practices what he preaches and speaks from a place of kindness and cultural humility. This book is an easily approachable and practical tool to help develop the skills to tackle difficult issues, and encourages everyone to understand why cultural competency is so important and why, as a leader, cultural humility is more than just a DEI compliance issue but is, rather, vital to a healthy workplace culture.
Each chapter ends with ideas on how to put the topics discussed into practice, and the tone and style make this book easy to follow and practical to implement, whether that means a few tweaks here and there or a complete cultural overhaul. In a season where it's easy to hear the voices of those looking to create more division, we need to highlight voices like these from Dr. Perez that encourage shared understanding and reflection.
Let me reassure you, dear fellow white leader, that Dr. Perez practices what he preaches and speaks from a place of kindness and cultural humility. This book is an easily approachable and practical tool to help develop the skills to tackle difficult issues, and encourages everyone to understand why cultural competency is so important and why, as a leader, cultural humility is more than just a DEI compliance issue but is, rather, vital to a healthy workplace culture.
Each chapter ends with ideas on how to put the topics discussed into practice, and the tone and style make this book easy to follow and practical to implement, whether that means a few tweaks here and there or a complete cultural overhaul. In a season where it's easy to hear the voices of those looking to create more division, we need to highlight voices like these from Dr. Perez that encourage shared understanding and reflection.
Read
April 23, 2025In a landscape where conversations around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are often fraught with tension and politicization, Dr. Joel Perez offers a refreshing and grounded perspective. His latest work is a compelling invitation to approach DEIB through the transformative lens of cultural humility—a concept he articulates with clarity and depth. Dr. Perez masterfully captures the heart of what it means to lead inclusively in today’s complex organizational environments. This book is not just insightful—it’s essential. For leaders who are serious about deepening their commitment to equity and inclusion, this is more than a resource; it’s a roadmap. Timely, thought-provoking, and deeply practical, this book stands as a must-read for anyone striving to create workplaces where everyone truly belongs. Dr. Perez doesn’t just challenge us to think differently—he empowers us to lead differently.
Julian Velarde
Julian Velarde
January 3, 2025
While the title draws in white leaders and reflects a focus on race, this is an exceptional read for all leaders with consideration of culture and experiences across a wide array of social identities. The book holistically focuses on cultural humility from frames including internal/personal, external/organizational, and systemic levels and perspectives. Dr. Perez introduces theoretical perspectives and content with applied personal examples, and he models the very cultural humility and curiosity he introduces through his writing. Whether interested in self-reflection of cultural competence and humility and/or working to drive inclusivity throughout your organization - this succinct read is well worth your time.
Read
January 14, 2025I very slowly read this book. I had to read it for a big departmental discussion at work. I’m not saying that there isn’t value in it—there is. But I do not enjoy reading nonfiction, life lesson, self-help type of things. At all. I read for enjoyment and pleasure and anything that resembles a text book is not it for me. I appreciate what this book is saying and do think it’s very valuable for an eval of oneself and one’s business. It was good for us all to have to read it, but I didn’t enjoy the process of reading it. I’m counting it towards my read total because it’s a book read cover to cover, but I don’t feel like it would be fair for me to rate it. I do think the discussions sparked in the department will be engaging.
June 20, 2024
The title is provocative but the material and presentation can and should be used by leaders to connect with their organizations. By utilizing the learnings in Dr. Perez's book leaders can understand and adapt a posture of cultural humility that can have a material impact on their organization's culture.
November 10, 2025
"Dear White Leader" is an excellent book. The emphasis on cultural humility is a very useful concept and the impact of deep self-awareness will help any leader take stock of their own privilege. The book has very practical suggestions and examples that will help leaders improve their practice.
Dr. Kandy Mink Salas
Dr. Kandy Mink Salas
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews