You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology

by D.D.S. Dobson-Smith

Your inclusive business culture starts here.

Does your company or organization have trouble attracting and retaining people from diverse and underrepresented communities? Does your organizational culture suffer from low morale, exclusive cliques, or microaggressions you don't know how to address?

You Can Be Yourself Here lays out the deep psychology of our need to belong, its critical impact on workplace performance, and the practical steps any organization can take to make everyone feel welcome and included.

Learn how diversity and representation can lead to a greater experience of belonging for everyone. Glean insights from interviews with real employees speaking openly about their workplace experiences. Discover how to facilitate a culture of belonging, with practical tips for creating inclusive workplaces where people can show up as themselves.

If you're a founder, leader, or HR practitioner who wants all your employees to feel welcome and fully included at work, You Can Be Yourself Here provides the tools you need to start making that shift today.

Genres: Nonfiction

126 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 8, 2022

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

DDS Dobson-Smith’s new book is You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging. While the topicality the title encapsulates is arguably part of a decidedly post-modernist, progressive trend overtaking the business world by storm, Dobson-Smith’s articulation and particular brand of dispensing that methodology is refreshingly straightforward and honest. Dobson-Smith highlights the key issues, from representation to equity to contemporary, societally inclusive expectation, in a manner that is clear, concise, and full of heart - but never at the expense of the facts supporting the rise and continued presence of a post-modern, inclusive, and continually evolving corporate jungle. The text has a ton of wit and a good sense of pace, Dobson-Smith knows how to communicate succinctly but informally, and there’s never a sense of bombardment nor a slackening on the urgency of the issues he passionately advocates for. “Over the course of my career, I’ve had the honor of running hundreds of workshops and learning experiences with groups of people on every single continent around the globe,” Dobson-Smith writes. “These workshops have gone beyond unconscious bias and explore the topics of identity and privilege.33 Time and again, group members have found strength in recognizing that, whoever they are, different aspects of their identity can in some way or another carry privilege. They have come to realize that instead of being ashamed of that privilege, they can own it and use it to support, elevate, and advocate for those people who could otherwise be marginalized, oppressed, or ‘othered’ because they are different.”

He continues, “Once you know yourself more, then comes the job of knowing others. Here I counsel some caution: it is not the job of people who are different from us to educate us about their struggles and experiences . . . that’s on us. It is crucial that we find ways to grow our own awareness and wake up to the experiences of people not like us.” By making it all seem like common sense, You Can Be Yourself Here succeeds in what it sets out to do. The fact it can be so blasé and to-the-point about the issues it raises creates a healthy sense of authority. Dobson-Smith may know of what he speaks, but because of the specific intonation he dispenses the information with, it all makes the read that much more compelling. It’s a tactic useful regardless of topicality, an almost Clintonesque way of empathetically shoehorning in a fresh perspective to the potentially close-minded and the naysayers. “It has been shown time and again that teams of diverse individuals are smarter than homogenous teams,” Dobson-Smith writes accordingly. “And we’re not just talking about diversity in skills or experience; we’re talking about diversity in sex, gender, ethnicity, race, ability, sexuality, socioeconomic background, age, religion and so on. Difference is strength, and an acceptance of difference opens the avenues toward belonging and inclusion.”