America is about to become a minority-majority nation. And yet, companies across the country do not reflect the transforming demographics of our nation, particularly with leadership. For decades, leaders have heard variations on the same theme on how to increase workplace diversity. It’s time to stop following failing trends. It’s time to lead change.
In Authentic Diversity, culture change expert and diversity speaker, Michelle Silverthorn, explains how to transform diversity and inclusion from mere lip service into the very heart of leadership.
Following the journey of a Black woman in the workplace, leaders learn the old rules of diversity that keep failing her and millions like her again and again, and the new rules they must put in place to make equity and inclusion a reality for everyone.
A millennial, immigrant, and Black woman in America, Michelle Silverthorn will show you how to lead a space centered on equity, justice, and inclusion.
Change the rules, change the world. That’s how great leaders make diversity matter for good.
Michelle Silverthorn believes diversity and inclusion needs a new voice for a new generation. A recognized organizational diversity expert, in-demand diversity speaker, and the founder of Inclusion Nation, Michelle works with clients in all industries to design spaces centered on courage, belonging, and authenticity. She equips her audiences across the country with the knowledge and skills to finally move forward on diversity and inclusion.
A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Michigan Law School, Michelle practiced for two large law firms in New York and Chicago. She then transitioned into the education field where she trained thousands of professionals – in-person and online – about implicit bias, diversity and inclusion, and millennials in the workplace. She has written numerous articles on those topics, including a well-received op-ed for the Chicago Tribune on implicit bias. She is a TEDx speaker and the author of the forthcoming book, Authentic Diversity: How to Change the Workplace for Good.
Michelle previously worked as an arts and entertainment journalist in Trinidad and Tobago, a legal researcher in Puno, Peru and Geneva, Switzerland, and a volunteer teacher in Gaborone, Botswana and Almaty, Kazakhstan. Michelle grew up in the Caribbean and now lives in Chicago with her husband Daniel and their two daughters.
I can see how this would be useful for the following people:
a) people who've never given any real thought to how marginalized people struggle in the workplace through no fault of their own, and b) people at or near the top of the hierarchy in a private-sector company.
Unfortunately, I was hoping to learn how to change my workplace culture as a marginalized person near the bottom of the hierarchy in the public sector! So this was disappointing for me personally but probably fine for the intended audience.
A direct and clear call to action for managers and administrators in all industries and organizations that current diversity and inclusion initiatives are not enough and that real change needs to happen. The author lays out 5 old rules of diversity and how they miss the mark or don't inspire real, lasting change and offers 5 new rules that are necessary to move towards equity and authentic diversity. Michelle Silverthorn uses concrete and real world examples and also give actionable steps that won't change organizations overnight but are crucial to real change. It is a brief but powerful book and that I highly recommend for all leaders and administrators.
I read this book in under a day. It has great examples to clarify by what we mean by diversity and inclusion. It starts with several propositions about why we typically think we should include diversity, ranging from making business sense (from the demand for it by both consumers and employees to how it reels in profit- for every 1% increase of race, leads to 9% increase of profit and for every 1 % increase of gender diversity, leads to 3% increase of profit (38). “In 2009, the American Sociological Association found that companies with the highest levels of racial or gender diversity brought in nearly 15 times more sales revenue than those with the lowest”(38). Plus diversity leads to more creativity and “to better group problem solving” and to “introducing new viewpoints or approaches” and Deloitte found them more “innovative and collaborative” ( 39). “Diversity triggers more careful information processing absent in homogenous groups…and more successful in completing their tasks (39).
We need diversity work in order to actually be better at business. Our biases get in the way of fairly evaluating and of helping others with advancement. Silverthorn mentions a case that illustrates how our bias does not mean evaluating fairly. A law firm was given a fictional person’s outlining of a legal argument; half were told he was black and half were told he was white. They were asked to grade his document. The ones who were told he was black were much harsher. Concretely, the study found that the ones told he was white ranked him on average as 4.1 out of 5 while those told he was black gave him 3.2 out of 5. Those told the person was white was praised while those told he was back was criticized and told lots of improvement was needed. Note, they were given the same document, just with a name change. The critical eye frequently directed towards blacks revealed 5.8 out of 7 spelling errors while the ones told he was white found 2.9 out of 7 spelling errors. They made 11 comments on formatting for the white one and 29 for the black one! “Because when you expect someone to stumble, you won’t look for ways that they succeed. You will look for ways that they stumble. Ways that fit into your schema. Ways that confirm your bias”(51). Another study looked at gender; it sent inquiries to professors around the country and found that women and minorities got less responses, and it found that the private university professors were worst (51). Lastly, she mentions a study that sent the same resume to over 100 science professors around the U.S. with the name Jennifer or John, and Jennifer was seen as less competent and they thought she should be paid $4,000 less than John. (51-52). Also studies have found that women get more critical feedback instead of supportive critical feedback.
She cites Verna Myers who says that “Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance.” A great visual is used of teaching the difference between equality versus equity. She says to imagine there are 3 boys of different heights trying to look over a fence. With equality they are all given boxes of the same height to stand on. With equity, they are given different sized boxes so that all 3 arrive at the same viewing level.
Points out about diversity training: It will be uncomfortable! The focus has to be on the impact of the actions NOT on the ‘intentions’ i.e. “I didn’t mean it”. – those are microinvalidations, such as “just a joke”, “Not a big deal” “just get over it” and “why are you blaming me?” (56). Companies need to look at who stays and who leaves. Facts: Only 4 Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Even FB, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have ZERO Blacks on senior leadership (27). Latinx = 4.3% of executives, 2.8% of Fortune 500 Board seats.
Exercise: In 3 groups: 1. write list of words associated with women 2. write words associated with men 3. write words associated with leaders. Result? Words for men and leaders coincide. (53).
Height bias: 14.5% of men in USA are over 6 feet but 58% of Fortune 500 CEOs are over 6 feet and 30% of men over 6 feet 2 inches are at Fortune 500 companies (53).
75% of white Americans have no friends of color at all (69) and “In America the average white person has 91 white friends and 9 friends of color—including just one Black friend (69). So are we thus surprised at how white workplaces are? I.E. we tend to hire those who look like us and 85% of jobs come via networking…
Michelle Silverthorn’s credentials are formidable. She is the CEO and founder of the firm Inclusion Nation and works designing authentic and inclusive spaces for employers, employees, and students that encourage success. Silverthorn and her firm have worked with tech start-ups, Fortune 500 organizations, universities, and non-profits to realize such ambitions and she has likewise earned a well-deserved reputation as a speaker and lauded organizational diversity expert. Her skills and experience merge in her new book "Authentic Diversity: How to Change the Workplace for Good" to provide interested partners with, for all intents and purposes, a roadmap in text pointing the way towards a more effective workplace environment.
Silverthorn, over the course of fifteen parts, makes a forceful and deeply personal case for how business leaders can incorporate tangible diversity into their professional world rather than paying it lip service. The personal edge she brings to the book is key. She doesn’t remain aloof from the subject but, instead, writes from personal and professional experiences alike and refrains from maintaining the distance common in books of this sort. She makes her arguments in a confident yet never strident fashion
Those arguments never rely on rhetoric or opinion alone. Authentic Diversity, despite being a relatively brief book, benefits enormously from the voluminous amount of research she does to support her point of view. It isn’t a question of cherry-picking her sources either. She relies on a wide variety of sources to strengthen her ideas rather than marrying herself to like-minded professionals and any attempt to dynamite her arguments based along political lines deserves disrepute. She warns readers early in the book that many of them may feel uncomfortable with its contents. Silverthorn never soft-pedals the issue though, to her credit, she never lapses into angry crackpot denunciation. The tone of the book is assertive without being abrasive.
Many readers will admire her prose style. It is a balanced mix of short sentences woven around longer counterparts and orchestrates that mix with a deft hand. Her experience as a writer is obvious and, considering her legal training, her concision is often remarkable. She adopts a conversation tone reflective of her experience as a public speaker, but it works well in a book form rather than reading like an uneasy transplant.
It is, moreover, a ruthlessly honest work. Much of the book’s early portions are as much about Silverthorn’s personal journey and she doesn’t mince words about coming face to face with limitations in her own thinking as a young woman. She goes even further when warning readers early on that, as a result of her own experiences as a “black” woman in American society, she will focus much of the book on that aspect of a much larger topic. It doesn’t mar the book, but some readers may feel she errs by not providing readers with a broader-based examination of the topic.
Some may even feel "Authentic Diversity"’s brevity does the subject disservice, but many will not. It is difficult to argue with "Authentic Diversity: How to Change the Workplace for Good"’s conclusions. The research brings the ring of truth to what many voices resistant to change will decry as identity politics run amok and the lucid, logical positions she takes throughout the course of this book make it a worthwhile and enlightening reading experience.
I have mixed feelings about this book. I think the writer is very skilled, and does a great job of explaining concepts such as the different types of bias. She helped me gain some education on topics that I am clearly lacking in the area of diversity. I found her examples relatable as someone who is a gender minority, and her examples of how differences in treatment (conscious or unconscious) over time snowball to the current state of upper management being dominated by white men at many employers (esp large ones). However, where she loses me is in her recommendations of how to make workplaces more diverse. The most disturbing one to me was to financially incentivize the workforce to recruit minorities for interviews / promotions. Yes, I get the fact that money talks and that might be an effective forcing function to change ingrained cultures, but I can also see an incentive program like that being abused ("I just gave HR ten resumes of minority people of random people I found, where is my $5K bonus?"). I also wonder how many employers are really going to invest in the time and manpower required to analyze the workforce current state, figure out an effective strategic plan of how to become more diverse, and then execute that plan. I would have loved to see examples where this was successfully done, esp at large employers like where I work. The theory makes sense, I want to see it actually done. Call me a cynic, but I don't see your stereotypical upper management (dominated by white men) caring enough to invest in that process and see it through execution. I agree with the author that employers must be more fair and make a conscious effort to diversify, but when I look back on my career of over two decades, I am at a loss of how to do that and I doubt any of the author's suggestions would have ever worked at any large employer I have ever worked at. Another shortfall of the book is how do we effect change further upstream to level the playing field? As a female engineer, I have read ad naseum about how girls are interested in STEM at comparable numbers to boys early on in school and that number plummets by the time they graduate from high school. So, the selection pool radically downsizes before they have even reached college, let alone the workplace.
"Authentic Diversity" is a well-structured exploration of diversity, inclusion, and equity in the workplace. The importance of transforming corporate leadership to reflect diversity is more critical than ever. Silverthorn's book is like a roadmap for leaders, particularly white cis-men in leadership roles, to effectively implement crucial changes.
One notable aspect this book is its clear target audience. As I said, the book is tailored for individuals who are new to inclusivity efforts or those in leadership positions, particularly white cis-men. For those already engaged in diversity work or belonging to minority groups, the concepts may not be groundbreaking. However, the author's approach ensures that the foundational principles of diversity and inclusion are communicated effectively to those who are in decision-making positions.
The writing style of the book is very appealing. Silverthorn writing style is accessible and maintain a level of sophistication in her language that is suitable for readers, including those for whom English is a second language (like me). The narrative flows smoothly, making it a pleasure to read or listen to, as was my experience.
Silverthorn’s openness about her identity as a Black American woman makes her storytelling more authentic. Her focus on the experiences of Black individuals in the United States provides powerful, real-world examples of exclusion and discrimination. These stories are eye-opening and the reader easily can fell strong empathy. However, some aspects of the book may feel somewhat alien to those of us working in different cultural contexts (like for me living in Scandinavia). Certain American-specific phenomena might not fully resonate, but they still offer valuable insights into the broader issues of workplace diversity.
I like book's practical approach. The book goes beyond theory, offering concrete tips and advice on how to foster diversity, inclusion, and equity in the workplace. This guidance is suitable for leaders looking to implement real change within their organizations. Moreover, the book successfully cultivates empathy by illustrating the myriad ways in which minorities (particularly Black individuals) face exclusion and discrimination. I found myself deeply moved on numerous occasions, which underscores the emotional impact of author’s writing.
Beautiful. I could not yet relate to her solutions at this very moment, since I do not have much experience working in an organisation, much less in a managerial role. Nonetheless, the anecdotes were touching and she managed to raise the subject of racism and bias as an area to be worked on, instead as an area to be judged upon. Very enlightening and should be be reread in a future episode.
I'm not really the audience for this but it is a good book on making inclusion a reality and the commitment to equity actionable and not just something on paper/a website. I am curious to see how it resonates with manager + level and if actual change can be made with allies or better said, UPSTANDERS (look it up👏🏽)
Really enjoyed this one. It encouraged me to be better and become a sponsor for others who need opportunities to show who they can become. Best question at the end was to figure out your why instead of just being better about listening to experiences of others. If you want to drive change, figure out your why.
The book explores the issue of diversity, equite and inclusion from a very biased perspective. Very aggresive approach to change the mindset and attitudes of leaders. I feel I wasted my time reading this book
Not a ton of new information if you’ve read similar books before but it’s a great primer and very succinct. Definitely geared toward people in higher up leadership positions, though most of the content is still valuable
I’m taking a class about diversity and equity so borrowed a couple books to listen to reinforce the stuff I’m learning. This was easy to listen nice narration and really talked about how to be authentic when pursuing diversity and not just doing it to be diverse but to be truly inclusive.
Incredible, incredible book. Every single person who has a job NEEDS to read this book! It was moving in ways I didn't expect and it made me look at myself differently.
Drumming up her own business. The book is actually good with a lot of really insightful ideas to help companies make positive change to their cultures.
There is a lot here for people who are new to diversity concepts and wanting to build an inclusive and diverse workplace. I appreciated the way the author laid out the concepts and used limited anecdotes/fictional scenarios. The book, though, is really geared toward higher up leaders of private companies. If you are more of the middle manager type, there is some helpful stuff, but most of the book won't be as useful depending on the culture of your organization.