Diversity Beyond Lip Service

A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias

By: La'Wana Harris

Narrated by: Anna Crowe

The ugly truth about diversity is that some people worry they must give up their power for others to have a chance. La’Wana Harris’s Inclusion Coaching method helps people realize that sharing power isn’t the same as losing it. The elephant in the room with diversity work is that people with privilege must use it to allow others equal access to power. This is often why diversity efforts falter - people believe in diversity until they feel that they have to give something up.

How do we talk them through this shift? La’Wana Harris introduces Inclusion Coaching, a new tool based on cutting-edge research that identifies the stages of preparation, implementation, and “self-work” necessary to help individuals, teams, and organizations build a sustainable culture of inclusion.

Harris’s six-stage C.O.M.M.I.T. model - Commit to courageous action, Open your eyes and ears, Move beyond lip service, Make room for controversy and conflict, Invite new perspectives, and Tell the truth even when it hurts - provides a proven process for making people aware of their own conscious and unconscious biases and concrete steps to make inclusion an embedded reality. Harris offers managers and diversity coaches new models to empower everyone from employees to CEOs to “do” inclusion and address deep-rooted biases that are often invisible. She addresses the growing need to challenge bias and build authentic cultures where everyone can feel a sense of belonging.

©2019 La'Wana Harris (P)2019 La'Wana Harris

Critic reviews

"La’Wana Harris has opened this coach’s eyes to the power of coaching practices to create new paths for diversity and inclusion work - whether or not you are formally trained as a coach. Please read this book and help create workplaces with honest engagement and access for all." (Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers 50 #1 Executive Coach and two-time #1 Leadership Thinker in the World)

Workplace diversity must read

If diversity and inclusion are top priorities for your organization, this is a must read. If they’re not... this is a must read. I believe every organization could benefit from the information presented here, regardless of where you are on the journey to diversity.

Helpful guide

actionable strategies to help transform organizations. also, the narrator was excellent. hoping to find more work by this author

A particularly useful read for anyone

This is a very good book not only for those operating in Diversity and Inclusion but for anyone in general. The narration is also very good and catches the listener's attention.

Diversity at its Best

What an awesome book to start a conversation about diversity and how to be intentionally inclusive.

Worth Resource for DEI Strategy and Coaching

Excellent source for learning about tools and strategy to develop or grow the culture of inclusivity within one's organization