La’Wana Harris - Diversity Beyond Lip Service: A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias

Praise for Diversity Beyond Lip Service

Diversity Beyond Lip Service makes a good read for all concerned with the question of human training, leadership development, and organizational change. It challenges us to think about diversity in more concrete ways to ensure transformative change in organizational leadership and within institutional structures. At the heart of diversity is addressing the power and structural issues of critical engagement of ideas, beliefs, practices, and social action. The books major strength is the focus on concrete and actionable practices to realize the hopes and dreams of genuine inclusion and diversity.

George J. Sefa Dei, Professor of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

Diversity Beyond Lip Service: A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias provides a clear, powerful guide through what a growing number of us in the coaching profession believe is imperative to our survival and relevance as a profession. To provide the service to our clients that we claim, we must do our own work to become aware of our personal and organizational blind spots and biases in the complex realm of diversity and inclusion. Through many powerful examples, and with a very calm, incontrovertible voice, LaWana Harris has made the intersection between coaching and inclusion work crystal clear. Bravo!

Halli MacNab, PCC, President, Association of Coach Training Organizations, and Chief Operating Officer, Accomplishment Coaching

LaWana Harris has opened this coachs eyes to the power of coaching practices to create new paths for diversity and inclusion workwhether 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, Thinkers50 #1 Executive Coach and two-time #1 Leadership Thinker in the World

Diversity Beyond Lip Service is a wonderful guide to diversity and inclusion for intelligent, caring human beings and their organizations. LaWana Harris wants us to understand that inclusivity is everyones responsibility. Theres no shaming or finger-pointing here. We all have room to improvebecause whether we know it or not, we all have biases. No matter who you are, youll be a better person for reading this book.

Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The New One Minute Manager and Servant Leadership in Action

Coaching is about expanding peoples view of themselves and the world around them. LaWana Harris demonstrates how we can use a coaching approach in conversations to help people courageously recognize when they have acted out of judgment, power, and privilege. We dont need to be told to be more inclusive; we need people who help make awareness and inclusion a conscious choice, even when the conversations feel uncomfortable. All leaders, coaches, and people who care about healing the divisiveness in the workplace and the world should practice what they learn from this book.

Marcia Reynolds, board member and past Global President, International Coach Federation, and author of The Discomfort Zone

DIVERSITY

BEYOND

LIP SERVICE

Diversity Beyond Lip Service

Copyright 2019 by LaWana Harris

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Ordering information for print editions

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-9867-5

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9868-2

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9871-2

Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-9870-5

2019-1

Book producer: Linda Jupiter Productions. Cover designer: Paula Goldstein. Editor: Elissa Rabellino. Proofreader: Mary Kanable. Text designer: Morning Hullinger, The Color Mill. Indexer: Paula C. Durbin-Westby.

This book is dedicated to
my grandmother Mildred, who taught me that
a life well spent is one that was lived
in service to others.