Laura A Liswood - The Elephant and the Mouse: Moving Beyond the Illusion of Inclusion to Create a Truly Diverse and Equitable Workplace

Addressing diversity and inclusion is a global, societal, and moral issue of utmost importance. At Mercer, we take an evidencebased approach to solving diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges. As a people business, having colleagues with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and cultures brings a richness of ideas that, in turn, helps us make brighter futures for everyone. Leaders need to be the north stars for their people, and they need to enable other leaders to support employees and execute DEI strategy through everyday actions. Companies are a large part of society with both the ability and the obligation to create progress across diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Laura Liswood's expertise in the fields and diversity of leadership is exceptional. We are fortunate to have her voice and her knowledge, as so eloquently shared in The Elephant and the Mouse. The Elephant and the Mouse outlines how we can understand both our conscious and unconscious biases and the ways they affect our perspectives and our decisionsboth personally and professionallyacross all facets of our lives. The Elephant and the Mouse shows the ways in which diversity alone is not enough and how we can all work together to help close the gaps between us.

Achieving true diversity, equity, and inclusion is an ongoing journey and educating ourselves is an important step. The insights in this book were revelatory to me as a friend, as a colleague, and as a leader but most importantly, as a human being. No matter who you are or where you are starting from, The Elephant and the Mouse contains lessons for everyone. It asks you to question yourself and provides a framework you can apply to your own life to actively shape change and transform the communities you are a part of. The Elephant and the Mouse illuminates the path forward to real and lasting change and I recommend it for everyone.

Martine Ferland, President and CEO, Mercer

If Laura Liswood ran the world, it would be a fairer, more inclusive place. In this wise book, she highlights that many of our problems with diversity stem not from differences in demography but from differences in power. Her analysis of dominant and nondominant groups offers valuable tools to have more productive conversations and drive more meaningful progress.

Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

The Elephant and Mouse is a mustread for anyone committed to making their workplace or their community truly inclusive. The Loudest Duck synthesized all the diversity research and gave us a framework for how to understand our challenges to diversity and inclusion and was a game changer in our thinking. The Elephant and Mouse takes that to the next level in such an amazing way to elevate our thinking in the way that only Laura can! Laura gives us a powerfully new framework to break through traditional approaches to social inclusion so that we can take our diversity efforts to the next level. Laura has that oneofakind mind that shows us where we arewhy we might be stuckand gives us a practical framework to turn our good intentions into meaningful change and real impact.

Beth Brooke, former ViceChair, EY

Laura has done it again!

As the former Deputy Director for Diversity and Inclusion during the Obama Administration, we used Laura to train the entirety of Senior Executive Service leaders throughout the federal workspace based on her groundbreaking and hugely successful book, The Loudest Duck: Moving Beyond Diversity While Embracing Differences to Achieve Success at Work.

In The Loudest Duck, Laura gave senior leaders within the federal government practical tips and tools to harness cognitive diversity. Her senior leader sessions were nothing short of fantastic and received much acclaim. I loved The Loudest Duck so much I constantly use phrases I picked up from Laura like Noah's Ark diversity while speaking to various audiences. I never imagined that Laura could author a followon book that could rival the simple truths and penetrating insight of The Loudest Duck, but she has!

The Elephant and the Mouse is so good that Im mad I didnt think of it.

In The Elephant and the Mouse, Laura provides a deep and transformative analysis of an issue at the heart of DEI. And that is the differing perceptions of dominant and nondominant groups of organizational and societal lived experiences. Laura makes the brilliant point that dominant group members must work to understand, appreciate, and acknowledge the lived experiences of nondominant group members such as women and people of color. In Laura's new book, you will learn hard truths about diversity and inclusion, why meritocracy as is currently understood is a myth, understand the real difference between the Model T and the Tesla, why we need to move beyond simple unconscious bias training, and so much more.

This book is simply one of the most important books on DEI I have read in recent years.

Bruce J. Stewart, CEO, The Small World Group

The Elephant and the Mouse tells us how ignorant we can be of each other, how group thinking can limit our horizon, and how we can so much improve by exploring, understanding, and sharing with the other tribe, if only because as La Fontaine reminds us in The Lion and the Rat: We need each other. There is a long way to go, and this book is a great start on the journey.

Christine Lagarde, President, European Central Bank

Laura Liswood

Author of The Loudest Duck

Copyright 2022 by Laura Liswood. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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