Diversity is all around us and can provide a powerful competitive advantage for organizations, when effectively handled. To achieve this, it is important to acknowledge that prejudice influences us, learn in what ways it affects organizations, and what can be done to minimize its negative effects. Prejudices have certain characteristics: they are persistent, they are often automatic and they are influenced by social structures. Everyone engages in stereotyping and harbours certain prejudices. In our daily lives we generally think that we are making rational decisions, yet our decisions are actually influenced by unconscious biases. However, once we are aware of our Mindbugs we can endeavour to ensure that they have less influence on our actions.
The workshop consists of Mindbugs test, the analysis of its results, a lecture about the theory and some interactive exercises.
Organizition
In advance every participant fills out a Mindbugs test online. This Mindbugs test is based on the Harvard IAT test (developed by Harvard scientists Mahzarin Banaji, Brian Nosek and Tony Greenwald). The test is designed to measure implicit associations between images and words. The group results are discussed in the workshop. You learn why we unconsciously seek similarities and why others are less visible. We illustrate this by means of a short film and interactive exercises. We go into the reasons we are unable to choose the best. We look at how our brains work and why both men and women have unconscious prejudices and make choices on the basis of that. We'll let you experience it with some simple examples.
This workshop makes you more aware of your Mindbugs so you can keep an eye out for them and practice adjusting your unexamined attitudes in order to make more balanced decisions.
Small bio of the trainer
After her studies at Nyenrode University (The Netherlands) and Thunderbird in Phoenix, Arizona, Esther Mollema (1965) worked as a managing director for professional training organizations in the Netherlands, Japan, Germany and the United States. In 1999 Esther founded Direction, a specialized and professional training organization for personal development, leadership development, team counselling and decision making. Esther is specialized in diversity, gender awareness and High Performance Organizations.
If you want to attend the workshop please register at: ffnt@utwente.nl.
If you cannot attend the event after registration, please cancel in writing before the lunch discussion to contain the costs of the event. Thank you for your understanding.
Looking forward to seeing you!
- Date: June 29
- Time: from 14.00 till 17.00 hrs.
- Location: Drienerburght Hotel
