Exponential Talent Flash Briefing, June 18, 2018

Researchers Robb Willer (Stanford University) and Rachel Wetts (University of California, Berkeley) found that starting in 2008, "racial resentment" began to rise in the US. In additional studies, they also found that communications emphasizing the shrinking size and dominance of the U.S.'s white population increases resentment towards people of color. A potential implication of this research is that it provides insights into how to frame diversity and inclusion communications within companies to avoid antagonism.

5 Brainstorming Exercises for Introverts
Ideo

An introvert and Interaction Designer at the design company Ideo describes five brainstorming exercises meant to capture creative input from introverted employees. She was inspired by Susan Cain, author, founder of the Quiet Revolution company and TED Talk presenter of “The Power of Introverts.” (18 min. 57 sec.)

With a $15 million gift from VMware, Stanford University launched the Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab to, “… conduct foundational research to diagnose barriers to women’s advancement, develop and evaluate interventions to move beyond those barriers, and act as a hub for translating and disseminating evidence-based solutions to achieve significant advancements in women’s leadership.” Stanford Professor Shelley Correll will be the Principal Investigator and Director, leading WLIL with Co-Founder Lori Nishiura Mackenzie and Managing Director Dr. Caroline Simard, co-founder of Exponential Talent. Exponential Talent founder and CEO Molly Anderson said, ““Without women's full participation in leadership, our world lacks the diversity required to develop innovative solutions to our toughest, most complex problems. By funding a sustained commitment to diversity research, VMware’s investment will transform Stanford’s capacity to create the knowledge so urgently needed in the world right now.” VMware, based in Palo Alto, is a cloud infrastructure & digital workspace technology company.

The Different Words We Use to Describe Male and Female Leaders
Harvard Business Review

Researchers used a large dataset of military performance evaluations to validate earlier studies that found differences between feedback for women and men (women getting vague or conflicting feedback, being seen as “bossy” instead of “assertive”, perceived incompetence associated with collaborative or communal work). In the 81,000 evaluations studied, they found no quantitative differences in the evaluations but qualitatively women tended to be assigned more negative attributes.

Words don’t exist without context. The author responds with humor and a message to a question about white people singing along, word for word, to hip-hop music.

Learn to Love Networking

Harvard Business Review

We’ve all heard, “I hate networking,” despite the fact that engaging in it presents opportunities of many types. Researchers suggest that there are ways to overcome the aversion to networking by shifting from a “prevention” to “promotion” mindset.

See it as a chance to discover and learn instead of viewing it as a “necessary evil”
Research or seek out shared interests with those you’re networking with
Focus on what you can bring to the interaction rather than what you can take away from it
Link networking to a loftier goal