Improving your diversity IQ | Doug Melville | TEDxSyracuseUniversity

0:13 it's Friday at 5:00 p.m and you are ready to go for the weekend can't wait there's two minutes left in class and your professor tells you and your 40 classmates that he has registered you for volunteer work this Sunday at 8: a.m. and it's mandatory everyone has to go when the time rolls around he tells you what the assignment is and that's that you must rake the leaves of an elderly couple's home who

0:44 can't do it on their own Sunday morning comes and at 7:50 the first wave of students comes they're the blue group they're the students that downloaded the raking app to figure out EX actly the best way to tackle the yard they want to know each inch and each Leaf in each tree in advance so there's no mistake at 8: a.m. the next group arrives they're the green group they want to do a quick session of yoga

1:14 before they get started and they also want to talk to the owner of the home to see where they would like the leaves placed next you know arriving at 8:05 is the red group they are irate and aggravated that they have to be here at Sunday morning to rake leaves for a family that they do not even know they demand that everyone takes the rakes and gets started right now they already made an appointment for 9:00 and then at 8:30 the yellow group

1:41 arrives hey everyone coffee and donuts what' you guys do last night I oh you all got here on time I can't even believe it do you want to sit down and eat before we get started these four ex this four these four personalities represent the Paradigm of diversity all 40 students heard the same information from the same Source at the same time yet each person interpreted it a little bit differently than the next the word

2:12 diversity is a complicated word and it actually represents how you view the world through your own lens for some people it means race for some it means religion for some it means ethnicity economic status culture habits Hobbies the word diversity is layered and complex so today I'm here to help you improve your diversity IQ I never want you to go out in the world without knowing some of the few fundamentals and basics of diversity as it is today in

2:45 the world so this behind me is a snapshot of my family when I grew up in Bridgeport Connecticut I was mixed race half black and half white and people would always ask me well which parent is which and I would tell them well I have a funny story my mom and dad my four grandparents and my eight grand grand great great grandparents are all mixed race so I made up a term when I was a kid called African amican I was I

3:12 am the most African American person you may ever meet in your life and I was pushed and driven because I never really felt comforted by the kids I went to high school with or the kids around me I actually used to have a afrian Hall of Fame when I found out Mariah Carey and Holly Berry Lenny Kravitz I used to hang it in my room and our African hero Barack Obama man he really is on the

3:36 Mount Rushmore so what I learned from the term is that is that people are comforted by commonality but people grow and learn and strive by diversity but people when given the choice normally hire people that are just like themselves not people that are opposite from themselves but we have to look at the word diversity as a growing term ter not a term that helps hold us back and keep us back today I'm a chief diversity officer

4:06 and I work on Madison AV at an advertising agency and what I work with each of our offices I look at them and say how can we recreate the cultural diversity of America within our supply chain how can I recreate the cultural diversity of America within each of our talent hires so that's what I do on a day-to-day basis and it only serves me right because I've really been learning diversity since I was a child so today

4:32 nine steps that you can quickly use and memorize to improve your diversity IQ these are everyday things that anyone can do on their own a perfect score will be nine I know what you're thinking nine things is a lot of things to remember but they're the first nine letters of the alphabet A through I and secondly if you want to be a genius you have to have an IQ of 160 plus so I think you could

4:54 remember nine things so let's get started from the top a awareness Ness everyone in here needs to be aware that diversity is taking over it's more topical than ever 50% of every baby born in America is Multicultural over a 100 million Millennials are in the United States of America and they represent the most diverse generation yet B Be Yourself there is only one you so you need to express yourself and feel comfortable with all the attributes that

5:26 you have if you want to have tatted up sleeves if you want to wear footy pajamas to work if you have short hair and don't care regardless of what you're bringing to the table you need to have 100% of you bring your whole self to work to your community and to your school next up check your bias there's a website online that was created by a professor from Harvard UVA and Washington it's called project implicit tocom what you can do is you can go

5:54 online and they show you 90 different categories that you can start with and and in the privacy of your own home on your computer you can check your unconscious bias some people have biases against accents skin color religion connotations so what you do is they throw a photo on the screen and then they give you two words to relate to that photo and how quickly you hit the button determines if you have an unconscious bias the good news is is

6:20 that we can change our biases but we can't do that unless we know what they are in advance the next thing I want everyone to do is look inside and go online line to either 23andme.com or ancestry.com and check your DNA you can order a DNA kit take a swab It's a prepaid envelope mail it back you get an email that tells you your family lineage for 50,000 years it breaks down your maternal side and your paternal side I

6:49 found out that I have 694 cousins that have been emailing me and I'm 2% Neanderthal so who would have known e eat out more I want everyone here to make a commitment to go to a new restaurant in a in a cultural neighborhood and try new foods this is a way to get all your senses involved taste new spices listen to the music talk to the waiter or waitresses in the restaurant to find out new things about

7:16 the culture you can go to Korean food EG Egyptian food Ethiopian food Sushi make the effort to go one extra mile to try new things F focus on women issues isues while women represent 50% of America's population globally they're considered some of the most underused resources that we have here on the planet Earth Fortune 1000 companies only 10% have a woman CEO and they don't all have a woman on their board of directors it's very important that we look around and

7:48 empower the women and females that are in our area and raise them up and encourage them to lean in glad glad matters glad is an advocacy group that focuses on LGB BT issues the first transgender model was on the cover of time Orange is the New Black has really brought the transgender issue to the Forefront marriage between gay and lesbian couples is now legal in 31 States but there's still 19 to go gay and lesbian issues are civil rights

8:16 issues so you need to be in tune with those H hidden handicaps there's six billion people in the world of which 1.3 billion people have hidden cand handicaps it's very important that we real realize when we talk to someone at face value they may be facing internal struggles and battles that you cannot see so be respectful of those around you that's oneth of the population of the world and lastly insights and inspiration that first example I gave

8:45 when I started was created by a a company called insights and what they do is they go into your organization go into your school or community group and they break down the different personality traits so you can communicate better with the different individuals that work or that are around you Mo most often also take the time to inspire people to think outside the box one of the things that we created at our company was called divers effects where

9:09 we measured how people consume music what their favorite cardio was on and on but what it did was it opened up people's minds to diversity not necessarily meaning race but meaning a much wider and broader definition your diversity is your personal currency and it is your responsibility to spend that in a positive way to help grow America and the resources that we have globally you can evolve how we look at diversity but it does start with you so spend your

9:39 personal currency wisely thank you