DEI--an Evolving (and Instructive) Case Study
Just take 3 minutes. Watch this MLB (Major League Baseball) clip about the first woman to manage in a men's professional baseball league (last year). No detailed 'baseball talk' (unfortunately for me, baseball geek that I am, but that's beside the point for our focus here). https://www.mlb.com/news/rachel-balkovec-to-manage-yankees-low-a-team
It's all there. Just listen carefully. No one needs skads of guidance and parades of experts to get the central point. I've worked in the DEI domain for decades (particularly as a consultant and coach to executives and High Potentials) and yes the details of implementation matter, beginning with systemic/organizational change along with expanding various micro skills such as listening (and learning). Yet, who wants 'it'? Who wants, as a therapist would say, to do the work or even to understand what the work is... and what the work can yield?
Well, in this case, pursuing 'the work' in earnest and over time has led to the hiring of another woman manager in another, more advanced professional league, to pursue a passion, a dream (1/20/23). What people in which organization want, not just to hire or to promote truly based on talent but also to create a legacy for the organization and, in this case, for a young woman to reference, to draw upon, and to seek to advance? And for parents, especially if you misplaced the memo about supporting daughters, as stated in the video, to be 'competitive, capable, and aggressive' athletes... or anything else that they pursue. As our strong, tough minded, independent, 30-something daughters say, 'we learned at home not to let anyone put gender between us and our dreams. No one. Never.' And if you read that 'memo' and have tried your best to put it into practice, then think Aussie and 'good on ya'. Take a moment for a deep, appreciative, even celebratory breath! https://www.mlb.com/news/ronnie-gajownik-named-high-a-hillsboro-manager
Want more? Watch the 26' clip at the same address https://www.mlb.com/news/ronnie-gajownik-named-high-a-hillsboro-manager regarding the experience of 3 successful and rising women coaches in professional baseball. Again, little baseball talk. Lots of considered, enthusiastic, and intelligent conversation among rising women professionals about being rising professionals who happen to be women. They lay it all out--the importance of their commitment (and ferocious competitiveness), peer support (especially among women colleagues), upper level/organizational support (that's so (too) often men...), friends/family/parents... It's all stuff we know and it's all stuff that matters, as these women bear witness. It's all stuff we all need to remember.
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Other points of note in the video include the role/use of enhanced data analysis and of other focus in coaching bundled together with the centrality of communication skills/flexibility in developing the talent in others. Interestingly, these women discuss how their physical 'limits', e.g., upper body strength compared to men, help them coach men because they have had to concentrate more, earlier, and longer on technique which, eventually, any truly serious and aspiring athlete has to come to concentrate on... the metaphor for all of us: 'weakness' as strength.
Want still more? Scroll down at the link below to Coaches at Breakthrough Series (3') to see these folks at work on the field, at the ballpark-- taking time to develop the next generation of women in baseball. https://www.mlb.com/news/ronnie-gajownik-named-high-a-hillsboro-manager
Celebrate these leaders. Celebrate those who toil with them in the fields of fairness and progress. Feel good about all of that and toil on... And, as these featured women professionals undoubtedly will, celebrate the approaching of spring which means spring training which means baseball...which means another chance for them to 'show game'.