The Advanced Experiential Seminar: A Special Learning Event

Written by Evangelina Friday, 17 February 2012 21:05

Last December I facilitated a two and half days workshop entitled Class, Race, Gender and Other Intersections of Differences and we engaged in a learning form I have named The Advanced Experiential Seminar. The Advanced Experiential Seminar is a combination of academic seminar, where participants engage in serious discussions on a topic and an experiential event, where participants engage in "here and now" activities, reflect on them, generalize and explore how to apply learnings derived from those experiences to real life situations.¹ This form of learning seems particularly suitable for a small group – five participants and one facilitator – of experienced professionals seeking to increase their skills, expand their knowledge, and engage with other experienced colleagues in "pushing" their own theory and practice. The characteristics of the Advanced Experiential Seminar are:

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Written by Evangelina Tuesday, 17 January 2012 00:00

"We need to bring all of ourselves to work" is a phrase frequently tied to diversity and inclusion efforts in organizations. Bringing all of our different selves is supposed to be good for employees and for the organization because the more skills, identities, and knowledge each employee brings the better the interactions and performance. Recent studies support this popular axiom. For example, Ramarajan and Thomas (2010)¹ report that displaying important aspects of one's identity can lead to a sense of congruence between one's internal feelings and their expression resulting in better relations in groups and increase innovation and problem solving. The opposite also seems true: having to prove a particular image (whether highlighting or concealing negative aspects of one's distinct social identity) can be detrimental.

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Hispanic Leadership

Written by Evangelina Sunday, 09 October 2011 18:02

Hispanics are a rich source of talent and profitability in formal and informal organizations today, but our contributions are barely recognized and our leadership remains untapped. This regrettable situation is largely a result of the limited understanding that corporations and educational institutions have about leadership and leadership development.

Let's take how leadership is usually conceived in corporate USA. Popular images of leadership are still very traditional in representing leaders as decisive, usually autocratic, smart, tall, and male. Study after study shows that those who do not meet this image, especially women and "minorities," do not climb the ladder, unless they conform to this image as closely as possible. Above all, they must prove that they will be available 24/7 to meet the demands of the corporation no matter what.

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Cultural Scripts, cultural repertoires and globalization

Written by Evangelina Saturday, 30 July 2011 11:09

The global free flow of goods, capital, labor, and cultures across national boundaries and throughout the world, means that new, complex and shifting identities are created, which demand new understandings of gender and other work identities. At CGO¹ we recently discussed with Visiting scholar Michal Frenkel, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, how the concepts of cultural repertoires and cultural scripts can help us address the complexity of gender issues and gender identity in today's world. More specifically, our interest was to explore whether cultural repertoires or scripts help us understand the intersections (or simultaneity) of social identities, organizational practices and societal processes of race-ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and nation in an increasingly global world.

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