Communication Leadership awareness: microinequities
April 5, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter
I'm not sure if I find this 'critical' because it makes sense, or because I'm very sensitive to microgestures. I think of this as a component of leadership 'presence'.TIME Magazine Archive Article -- Why Your Boss May Start Sweating The Small Stuff -- Mar. 20, 2006
: By JULIE RAWE Mar. 20, 2006Ever had a boss tell you to keep talking while she checked her BlackBerry? How about a team leader who pronounces your name wrong? Such slights may not mean much individually, but added up they can lead--at least in terms of employee retention--to death by a thousand paper cuts.
Part pop psychology, part human-resources jargon, the term microinequities puts a name on all the indirect offenses that can demoralize a talented employee.
This growing awareness is due largely to the efforts of globetrotting consultant Stephen Young, a former chief diversity officer at JPMorgan Chase who has addressed audiences as varied as rocket scientists at Raytheon and readers of Seventeen magazine on the power of small signals. "It's not so much what I say, but what you hear," he says. One of his most effective demonstrations--the one that has left even mighty CEOs stammering--has him role-playing a guy who is less and less interested in what a speaker is saying. "When you do this," Young says of the exercise, "you see performance change right on the spot."