Diversity of staff, clientele, vendors, and other constituents, as well as cross-cultural competence, are no longer secondary or tertiary matters for organizations; they are economic and philosophical essentials.
On what basis do we judge others?
Stereotyping is a process by which individuals are viewed as members of groups and the information that we have stored in our minds about the group is ascribed to the individual. Many diversity theories show that individuals use stereotyping to navigate interpersonal and group interactions on a daily basis. Stereotypes can become barriers to effective interaction, but they also serve a very real need to navigate large amounts of information and hundreds of interactions.
In this workshop, we address the following questions: What purpose does stereotyping serve? On what basis do we form stereotypes? Why do they get us into such trouble?
This workshop offers a new typology for understanding the sources of stereotypes in the hopes that we can learn to avoid their oppressive use, particularly in organizational life. This is a foundational workshop for OPG’s diversity, equity, and inclusion series and consultation services.
In the Personal Identity and Stereotyping workshop, you will:
- Discuss positive and negative stereotypes and review a new typology for identifying the sources of stereotypes
- Evaluate the three types of data sources – immediate, proximate, distant – we use to stereotype
- Learn how to remediate the weaknesses of stereotypes generated from these various sources
- Address the connection between your personal identity and how you are perceived through stereotypes
AUDIENCE: All levels
In our Personal Identity and Stereotyping workshop, we look at immediate, proximate, and distant data. Ultimately, when we stereotype, we are relying on data, some valid and some invalid.
With all data, there are two important questions to ask yourself:
1. Do I have adequate data to draw a conclusion?
2. Is the source of this data reliable?
When we interact with people, we rarely ask ourselves these two questions – we quickly make broad generalizations and use our intuition (our experience, our read of subtle clues, our education and training, and hearsay) to make judgments.