Kendrie Upton
As the DGC BC's Executive Director, Kendrie Upton represents the organization in all facets of the industry. She's responsible for ensuring that Executive Board policies are implemented and that Members' needs are met. She has been very involved with the respectful workplace efforts that the Guild has engaged in both at the local and national levels. She currently co-chairs the cross industry Education, Training and Awareness Committee, sits on the Executive of MPPIA and serves as the co-chair of the MPPIA Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
The Person You mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias by Author Dolly Chugh
This was originally posted in the October 15, 2021 edition of the Ebulletin:
In celebration of October being Canadian Library Month I want to share one of the best books I’ve ever read with all of you. It’s called The Person You Mean To Be: How Good People Fight Bias and it’s written by Dolly Chugh, award-winning Professor and Social Psychologist. Dolly (I feel like she and I are using first names) does research on the psychology behind good people.
I was hooked mere lines into the Foreword which is by past VP of People Operations for Google (What a great job!) Laszlo Bock who’s an author in his own right. Lazlo opens by recounting a speech Dolly gave at a conference he attended in which she began by asking, “How can it be true that all of us act in ways that aren’t perfectly ethical, but amazingly, every one of us believes him- or herself to be a good person?”
This resonated for me as I recalled my work with the Listening Tour that DGC National mounted in 2017 following the launch of the #MeToo Movement. I was confounded by the fact that the consultant who conducted the many, many Member interviews reported that in several cases the same people who had told her that they found the industry to be full of bullies who mistreated people for breakfast were, in later interviews with other Members, also reported as having engaged in harassing behaviours themselves. To be clear all the interviews were anonymous so I only know this happened and not who the people in question were. Still I found myself wondering, how can a person know exactly what bullying looks like and how harmful it is and yet still treat people in many of those inappropriate and harmful ways? And isn’t the fact that this happens the central problem that we’ll need to correct if we’re to create safe workplaces?
The answer lies within the “fundamental attribution error.” This is the ability of our brains to cut ourselves an enormous amount of slack when it comes to those minor unethical behaviours like cutting a person off in traffic because we know that we’re late to catch a flight or rushing to the hospital to tend to a sick loved one. Yet when someone treats us the same way, cutting us off, we attribute their behaviour to some level of malice.
Of course each of us can only attempt to “fix” this problem by working on ourselves. I may know people who treat others poorly. I can’t change their behaviour. But I have full influence and control over my own actions and how I choose to treat people. So I'll start there and keep in mind that I’ll have to guard against the “fundamental attribution error” as I do so.
In her exploration of the fight against biases, Dolly also talks about the difference between people who are believers in the concepts of diversity and inclusion versus those who are builders of more diverse and inclusive workplaces. Which she then does an incredibly clear and concise job of explaining exactly how to do replete with examples and suggested actions.
Dolly Chugh is an incredibly talented and insightful writer and a treasure of a human being. I hope that you will take the time to read her book and join me in moving from believer to builder!
Kendrie Upton
Executive Director