Leadership Optimization

A Gemisode™ Series – Part II Systems, policies, and people eventually fall short of their intentions and as such “all paths to progress begin with acknowledgement”. Whether harm is experienced due to race, gender, ethnicity, religious identity, ability status, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, body shape and/or size, or any other intersectional identity used to judge […]

A Gemisode™ Series – Part I You’re overwhelmed, perhaps exhausted, and juggling more thoughts and responsibilities than you can fathom, yet the ever-pressing demand surrounding you is, ‘be resilient, be, be resilient’!  The American Psychological Association offers that “resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through […]

A Gemisode™ Series – Part II Dr. Sarah Webb, in a 2017 essay explained that internalized oppression was “the belief among historically oppressed people that negative stereotypes about themselves and positive stereotypes about a dominant group are, in fact true.” Delving deeper into the dangers of internalized oppression, the 2022 Forbes article by Janice Gassam […]

A Gemisode™ Series – Part I “The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.”― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed If guaranteed allies were freely handed out, who wouldn’t line up? Receiving support when experiencing difficulty can have a positive impact on our mental and emotional state, yet, […]

In part I, we shared the first and might we add, epic, Leadership Fail Statement, “I’ll find time in the coming weeks”. The statement was made by a C-suite executive to an employee who escalated an issue they’d been unsuccessfully navigating and attempting to resolve with the direct leadership team of said executive for months. […]

A Gemisode™ Series – Part II In part I, we presented the concepts and definitions central to the series, specifically, intersectionality and psychological safety. We then connected the concepts and highlighted the researched benefits (e.g., increased team performance, retention, and effective communication) of psychological safety in the workplace before sharing our belief around why psychological […]

A Gemisode™ Series – Part I Could one ever feel safe in an environment that refused to acknowledge their intersectional identities and experiences? Simply put—nope. Intersectionality, as coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, is defined as: “A lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not […]

Collective cringe-y or face-palm moments often follow a combination of ill-timed, inappropriate or willfully unaware statements made by those in positions of power and authority. In this series, we examine the impact of actual statements made by leaders around the globe in response to internal or external issues, which, at times, overlap. Alexander Pope first […]

When an employee finally musters the courage to reach out to you after being subjected to a toxic and harmful situation that has involved several parties, including your leadership team, who have either: 1) Been the cause of said harm or  2) Failed to adequately acknowledge or address the harm Your response should NOT be, […]