der, or one's religion, have been used to justify the most brutal and inhu-
mane treatment of one group of people by another. Wars, holocausts,
ethnic cleansing, slavery, genocide, inquisitions--all have been the result
of human beings' need to define one's own group as "we" and another's
group as "they."

Americans are not comfortable thinking about "oppression" as a fact
of our own national life. We can state with equanimity that various
groups of people in faraway lands oppress other groups in those lands.
But it is much more difficult for us to use that term to describe the hateful
history of racism in this country. We hesitate to call sexism or sexual
harassment "oppression." Even when a young gay man is brutally mur-
dered specifically and explicitly because his murderers hate him because
of his sexual orientation, we don't want to think of the incident as part
of an oppressive system.

But the realities of change do not allow us the luxury of equivocation.
People of color, white women, gays, lesbians and bisexuals, people with
disabilities--from these groups is our work force of today and tomorrow
being constituted. Already it is a cliché to point out that the white men
who have dominated our society and our institutions from the beginning
of our national history are an ever-decreasing minority now, in the so-
ciety, and tomorrow, in our businesses.

So the white men who continue to be in virtually all the top positions
in our organizations, and in most of the second- and third-level positions
as well, have no choice but to figure out how to have the courage to lead
in a new environment, working with people they have little direct
knowledge of, and who, at some level, they fear. Helping these leaders
come to terms with this reality requires an approach that is different
from the linear, "do-this-first-and-then-do-that" style of the typical man-
agement text. To find the courage to lead in this new world means that
our leaders must gain both cognitive and affective understanding of
tough topics: racism, sexism, heterosexism and all the rest.

I begin with the cognitive level. Chapter 1 provides an overview of
the organizational development model we call the "Managing Diversity
Intervention." The model describes a process that moves through three
phases. In the first, or start-up, stage, we identify the problem, collect
and analyze data, and provide a diagnosis. Education and awareness
follow, and then the model shows how the process leads to organization
and implementation of a strategic plan. In the second stage, capacity
building, numerous components are added that help the organization
begin to take ownership of the process and define its own strategies. In
the third and final stage, the intervention leads to a major shift in the
culture of the organization, and a new value system and way of doing
business is institutionalized.

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