Manufacturing Culture + Engagement for HR Leaders: Addressing Unconscious Bias to Build Inclusion, Trust, and Team Performance with Michelle Maldonado #22
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (traffic.libsyn.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
Welcome to Manufacturing Greatness with Trevor Blondeel, where we work with organizations to manufacture greatness by leveraging resources you already have to achieve greater retention, productivity, and profits. To learn more, visit www.manufacturinggreatness.com and click here to subscribe to Trevor's monthly newsletter.
Now, let's jump in!
Join us as Michelle Maldonado joins the podcast to unpack unconscious bias and how it directly impacts hiring, engagement, and attracting the right talent.
In this episode, Michelle, founder of Lucenscia, shares insights on manufacturing leadership, emotional intelligence, and authentic leadership for Operations Managers, Production Managers, Manufacturing Managers, and Shift Supervisors.
We explore difficult conversations, communication skills, and trust building, plus how mindfulness, self awareness, and compassion help leaders address bias, strengthen culture, and improve workforce retention. Michelle makes uncomfortable topics approachable while offering practical strategies to lead with clarity and intention on the shop floor.
2:30 – Unconscious bias – we all have it! Beliefs that we have about a person or group or conditions that we are not even aware of. Great examples and explanation, self awareness development.
7:45 – We each are either racist or anti-racist. And, here's why: silence and inaction can equate to enabling, and this depends on your comfort level to speak up. Hiring for diversity, and on boarding for assimilation does not help. Be curious and engaging in conversation. Bias sneaks in when we scan for threat, we are hard wired that way. In groups vs. out groups. Stretch yourself to also be in the company of people who think differently and have different experiences.
12:30 – To make a difference, depends on your comfort level to speak up. One of the original meanings of the work competition come from the Latin word Competere. The original meaning was everyone striving together towards a common objective, and over the centuries, we have twisted this to in order for me to win, you have to lose. There is room for everyone at the table.
14:40 – make an edit
16:00 – Any meaningful societal change in history did not happen at the top, it came from the people. We can all take a step – do one thing - or make a commitment to change one percent of whatever you are doing. It does take all of us, collectively to generate change. At some point we need the CEO or leader at the top to be modelling and be all in. In supportive, not judgemental ways. Consistent modelling.
20:00 – Context is crucial, each person has to evaluate how they can contribute and what are they comfortable with.
21:45 – You can be a good person and still hold bias, Michelle explains micro-aggressions and how they work. The offence is measured at the ear of the listener, and not at the mouth of the speaker. Intention does not always match impact.
25:00 – What to do when you become self-aware that you have said the wrong things. You need to be in conversations.
27:40 – The difference between mindfulness and meditation – they are different, but related. The purpose of being mindful meditation or practicing it, is to help our selves be grounded, focused, clear, and aware as well as to be compassionate, properly self-managed and high performing, filling up the well. Mindfulness is to be present with what ever is happening with yourself, others and your environment. If you are not aware of yourself, the level of awareness of others is probably low. Mediation is another way of saying a focused attention practice.
36:00 – Michelle explains the Institute for Organizational Mindfulness where she serves on the board, and where we serve as the ambassadors for Manufacturing! It is all about how we bring mindfulness to the workplace, built by people who have come from business. IOM provides resources and courses to cultivate that skill set within yourself. Join the effort by signing up for free here www.iomindfulness.org/membership and be part of the community membership program getting access to exclusive member content, webinars, news, and more.
How to contact Michelle or learn more about her work:
[email protected] the information about what it means and how it works.
in/MichelleLMaldonado