Articles by Michelle T. Johnson

  If you are involved in any Social Media sites at all, particularly Facebook or Twitter, one topic that's all the rage is the issue of prospective employers having the ability to access the Facebook pages of applicants.  Now, if you’re not someone who “does” Facebook, that has as much relevance as a meteor launched from Jupiter hitting Mars. And if...Full Article »

That’s a term I made up. It may actually be some term in a field of study I’m not an expert in, such as psychology or social studies. But for my point, in my column, it’s a term. Racial juxtaposition is my analysis, in a nutshell, of what all the recent Jeremy Shu-How Lin buzz is about. Lin, the Harvard educated NBA player who plays basketball with the New York Knicks, is all...Full Article »

Neuroplasticity has become my new favorite word. Almost my mantra. It explains all. It explains why we have the habits in our lives that we do. The good habits. The bad habits. And just the way way we think about life. I think it’s as good an explanation as any for how we deal with diversity in our lives and develop biases towards others. What is neuroplasticity? Medicinenet has one of my...Full Article »

I'm a huge believer that life is just one big metaphor. A metaphor explained by a good analogy.  On a long recent train trip without access to WiFi, it hit me that the game Angry Birds is a lot like workplace diversity. For those of you who don't know what Angry Birds is, it is a colorful, highly addictive game played on mobile devices and electronic tablets. If you've ever...Full Article »

Getting people to buy in to the importance of diversity is half the battle in the workplace. That is one of the reasons why my style of talking about and writing about diversity is different than many others who train. Sure, I could make my emphasis strong-arming corporations about race and gender. Those two issues are particularly close to my heart as a black woman. But I can’t get people...Full Article »

America has gone all warm and fuzzy and retro.   All you have to do is watch the upcoming TV lineup and see what has been tops at the box office-- The Help, Mad Men, The Playboy Club, Pan Am. Shoot, I could even throw the reboot of Charlie’s Angels in the mix.   Entertainment is entertainment. Fiction isn’t meant to be a documentary or a perfect reflection of real life. I...Full Article »

A colleague called me the other day, way bent out of shape, because her company had put into place a new self-reported “diversity checklist” requirement as part of the annual performance evaluation process.   At the place where this person, who I’ll call Shannon, works, the concept of a diversity checklist had been a requirement for senior management for years. Shannon...Full Article »

I have a close friend-- I’ll call him Kevin-- who could be the poster child of stable, long-term employability. Kevin, in his early 50s, has the good looks of a seasoned Tom Cruise, three kids with his wife of more than 25 years, and is currently in-house legal counsel of a major company by way of back-to-back long stints at well-respected law firms in his community. He’s in the...Full Article »

The politics of pantyhose. The philosophy of flip-flops. The tyranny of the tie. However you want to accessorize it, workplace dress codes and how people interpret them can be one of the more apparent ways that diversity springs up in the workplace. Many employees “poo-poo” diversity as an issue, if they have never felt that they’ve been on the receiving end of a problem. For...Full Article »

Whenever I do any kind of presentation on workplace diversity issues , I always warn my audience that they will hear about reality television. While I halfway say it as a joke to warm up any tensions about what some worry will be a prickly conversation, I’m half serious because reality television, like pop culture generally, has always been a great index for the changing mores of society....Full Article »