Four Days to Change: 12 Radical Habits to Overcome Bias and Thrive in a Diverse World - Softcover

Welp Ph.D., Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 099734220X ISBN 13: 9780997342208

Publisher: EqualVoice, 2016

Synopsis

Organizations that get diversity right reap tremendous benefits that ripple across the company culture and eventually lead to an indisputable impact on the bottom line. But robust, resilient diversity in the workplace thrives only when members of the majority group actively educate and challenge each other. Based on twenty years of pioneering workshops engaging white male leaders in transforming their own mindsets, building leadership skills, and creating powerful partnerships at work and at home, Four Days to Change follows a group of men embarking in a life-changing process to broaden their view of the world and lead them into more authentic relationships across race, gender, and sexual orientation. Witness the kinds of conversations that have opened the eyes of thousands of white male leaders, freeing them to benefit from more inclusive, authentic partnerships in the workplace and at home.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Welp, Ph.D., author of Four Days To Change, is the co-founder of White Men as Full Diversity Partners. He is known for his authenticity, his trust-building style, and his success in using diversity as a source of transformation. In 1990, Michael spent a year in South Africa facilitating interracial team-building for more than a dozen South African corporations. In 1996, he conducted groundbreaking research on how white men learn about diversity. His research highlighted the need for new ways to engage white men, leading Michael to cofound WMFDP the following year. For thirty years, Michael has worked extensively with leadership teams in numerous organizations to grow leadership skills, transform conflict, and develop innovative approaches to diversity and inclusion. Michael has designed and taught graduate courses for a number of universities and is a blogger for Catalyst’s Men Advocating Real Change (MARC), an online learning community for professionals committed to achieving equality in the workplace. He has also coauthored three field guides on skill-building for leadership and diversity partnerships. Earlier in his career, Michael learned to design and facilitate experiential learning as an Outward Bound instructor while leading canoeing, backpacking, and dogsledding expeditions. Today he lives in the mountainous lake town of Sandpoint, Idaho, with his two daughters. Michael can be reached at welp@wmfdp.com.

Review

Every so often, a book comes along that enables us to see the world differently, with the inspirational power to drive one to responsible action.  Four Days to Change is such a book.  As an attendee of the White Men s Caucus, I can attest to the transformative insights Michael articulates in this easy to read book based upon his decades of experiential learning.  I found Four Days to Change enormously informative and life changing both on a personal and leadership level as we strive to support an increasingly diverse and inclusive workforce in full partnership.  A must read for any courageous leaders ready to begin their lifelong journey of enlightenment while viewing and understanding diversity and inclusion through their white male lens.  

 
  Rick Gesing, Corporate Vice President
Worldwide Operations, Applied Materials Inc.

This is one of the most profound books on culture I have ever read because it tackles the difficult problem of the culture within us that we don t see.  By reviewing what happens in white men s caucuses we learn the deep cultural differences that exist between races, genders, and sexual orientations, and see how these have worked their way into western business culture and our daily life.  This is a must read for those of us who are blind to the automatic privileges we enjoy.

Edgar H. Schein
Professor Emeritus
MIT Sloan School of Management
Author of Humble Inquiry and Humble Consulting

A meaningful book that will help white men redefine their role as key leaders for inclusion and equity in the workplace.

 
Keith Nosbusch
CEO, Rockwell Automation

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation embraces differences and respects and nurtures people of all races, ethnicities and religions as a result of our longstanding relationship with WMFDP. Their body of work has provided the single most important factor in an organization's success, which is the ability to create an authorizing environment for learning to take place.  An authorizing environment means that the place is completely safe at all levels, from boardrooms to bathrooms.  The change garnered in four days is palpable and its impact on lives and institutions is brought to life in Four Days to Change.   Congratulations on providing an effective tool for the field.

La June Montgomery Tabron
President and CEO
W.K Kellogg Foundation

Four Days to Change shows white male leaders how to strengthen their organizations by having them understand and accept their responsibility toward improving equity.  It does so without shame or guilt and in a manner that encourages you and makes you proud to be a part of this work.

Larry O'Dea Chief of Police Portland, Oregon

We know from our research that to develop more inclusive workplaces, we must fully engage and empower men to serve as agents of change. In Four Days of Change, Michael shares powerful insights that will help any organization transform into one that leverages and embraces differences, by equipping men to lead more inclusively.

Deborah Gillis, President and CEO, Catalyst

 

Four Days to Change is, more than anything else, a book about possibility.  It, along with the work it represents, leaves us with hope that by honoring the human condition, and shining the light of consciousness on ourselves and others, we actually have the ability to transcend the wounds that divide us from others, and even from our own true nature.  Thank you for this book. Thank you even more for your work.

Howard J. Ross, Founder, Cook Ross, Inc. Author Everyday Bias and ReInventing Diversity

--Reviews

Through the work and introspection during the White Men s Caucus, I ve participated in one of the most impactful events in my 35 year career. Michael has captured the essence of the Caucus in his book, Four Days To Change. He has honed in on the essential element of this unique and enlightening experience for white men: learning to lean into our discomfort and to question our assumptions. This book will elicit a transformational experience for the reader that is essential in our increasingly diverse society.

 
Paul J. Steffen
VP, Northwestern Mutual

Four Days to Change challenged my thinking to recognize that as a white male leader in a high masculinity profession, I have a very real role in growing an environment of openness to the real - sometimes painful - realities for those of a different sexual orientation, the women, and people of color with who I live and work.

Paul Schnell
Chief of Police
Maplewood, Minnesota

WMFDP has helped so many leaders rise to the opportunity to put their privilege to honorable use.  In Four Days to Change, Michael captures the essence of an experience that transforms diversity work from someone else s problem into an inspiring opportunity to make the world a better place.

Mark Burget
Executive Vice President
The Nature Conservancy

Four Days to Change can transform your mind, your heart and your life! Shattering the Myth of Meritocracy this important book opens the eyes of white male leaders, like myself, and points us to a much more inclusive, authentic and value-creating world.

 
Kevin Cashman
Senior Partner, CEO and Executive Development, Korn Ferry
Best-Selling Author, Leadership from the Inside Out and The Pause Principle

As a white man reading this book I felt totally engaged and fully accounted for, caught up in the transformations that were taking place in front of me. To say this is must read is to understate its importance. A real tour de force!

Thomas Kochman
COO, Kochman Mavrelis Associates, Inc.
Co-Author, Corporate Tribalism, Author, Black & White Styles in Conflict

We know we have to make race and gender visible for white men to fully engage men as allies.  But how?  In this valuable volume, Michael Welp compresses 20 years of facilitating that engagement into a book as deeply theoretical as it is handy and practical.  Quite a feat!

Michael Kimmel
SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies
Executive Director, Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities

A courageous book about the critical journey and lessons that enable White Men to live and work authentically across differences.

Judith H. Katz and Frederick A. Miller
The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc.
Co-authors: Inclusion Breakthrough & Opening Doors to Teamwork and Collaboration

The rights of women is a matter for both women and men together. (O R Tambo led us to freedom in South Africa.) You bring men to this understanding. Good on you for trying. In South Africa rape and abuse of women is rife. Promote your work here.

Professor Denis Goldberg,
sentenced with Nelson Mandela to life imprisonment in 1964.

--More Reviews

In Four Days To Change, Michael Welp has beautifully provided profound insights on the confusion and challenging complexities of unrecognized systemic advantage...privilege...that shapes how white men likely perceive and engage with anyone we come in contact with and how others likely perceive and engage with us. No doubt, we live in a very compact planet neighborhood as the result of relentless demographic shifts, nanotechnology, jet speed transportation, instant communication and media coverage, and the interconnectedness of global economies and marketplaces. In this vortex of human change, we are now grinding up against differences such as race, gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual orientation, gender expression and identity, as examples, in ways no one could have imagined just one generation ago. Michael Welp's Four Days To Change offers a caring, honest and practical way forward for white men to discover and demonstrate untapped leadership and human potential to deepen the quality and authenticity of our most intimate, personal and professional lives.

Frank McCloskey
Retired Vice President Diversity Georgia Power

--More Reviews

Edition details

• Publisher: EqualVoice
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 099734220X
• ISBN 13: 9780997342208
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 326