The short version of the review of Hop is that People Magazine gave Hop 3 (out of 4) stars and my son liked it.  It features a cute bunny and a cute leading man…something for the kids and for the moms…plus 100’s of adorable baby chicks.  How could you go wrong, right? 

But early on themes of engagement and inclusion, disparity, and feudalism started to bubble through. 

The first “cringe” moment was Carlos’ sad “Go on, enjoy your life of privilege” that he calls after EB (the Easter Bunny’s son, pre-ordained to fill the position when dad retires) as he hops off to go play, shouting “later” over his shoulder, in response to his father’s suggestion that it’s time to learn the family business.

Carlos, who speaks with an unmistakable Hispanic accent, is a giant yellow chic who runs the Easter Bunny factory, managing the day to day work of 100’s of yellow baby chicks, impeccably churning out millions of perfect chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, Easter baskets and more.  “Will we be ready for Easter?” asks the patriarchal Easter Bunny?  “Yes, boss,” answers Carlos, showing off the efficiencies and improvements he has implemented around the factory.  He clearly knows the business better than anyone, including the boss himself.

Yet when EB runs away to pursue his dream of becoming a professional drummer and Carlos suggests that perhaps he can fill in, he is brushed off without a moment’s consideration. 

“You need someone who knows the business to take his place,” hints Carlos. 

“But who could that be?” asks the Easter Bunny. 

“Me, boss,” says Carlos.

“You!?” the Easter Bunny responds, laughing uncontrollably at Carlos’ fantastic joke.  “Can you imagine the Easter Chick? A chick could NEVER be the Easter Bunny!”  Ouch.

At this point I thought there was a distinct Pro Engagement and Inclusion message.  Carlos clearly was a leader, hard worker, and with his strong accent in contrast to the patriarchal whiteness of the Boss, I felt the injustice of his situation.

But suddenly the propaganda machine swings into full gear, warning of the dangers of what would happen if minorities were allowed into leadership positions. 

The Easter Bunny leaves to search for his son.  Carlos stages a coup, taking over the factory. 

After years of careful attention to every detail of the factory, Carlos declares that now that he is in charge all of the kiddies will get baskets of dirt and worms.  Yellow furry bunny ears sprout from his head, two prominent front teeth pop out from his mouth, and his feet quadruple in size, as he becomes a gigantic fuzzy yellow evil monster rabbit-chick (you could argue this one for either side:  ANTI-if a minority gets in power they will destroy everything, or PRO-see what happens if someone is forced to emulate the majority population, just to be accepted?)

In the end, white privilege reigns.  EB and Fred, the human who befriends EB when he runs away—a white, male, 26ish out of work slacker, return to over throw Carlos, “save” the factory, and, after having demonstrated no effort or actual competency, take over as “co-Easter Bunnies,” one because he was born into the family, the other because he just “felt he’d be good at it.”

So in the end, when my son says, “did you like the movie?”   Where do I begin?

Did you see Hop?  What do you think?  More importantly, what did your kids think?

There was a story on NPR last month that showed that despite sharing the same genes, siblings can be completely foreign to each other from a personality perspective.  Not only do they share the same culture, they come from the same gosh darn family….and still sometimes can’t get along. 

You’d think applying some of the basic tenets of Engagement and Inclusion, or Intercultural Communications might help, but…

In intercultural communications, we take responsibility for our actions and our role in an interaction.  We say, “oh, that didn’t work, let me try another approach.”

We don’t say, “You wanna play nice?  You go first.”

In intercultural communications, we learn to recognize when someone’s communication style is different than our own, and we learn to separate the content from the delivery style.

We don’t say “You’re communication style sucks.”

In intercultural communications we learn to assume positive intent first, so that if someone e-mails and texts us on the weekend to confirm a weekend gathering, we think “they must really WANT to reach us and must be more comfortable with this technology assisted communication (or perhaps they are studying Japanese and didn’t say anything…30% of Japanese Send E-Mail First To Ask If They Can Call.  One reason given: “Other person may not like telephone”)

When we look at the missed messages on Monday we don’t think “It was Sunday, why didn’t he/she just pick up the @$%&* phone and call the house if he/she really wanted to talk?

And, finally, in intercultural communications, we might say “tell me the cultural tradition of your beautiful clothing.”

We don’t say “Yeah?!  Well…Your mother dresses you funny!”

Ah, but wait, I just insulted myself.  We have the same mother.

And there lies the deeper difficulty, or perhaps the more profound challenge ultimately yielding the greater reward.

While Engagement and Inclusion and Intercultural Communications are critical for a more productive workplace, and while one hopes that learning to navigate cultural differences at work will promote greater sensitivity overall…at the end of the day these valuable workplace skills, can if one chooses, stay at work.

But family, they are permanent and constant.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Okay.  Swallow.  Let me try another approach.  If I can master this, I can do anything!

Happy Holidays.

Photo credit by Regenboog on Flickr

We covered the “Why” budding entrepreneurs need to be able to communicate and engage with people of all backgrounds:

1.  If you look at US Census Statistics to 2040, the population is shifting.  By 2040, caucasians will no longer be the majority.  As people of color make up the majority population in the US, one’s ‘multicultural competence’ becomes critical.  The population is changing, it’s a question of being prepared.

2.  As Entrepreneurs, you will be hiring staff.  Data shows that diverse teams where participants are engaged consistently outperform homogeneous teams.  You can get the broadest range of creativity, performance and execution from diverse, engaged, inclusive teams.

3.  As Entrepreneurs, you want to maximize your client base.  People of color represent over $1 trillion in buyng power.

But, unconscious bias and a natural tendency to enagage within one’s cultural comfort zone, sometimes can prevent people from reaching out across supericial characteristics of difference, such as race, ethnicity, gender, orientation and ability.

From here the remainder of the workshop focused on activities such as a Personal Identity worksheet, that captured how views of oneself can differ from how we believe others view us (e.g. most important identifiers to me might be ’mom,’ ‘jewish,’ ‘marketing/diversity professional.’  Others who look at me might say ’white,’ ‘woman,’ ‘middle-aged’).  Seeing the disparity in how we see ourselves vs. how we think others see us is an entree to empathy.

Next we did a “Dimensions of Diversity” exercise to explode the idea of diversity beyond the ‘low hanging fruit’ of race, ethinicity, etc., to diversity of ideas, lifestyles, or other factors.  It’s nice because it gets people up and moving around, as in, Go to this corner of the room if you are always early, this corner if you are always late, this corner if you are pretty much on time, and this corner if it depends on how important it is.  People self-segregate by habits.  Another one is “go to this corner if you are the oldest, this corner if you are the youngest, this corner if you are somewhere in the middle, and this corner if you are an only child.”

My friends, if you only read to here, I will say “Thank you very much” and summarize that I am brilliant and know everything. 

If you have to read further, well, not so much.  Or, rather, how we model language and how interactions work vary based on the participants.  I did this workshop last month for JEN, the Jewish Employment Network.  Well, guess what.  It was brilliant and everyone loved it.  But everyone looked like me.  This workshop today was well-received, but the language sounded different.  And, the issues are different. 

This group was extremely diverse.  In fact, of the 30-40 people in the room, only 5 of us were Caucasian.  When we did the Dimensions of Diversity exercise and self-segregated by birth order, the five participants from China ended up in the “only child” corner.  “One Child Policy,” they explained.  So suddenly my exercise to transcend ethnicity still divided by national origin.

The exercise was designed to get people up and moving around the room.  But for the first time, I had someone in the group who was a person with disability.  So, basically, I was leading a workshop on engagement and inclusion, but I’m not sure that he felt included.

The final exercise, on “Circles of Influence and Linchpins to Community” where we looked at who ’serves’ us in our lives–our Doctor, Dentist, Hair Stylist, Mail Carrier, etc. opened the deepest discussion.  Some found their circles to be very diverse.  Others noted that the professional services seemed to be caucasian, others people of color.  It also opened up conversations about access and who is educated and ideas about who is near us in the communities we live in, and how that connects more deeply to access to resources from an institutional perspective.

I spoke to the final student who lingered after the workshop about unconscious bias and how we form stereotypes from images in media all the time, and how important it is to question and embrace multiple perspectives.  “It sounds exhausting,” she said.

It is, I thought, but you can bet that I’ll be a better person for it.  And you can bet that I’ll have solutions and alternatives the next time to better remove my own bias and structure when working with amazinging and wonderfully diverse groups.  These young future CEO’s, full of passion and ideas are ready to engage and change the world.  Heck, who said the future is 2040?  It’s now!

Have you ever delivered the same messages to different audiences.  How did the meaning to the same words change, based on who was listening?  How would you change it if you did it again?