Lenora Billings-Harris

Diversity and Inclusion is a full-time focus, not just one topic among many for Lenora Billings-Harris. Whether through keynotes, workshops, or organizational consulting, Lenora partners with clients to help them build effective relationships that leverage diversity in order to increase inclusion, employee engagement, customer satisfaction and bottom-line results.

Billings-Harris is a recognized authority. She has been included as one of 100 Global Thought Leaders on Diversity and Inclusion by The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), and was named by Diversity Woman Magazine as one of the twenty top influential diversity leaders in the US. Her award winning diversity leadership research is recognized in academic journals internationally. Lenora recently keynoted at the Inclusion Conferences in Cape Town, South Africa and in Tel Aviv, Israel to share best practices with leaders within business, government, education and NGO communities.

Billings-Harris co-authored TRAILBLAZERS: How Top Business Leaders are Accelerating Results through Inclusion and Diversity, and is the author of The Diversity Advantage: A Guide to Making Diversity Work, 3rd Ed. She is often an expert guest on TV and radio around the globe. She serves on the adjunct faculty of the business schools of Averett University and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Lenora is a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), a past president of the National Speakers Association, and is the 2014 president of the Global Speakers Federation.

Before launching her business in 1986, she held management positions at two Fortune 100 companies, and managed executive development seminars for the Graduate School of Business, University of Michigan.

Beyond Diversity Rhetoric: Cultural Intelligence for Our Global Village

Are you ready to go beyond multicultural awareness? Is your organization ready to create a respectful, engaging environment that utilizes is diversity to gain a competitive advantage? If so, this program is for you.

By participating in this session, you will be able to:

• Explore Transformational Diversity Management based on the best practices of award winning companies.
• Explore ways to evaluate your organization’s current processes to identify gaps and celebrate successes.
• Discover techniques that engage Middle Management and empower employees around D&I outcomes.

This presentation offers participants an opportunity to explore the Transformational Diversity Management Principles™ based on the work of Lenora Billings-Harris, CSP in her book TRAILBLAZERS: How Top Business Leaders are Accelerating Results through Inclusion and Diversity, and her latest research with the Bryan School of Business, University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Engaging Generations in the Workplace, Maximizing the Positive Potential of Generational Differences in Your Workplace

There are four generations , and soon to be five, that work side by side in today’s organizations.  Each with its own culture. What complicates generational diversity is what complicates all diversity; all of the other layers that make up a human being coexisting with generational differences. These groups  have shared memories, and experiences, and social norms that inform their behavior on the job and elsewhere.

Join Lenora Billings-Harris, CSP in a highly interactive session to not only explore the generational differences, but to identify ways to   inspire each generation to deliver their best work.  You will discover   how best to appreciate instead of criticize the differences. Lenora will share best practices from award winning companies she highlighted in her book, TRAILBLAZERS: How Top Business Leaders are Accelerating Results through Inclusion and Diversity.

You will walk away from this session with:

1. Actionable tactics to engage each generational team member to perform at their best level.
2. Methods to inform leaders of the powerhouse of mixed generational talent they have and how to inspire across generations.
3. A power technique for giving feedback that keeps the relationship intact when cultural collisions occur.

Join Lenora for this informative session exploring inclusiveness and multiculturalism from a business bottom-line point of view. You will leave with actionable tactics and strategies that drive diversity success.

From Adversaries to Allies: 7 Keys to High Performance Cross-Gender Communication

Men and women do communicate differently. This session will teach easy techniques to bridge the gender divide. This fun yet informative presentation will help you improve your communication skills with the opposite gender.

Recognizing gender communication conflicts is not enough to make changes. You need to determine the best solutions for your organization too. During this session, we will explore ways to say what you mean in a way the other gender will hear and understand. This insightful session will help both men and women learn how to express themselves in a way that increases productivity, reduces conflict, and enhances collaboration between the sexes. By practicing techniques that recognize communication differences without value-judging, you will discover your own hidden communication strengths.

As a result of applying the principles and skills presented, you will be able to:

• Identify the 3 major male and female communication tendencies
• Explore the 5 habits that hinder effective communication
• Manage gender conflict more effectively.
• Apply the S.T.O.P.™ technique to overcome communication collisions

The focus of this session is  communication solutions, not gender bashing. Both sexes can learn to enhance their effectiveness. By applying a few simple rules each will be able to refrain from trying to change the other and focus on how best to utilize the strengths of the other gender.

Go Beyond the Inclusion Illusion: How Trailblazer Companies Move from Rhetoric to Action to Build an Engaged Workforce

This session will help you reframe your understanding and approach to  employee engagement, diversity and inclusion. Lenora will reveal the interdependence of these concepts and the missing components needed to create an environment of high performance across generations, gender and cultures. This content-rich and results-focused session will help you identify the key skills that accelerate results in your fast paced multicultural world. Based on original qualitative and quantitative research, Lenora will provide practical yet cutting edge insights that can be immediately applied to your team and organization.

As a result of attending this session you will:

1. Examine the formula that connects employee engagement , diversity and inclusion  required to sustain high performing teams
2. Discover how multicultural mishapsimpact top talent retention
3. Be able to accelerate results by applying the 4 Cornerstones of Cultural Intelligence