Lenora Billings-Harris

Lenora Billings-Harris has been transforming how organizations understand and leverage diversity for more than 25 years, and the honors she has accumulated along the way speak for themselves. She is the first African American woman inducted into the National Speakers Association Speakers Hall of Fame, a CPAE inductee, a recipient of the NSA’s Cavett Award, a past president of both the National Speakers Association and the Global Speakers Federation, and one of the 100 Global Thought Leaders on Diversity and Inclusion named by SHRM. She has presented in more than 45 countries on six continents and speaks on diversity, equity, inclusion, unconscious bias, and building cultures where difference drives performance.

Turning Barriers into Bridges
Billings-Harris’s most in-demand keynote, Turning Barriers into Bridges by Disrupting Bias, uses a no blame no shame approach to help audiences examine and reframe their relationship to unconscious bias. Drawing on the latest neuroscience research, she demonstrates that bias is universal, that it is not inherently harmful, and that awareness of its impact gives every individual the power to choose differently.

Research, Faculty, and Field Work
Billings-Harris is the author of The Diversity Advantage and co-author of TRAILBLAZERS: How Top Business Leaders are Accelerating Results through Inclusion and Diversity. Her award-winning research has been published in international academic journals. She has worked with organizations including NASA, Disney, PayPal, Mercedes-Benz, and Ritz-Carlton.

Lenora Billings-Harris delivers keynotes on diversity, equity, inclusion, unconscious bias, and building the culturally intelligent organizations that attract and retain top talent.

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