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Mary C. Gentile Biography

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Mary C. Gentile is an expert in an unknown field. Born on May 3, 1954, her specific profession and achievements are not clear.

Related Quotes

“As for my interest in diversity, I believe it is closely aligned with my work on the project, Giving Voice To Values. That is, there are often times when we may witness or personally experience situations where some individuals are not treated with the same respect or care as others, precisely due to some difference in their identities, their styles, their experiences, or their perspectives. Often it is difficult to speak up in such a situation, for ourselves or for others.”

Giving Believe Care Values Individual Speak I Believe Difficult Interest Situation Style Identity Perspective Diversity Witness

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“I believed that we would all come to better decisions and we would create more humane and ultimately more livable and more sustainably productive workplaces if we knew how to speak to each other about difficult issues and if we were more able to listen to and learn from diverse points of view.”

Speak Difficult Decision Point Of View Productive Diverse Workplace

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“I am most comfortable in a "learner" role, I may raise my values-related concerns by asking the well-crafted and well-timed question, rather than by strenuously arguing a particular point of view. Or if I am a risk-taking, aggressive manager, I may frame the values conflict as just one more challenge that I want to take on, as opposed to a "constraint" on my action choices.”

Action Values Choices Challenges Conflict Concern Point Of View Arguing Aggressive

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“Interestingly, many of the organizational characteristics that have been identified as conducive to effectively managing diversity and as conducive to fostering innovation and creativity in the workplace are also important for enabling employees to voice their values.”

Important Values Creativity Diversity Innovation Employee Workplace Organizational

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“By creating explicit occasions to invite dissenting viewpoints on a new project, strategy or policy, leaders enable employees to feel that their questions are welcomed and appreciated.”

Leader Policy Strategy Employee Appreciated Explicit

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“Time pressures are a reality of business life that cannot be eliminated entirely and that even can create a beneficial focus at times, it can be powerful to set aside discrete occasions where individuals are invited to step back, to look at their projects from different vantages, to consider input not usually examined, and so on. This again encourages folks to express alternative points of view.”

Different Reality Individual Powerful Focus Point Of View

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“When leaders are willing to talk through their own decision-making process, making visible that values are an important consideration, this sends a powerful signal to employees.”

Important Values Powerful Leader Employee Consideration

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“Communicating and celebrating the times when individuals have made values-based decisions is, of course, empowering and can provide role models. But perhaps more importantly, it removes the sense of futility that often prevents employees from speaking up.”

Individual Decision Communicate Celebrate Empowering Employee Role Models Futility

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“Typically efforts to address values and ethics in business education and leadership development tend to focus on building Awareness and teaching Analysis. That is, we expose future leaders to the kinds of ethical and values conflicts they may encounter, so that they will recognize them and will have considered them in advance.”

Kind Values Effort Leader Focus Teaching Awareness Building Conflict Ethics Ethical

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“In short, we needed to shift our thinking and teaching about values-driven leadership from asking the question "What is the right thing to do?" to asking and answering the question "Once I know what I believe is right, how do I get it done?"”

Thinking Believe Done I Believe Teaching Right Thing

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“I have to think that we all have - at one time or another - felt that our own voice was silenced or under-valued. Who among us did not have the experience as a child of feeling as if our parents just didn't listen?”

Thinking Children Feelings Parent

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“Throughout history we have seen the tyranny of the powerful over the less powerful - think of the history of colonialism or of slavery - and the tragic mistakes made when important information was not "heard" or valued.”

Thinking Important Powerful Mistake Slavery Tyranny Tragic

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“Perhaps sometimes we have self-serving sense that we often experience when we believe we know better than our boss, our teacher, our spouse or partner, our friends, our political leaders - if only they would listen to us!”

Believe Sometimes Political Leader Teacher Boss Spouse

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“We are better able to bring the same sort of pragmatic planning and analytical pre-work to our values scripts that we would bring to any other business position that we espouse. This approach enables us to be more reasonable, more respectful, less impulsive and more constructive. Risk cannot be eliminated entirely but that is true in all of life.”

Values Risk Planning Respectful Pragmatic Impulsive

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“Often we fail to voice and act on our values because, before we even apply our best thinking to developing an action plan, we engage in process of "pre-emptive rationalization." At some deep level, we anticipate difficulty and resistance so we start to back away from our own instinctive values perspective.”

Thinking Action Values Failing Perspective Difficulty

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“We try to effectively free ourselves up to be creative, to think about what might be possible, to come up with truly innovative ways to enact our values-driven positions.”

Thinking Trying Creative Be Creative Innovative

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“The whole endeavor becomes less about a constraint on action and rather about helping us to be more of who we would actually like to be, at our best and if we felt it were possible. Rather than positioning effort as being about "thou shalt not," it becomes all about "can do!"”

Helping Action Effort

Author:Mary C. Gentile

“It seems that simply being willing to express our views clearly, persuasively and without malice, can be a powerful invitation to others who may be lurking out there, in agreement with us but unsure whether their position is speakable or practical.”

Powerful Invitations Malice Unsure Lurking

Author:Mary C. Gentile

About the Author

Born: May 3, 1954
Known for: Author
Quotes: 18

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