Politically Correct or Politically Direct? by Carolyn Parks, M.B.A.

We have become sensitive as a world community. And this sensitivity shows a positive movement toward tolerance and understanding. And I think most of us can buy into the logic that increased tolerance and increased understanding most certainly leads to lesser conflict.

But is there a point in time in which political correctness in our words and/or life actions can be taken to another type of extreme? Where we are afraid to talk directly about certain issues or live directly for fear of being ostracized?

Perhaps sometimes, there is context for political directness. And perhaps directness is sometimes confused with correctness. When this happens, we may run into some dangerous traps. I am only scratching the surface and touching upon two:

1. We may focus so much on semantics of 'correctness' that we don't actually deal with the issue at hand and recognize it for what it is.

Consider the terminology surrounding individuals who are mentally 'slow'. Two-three decades ago, the word 'retarded' was used. Then, the word retarded was considered ignorant, and was replaced with 'disabled'. And then, as far as I am aware, 'disabled' became inappropriate and was replaced with 'challenged' and then, 'gifted" (or specially abled?) to eliminate any negative connotations. Please forgive me, as I'm sure I've missed some words inbetween or mixed these up. If I am called on this, my point may just be confirmed (issue getting lost in the words).

The word 'retarded', when looked up in a dictionary, means "slowed down in mental achievement'. Now. I ask you to please put aside years of political conditioning aside. If such negativity had not been associated with this word, would it really be far from accurate when describing an individual who is not able to achieve the pace of learning that you and I achieve? If your car reaches the finish line before my car, my car is slower.

I am going to head out on a limb and suggest that in this case, the word retarded was originally NOT meant as a bad word. And now, we use the word 'gifted'. Ask yourself if that word is more compassionate than it is accurate? If you think I am not caring, then you are not correct. I am MORE than aware of the power of semantics and their potential to harm. I believe that titles and adjectives used to describe people should be equally accurate and compassionate. I understand why the word 'retarded' was changed. It became insensitive as it was used in a negative tone. But my worry is this...when the words change frequently, I become so phobic that I am not using the RIGHT word that I stop talking about it (IT being the topic). We need to be DIRECT as well as compassionate so people can openly talk about issues without fear of banishment.

2. We may avoid differences of opinion.

Differences in opinion are what make this world grow and develop. Differences don't always point to conflict. And the other thing to note is that differences DON'T disappear. They will just become more potent, as the nature of mankind is to argue and to think for himself. If we quash opinions too much, we may create a bigger problem in the end when there is the inevitable explosion of will. Political correctness, while absolutely noble in its intentions, has the danger of quieting important conversations if taken to extremes.

Consider the women's movement. In the 1950's and 1960's, women considered motherhood, wifehood and managing a household to be 'their role' and it was NOT politically incorrect at the time to say the word 'housewife'. And then, in the 1970's, the pendulum started to swing the other way, encouraging women to recognize their choices. This was a great thing. But then it became more politically incorrect for women who wished to remain in the home when they 'should have' been out blazing the career trail in the 80's. Those women must have felt very alienated, because they could have been seen as assailants to the women's rights movement. And now, in the new millennium, motherhood is coming 'back into style' and the pendulum seems to be reaching its rightful place in the 'middle' (where choice of career and motherhood are personal).

However, during each of these phases, it took crusaders to stand up and be politically INCORRECT on the matters of motherhood, being a wife, etc. It was precisely very strong differences in opinion that led to a new generation of thinking. Being direct and often vehemently opposed was necessary in order to create change. Imagine exactly how wrong or radical some of these women would have sounded during the time at which they spoke out or stood up!

I think that the most important gift we can give ourselves is the understanding of when political correctness may overshadow political directness and therefore stymie open discussion and action.

So, the benchmark? For myself, I ask a simple question. Am I hurting the person I am talking to or about? Am I limiting their potential? Am I presuming things I know nothing about? If not, then let me speak. After all, it's a free world (or shall I say, 'global community')?.

Top Seven Women Wonders of the World

We are premiering a new feature on our site which will highlight different categories of women who have made or are making a difference in our world. This week the category is environmentalists.

Many of these women have risked their own personal safetly, indeed their lives, as well as their careers to make themselves heard on these issues. Here are a few examples:

Erin Brockovich - her solo investigation established that the health of countless people who lived in and around Hinkley, California in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s had been devastated by exposure to toxic Chromium 6.

Lois Marie Gibbs - her 7-year-old son's elementary school in Niagara Falls, New York was built on a toxic waste dump - The Love Canal.

Hazel Henderson - an authority on global economics and human development issues, was labeled by corporate CEOs the "most dangerous woman in America."

Check out http://www.outstandingwomenspeak.com/hotnews.htm for more names.

Do you have a top 7? We'd love to hear from you.

Susan

People are our greatest asset

North Americans are working more hours and some are making more money, but many are working more for less.

-We're putting in longer hours on the job now than we did in the 1950s, despite promises of a coming age of leisure before the year 2000.

-In fact, we're working more than medieval peasants did, and more than the citizens of any other industrial country.

-Mandatory overtime is at near record levels, in spite of a recession.

-On average, we work nearly nine full weeks (350 hours) LONGER per year than our peers in Western Europe do.

-Working Americans average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks.

Is this your scenario? We need to start taking care of ourselves and the people we work with. I'd love to hear your comments.

Applause for Queen of Jordan

The Queen of Jordan made a speech on Monday in NY introducing the media to the animated series "Ben & Izzy". It is about two 11-year-old boys, one from America, one from Jordan, who go on time-traveling adventures with the help of a genie named Yasmine. Neither boy is specifically identified with a religion.

"Whether we are Muslims, Christians or Jews ... whether we live in the Middle East or the Upper West Side (of New York) ... we all want our children to be able to make the most of their potential in a secure, peaceful and just world," Queen Rania said in a speech at the event.

"There is no magic pearl we can rub to make all the people in the world get along," Queen Rania said. "But projects like 'Ben and Izzy' go a long way to ensuring that the next generation grows up with a mind-set geared toward trust and tolerance."

Sales People: Sit up and Take Notice!

I attended a great teleclass yesterday by Jill Konrath of www.sellingtobigcompanies.com. I really thought she nailed the state of the corporate world these days. Executives are:

-Stressed out, burned out, overwhelmed - working long days
-Operating quarter to quarter
-Have 59 hours of work every day that they have to take care of
-About 200 emails per day
-No free slots in their day - meetings all the time
-will only get worse - putting out fires.

Where does that leave those of us who want to get the attention of these people and offer them our products and services? Well, thankfully, not out in the cold. Jill stressed that the most important thing is to clearly state your company's value proposition:

-think SMALL - think of how you recently solved a problem for a big customer
-what kind of problems are these companies having that you can solve?
-get a slice of business your competitor isn't paying attention to - it doesn't have to be the whole pie.

Just be specific and using business terminlogy, tell them the bottom line results of what you can do. Use industry stats, case studies, etc. Don't waste their time!

-use a minimum of 7-10 contact efforts
-always have something new to say - it's okay to leave voicemail.

I got a lot out of the teleclass. I encourage you to check Jill's site out when you have a moment. Outstanding Women Speakers Inc. will be taking her advice.

What's In It for Me? by Carolyn Parks

What keeps people coming back to a website? From our experience, there is only one reason why people will come back again and again to a site and that is by reflecting upon what we ALL think whenever we do anything:

What's in it for ME?

There has to be a reason for people to spend the time to type in "www......com" in the navigation bar of their search engine. If a site is strictly promotional and fairly static in nature, people will visit when they have a specific need for your organization's product/service. If you are ok with visits being associated with a specific need that is urgent, then great.

But perhaps you are interested in more freqent visits (because let's face it, more frequent visits means a stronger relationship and better awareness of what your organization offers). What keeps people coming back more often? Well...what's in it for them?? Give them the frequent urge to pop back in. This could mean you offer exciting promotions, hot news, resources that are useful to them, etc.. If people feel they might be missing some kind of proverbial party, they'll keep checking in.

In our case, we at Outstanding Women Speakers believe that the best value we could possibly provide our visitors is INFORMATION...expert insights on the most topical organizational issues of today. Sure, we provide talented speakers which will ultimately help our clients. This is a given and people already know they can find this on our website. But it will be our goal to give them added value for visiting our site...if a potential client can take away an article or a set of tools that will help them within their own organization, then we feel we have contributed in a real way. If they decide to go with one of our speakers or not, their visit to our site has hopefully still been worthwhile. So, we will be committing ourselves to building a virtual treasure chest of the most credible expert insights in a variety of topics...we call it our Xpert Files - an exciting storehouse of leading edge knowledge.

So, to bastardize one of the most well known calls to action of all time: "think not what your clients can do for you, but what you can do for your clients!". We will be asking ourselves this question all the time and determining if we are actually thinking of our visitors as we develop our site.