Leading With Dignity

A noted conflict-resolution expert explores dignity, its role in human conflict, and its power to improve relationships Drawing on her extensive experience in international conflict resolution and on insights from evolutionary biology, psychology, and neuroscience, Donna Hicks explains what the elements of dignity are, how to recognize dignity violations, how to respond when we are not treated with dignity, how dignity can restore a broken relationship, why leaders must understand the concept of dignity, and more. By choosing dignity as a way of life, Hicks shows, we open the way to greater peace within ourselves and to a safer and more humane world for all. For the Tenth Anniversary Edition of Dignity, Hicks has written a new preface that reflects on her experience helping communities and individuals understand the power of dignity and how it can lead to a more peaceful world. "Anyone who understands the importance of personal feelings and their fuel for conflict should consider Dignity as a powerful advisory and motivational guide."--Midwest Book Review Winner of the 2012 Educator's Award, given by the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International.

What every leader needs to know about dignity and how to create a culture in which everyone thrives This landmark book from an expert in dignity studies explores the essential but under-recognized role of dignity as part of good leadership. Extending the reach of her award-winning book Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, Donna Hicks now contributes a specific, practical guide to achieving a culture of dignity. Most people know very little about dignity, the author has found, and when leaders fail to respect the dignity of others, conflict and distrust ensue. She highlights three components of leading with dignity: what one must know in order to honor dignity and avoid violating it; what one must do to lead with dignity; and how one can create a culture of dignity in any organization, whether corporate, religious, governmental, healthcare, or beyond. Brimming with key research findings, real-life case studies, and workable recommendations, this book fills an important gap in our understanding of how best to be together in a conflict-ridden world.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A profound book.... It will break your heart but also leave you with hope." —J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy "[A] deeply empathetic book." —The Economist With stark photo essays and unforgettable true stories, Chris Arnade cuts through "expert" pontification on inequality, addiction, and poverty to allow those who have been left behind to define themselves on their own terms. After abandoning his Wall Street career, Chris Arnade decided to document poverty and addiction in the Bronx. He began interviewing, photographing, and becoming close friends with homeless addicts, and spent hours in drug dens and McDonald's. Then he started driving across America to see how the rest of the country compared. He found the same types of stories everywhere, across lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and geography. The people he got to know, from Alabama and California to Maine and Nevada, gave Arnade a new respect for the dignity and resilience of what he calls America's Back Row--those who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class. The strivers in the Front Row, with their advanced degrees and upward mobility, see the Back Row's values as worthless. They scorn anyone who stays in a dying town or city as foolish, and mock anyone who clings to religion or tradition as naïve. As Takeesha, a woman in the Bronx, told Arnade, she wants to be seen she sees herself: "a prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God." This book is his attempt to help the rest of us truly see, hear, and respect millions of people who've been left behind.

While efforts to achieve equity in education are prominent in school districts across this country, the effective implementation that results in meaningful change remains elusive. Even with access to compelling theories and approaches such as multicultural education, culturally responsive teaching, culturally relevant instruction, culturally sustaining pedagogy, schools still struggle to implement equitable change that reshapes the academic experiences of students marginalized by the prevailing history, culture, and traditions in public education. Instead of getting it right with equity implementation, many schools and districts remain trapped in a cycle of equity dysfunction. In Belonging through a Culture of Dignity, Cobb and Krownapple argue that the cause of these struggles are largely based on the failure of educators to consider the foundational elements upon which educational equity is based, belonging and dignity. Through this work, the authors make these concepts accessible and explain their importance in the implementation of educational equity initiatives. Though the importance of dignity and belonging might appear to be self-evident at first glance, it's not until these concepts are truly unpacked, that educators realize the dire need for belonging through dignity. Once these fundamental human needs are understood, educators can gain clarity of the barriers to meaningful student relationships, especially across dimensions of difference such as race, class, and culture. Even the most relational and responsive educators need this clarity due to the normalization of what the authors refer to as dignity distortions. Cobb and Krownapple challenge that normalization and offer three concepts as keys to successful equity initiatives: inclusion, belonging, and dignity. Through their work, the authors aim to equip educators with the tools necessary to deliver the promise of democracy through schools by breaking the cycle of equity dysfunction once and for all.

In everything from philosophical ethics to legal argument to public activism, it has become commonplace to appeal to the idea of human dignity. In such contexts, the concept of dignity typically signifies something like the fundamental moral status belonging to all humans. Remarkably, however, it is only in the last century that this meaning of the term has become standardized. Before this, dignity was instead a concept associated with social status. Unfortunately, this transformation remains something of a mystery in existing scholarship. Exactly when and why did "dignity" change its meaning? And before this change, was it truly the case that we lacked a conception of human worth akin to the one that "dignity" now represents? In this volume, leading scholars across a range of disciplines attempt to answer such questions by clarifying the presently murky history of "dignity," from classical Greek thought through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment to the present day.

“Maya Hu-Chan shares a blueprint for becoming a more empathetic, self-aware, and inclusive leader. Saving Face guides us to consider different perspectives, to think first and speak last, and to respect others above all else.” —Frances Hesselbein, former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Organizations now need to attract, retain, and motivate teams and employees across distance, time zones, and cultural differences. Building authentic and lasting human relations may be the most important calling for leaders in this century. According to management and global leadership specialist Maya Hu-Chan, the concept of “saving face” can help any leader preserve dignity and create more empathetic cross-cultural relationships. “Face” represents one's self-esteem, self-worth, identity, reputation, status, pride, and dignity. Saving face is often understood as saving someone from embarrassment, but it's also about developing an understanding of the background and motivations of others to discover the unique facets we all possess. Without that understanding, we risk causing others to lose face without even knowing it. Hu-Chan explains saving face through anecdotes and practical tools, such as her BUILD leadership model (Benevolence, Understanding, Interacting, Learning, and Delivery). This book illustrates how we can give face to create positive first impressions, avoid causing others to lose face, and, most importantly, build trust and lasting relationships inside and outside the workplace.

The language of human rights has become the public vocabulary of our contemporary world. Ironically, as the political influence of human rights has grown, their philosophical justification has become ever more controversial. Building on a theory of discourse ethics and communicative rationality, this book addresses the politics and philosophy of human rights against the background of the broader social transformations that are shaping the modern world. Rejecting the reduction of international human rights to the Trojan horse of a neo-liberal empire's bid for world power, as well as the conservative objections to legal cosmopolitanism as encroachments upon democratic sovereignty, Benhabib develops two key concepts to move beyond these false antitheses. International human rights norms need contextualization in specific polities through processes of what she calls 'democratic iterations.' Furthermore, such norms have a 'jurisgenerative power,' in that they enable new actors to enter fields of social and political contestation; they promote new vocabularies for public claim-making and anticipate a justice to come. Ranging over themes such as sovereignty, citizenship, genocide, European anti-semitism, the crisis of the nation-state, and the 'scarf affair' in contemporary Europe and Turkey, this major new book by one of our leading political theorists reflects upon the political transformations of our times and makes a compelling case for a cosmopolitanism without illusions.

What does it mean to love someone? What does the concept of human dignity mean, and what are its consequences? What marks the end of a person's life? Is personhood more than consciousness? These perplexing questions lurk beneath the surface of everyday life, surfacing only to demand urgent attention in crises. Renowned German philosopher Robert Spaemann addresses these and other foundational enigmas in three eloquent short essays. Speaking wisdom to controversy, he offers carefully considered, novel approaches to key philosophical and theological questions about the nature of human love ("The Paradoxes of Love"), dignity ("Human Dignity and Human Nature"), and death ("Is Brain Death the Death of a Human Person?").

#4 Book on The New York Times Monthly Business Bestseller List #9 Book on The New York Times Monthly Political Bestseller List #9 Book on The New York Times Weekly Nonfiction Bestseller List USA Today Bestseller In the early morning hours of February 19, 2006, a sudden blast shook a coal mine in northern Mexico, trapping sixty-five workers in a subterranean tunnel. Napoleón Gómez, head of the fiercely independent union that represented the workers, was appalled by what he found at the scene: labor department inspectors and the company operating the mine had ignored the egregiously hazardous state of the work site and were failing miserably at a rescue effort. Rather than focusing on saving lives, they were busy downplaying the company's role in the collapse and selling false hope to the families camped out at the mouth of the mine. Less than a week after the explosion, Mexico's labor secretary called off the rescue, leaving the lost men to their fates. The senseless tragedy—stemming directly from an insatiable hunger for profits—set off a massive confrontation between the National Miners' Union and the transnational corporations that wield great power in the country's government. Over seven tumultuous years, Gómez waged a battle against Mexico's corrupt politicians and voraciously greedy businessmen, insisting that the mine blast was an "industrial homicide" and that those responsible must be held accountable for it. Told with candor and passion, Collapse of Dignity is Gómez's account of the union's fight, mounted in the face of traitors, armed aggression, death threats, and a political alliance extending all the way up to the presidential residence at Los Pinos. As he fends off absurdly complex legal charges, organizes the resistance from exile in Canada, and uncovers an anti-union conspiracy stretching back to years before the explosion, he only becomes more committed to fighting for the rights of Los Mineros—and by extension the workers of every country. Gómez's story is one of outrage, but also one of hope. Though Collapse of Dignity lays bare sickening injustice and inexcusable aggression against the Mexican working class, it is at its core a fervent call for a global workers' movement that will represent the fundamental rights of every person who works for a living.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white America’s love affair with “diversity” so often falls short of its ideals. “Austin Channing Brown introduces herself as a master memoirist. This book will break open hearts and minds.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with a racialized America came at age seven, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools and churches, Austin writes, “I had to learn what it means to love blackness,” a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America’s racial divide as a writer, speaker, and expert helping organizations practice genuine inclusion. In a time when nearly every institution (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claims to value diversity in its mission statement, Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice. Her stories bear witness to the complexity of America’s social fabric—from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations. For readers who have engaged with America’s legacy on race through the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Eric Dyson, I’m Still Here is an illuminating look at how white, middle-class, Evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognize God’s ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness—if we let it—can save us all.