Life Lessons for Leadership with Crystal Robinson
Crystal Robinson is a retired professional Basketball player and coach who's played the highest level in the Women's NBA. Today, she's a thought leader in the space of conscious leadership, mental health, and diversity. In sharing her life and professional lessons Chrystal talks about: Growing up in poverty in rural Oklahoma and learning to deal with poverty and racism while dealing with her own sexual identity. How Basketball became her coping mechanism. How learning to deal with life’s challenges helped build resilience in her career. After writing her book, “Finding Myself”, she admits she still hasn’t found herself and continues to learn. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Chrystal below: Finding Myself Book: https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Myself-Crystal-Robinson/dp/1777573726 Full Transcript Below Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you And a special guest on today's show is Crystal Robinson. She's an American basketball coach and former Women's NBA, All-Star. And she was the first black woman to be inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Now, after chronicling her life's lessons in her book, Finding Myself, she's now an ambassador for the LGBTQ Community, but before we get a chance to meet with Crystal, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore how diversity and inclusion has evolved and diversity education started in the sixties, so it's nothing new to us. And over time we would have all become aware of how it's evolved to take into consideration inclusion. And while many think that diversity and inclusion are the same thing, they're not. Diversity is the act of creating community, comprised of people with varying backgrounds, creeds, ages, differences, and inclusion is finding a way of making sure that all of those people feel really valued in what they do and how they behave. Wait, where did equity come from? Well, it's always been there. In recent years, diversity and inclusion issues have been bolstered by the addition of the concept of equity and unlike equality, which focused on providing equal resources, regardless of context. Equity actually focuses on the process of just being fair. Equality is treating everyone the same. Whereas equity is about achieving the same benefits, even if it means that everyone receives different, there's still fair and justified treatment and experiences. Regular listeners will know that we love the difference that makes the difference. And that's because all humans are different. We all have components of our identities that are both seen like race, gender, identity. And then there are hidden things like our mental health or disability or sexual orientation, and whether you're willing to admit it or not, we all come from different backgrounds and we hold multiple interconnecting identities and biases that show up in our relationships and our workplace. Research also shows that higher levels of diversity may lead to increase conflict and misunderstanding. And often because we struggled with accepting and celebrating our differences. Inclusion doesn't mean that