Several weeks ago, I had the honor of delivering a Keynote Speech at a Human Resources conference in Huntsville, Alabama, somewhere I had never been.
Prior to the event, I interacted with several of the other speakers for the event. Sadly, two of them began making fun of us going to rural Alabama, claiming that we would be meeting and presenting to “a bunch of rednecks and hillbillies.” I found this prejudgment incredibly unfair and unjust. The rest of this story is both highly ironic and full of Karma.
Upon arriving in Huntsville, banner signs greeted us with “Welcome To Rocket City.” Unbeknownst to me, and the prejudiced idiots, Huntsville was the place where nearly all of the design and testing of NASA’s rockets and space shuttles took place. Hence the moniker “The Rocket City.”
Needless to say, I took great pleasure in “educating” the prejudging morons that Huntsville was not a hillbilly town of rednecks, but rather a city literally full of Rocket Scientists!
Sadly, many workplaces are contaminated with all types of bias and prejudgments. Please do your part in helping eliminate them and making things both fair and right.
Kevin Sheridan is an internationally-recognized Keynote Speaker, a New York Times Best Selling Author, and one of the most sought-after voices in the world on the topic of Employee Engagement. For five years running, he has been honored on Inc. Magazine’s top 100 Leadership Speakers in the world, as well as Inc.’s top 100 experts on Employee Engagement. He was also honored to be named to The Employee Engagement Award’s Top 101 Global Influencers on Employee Engagement of 2017.
Having spent thirty years as a high-level Human Capital Management consultant, Kevin has helped some of the world’s largest corporations rebuild a culture that fosters productive engagement, earning him several distinctive awards and honors. Kevin’s premier creation, PEER®, has been consistently recognized as a long-overdue, industry-changing innovation in the field of Employee Engagement. His first book, Building a Magnetic Culture, made six of the best seller lists including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He is also the author of The Virtual Manager, which explores how to most effectively manage remote workers.
Kevin received a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School in 1988, concentrating his degree in Strategy, Human Resources Management, and Organizational Behavior. He is also a serial entrepreneur, having founded and sold three different companies.
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Email: kevin@kevinsheridanllc.com
November 22, 2021 by