Leading in Black and White: Working Across the Racial Divide in Corporate America

As specialists within the Center for Creative Leadership, a well-regarded base of executive education in North Carolina, the authors pooled their observations and insights gleaned from working with clients on an often-painful subject: navigating the complexities of race relations in corporate America. Their book provides practical, workable strategies for executives coping with the all-too-common problem of "lost opportunities, the missed communications, the distortions, the misunderstandings, the perceptual miscues" among black and white colleagues. Chapters cover interactions and networking, assumptions about identity, political pitfalls and other angles on personal leadership development. They take aim at upper management as well: Diversity is more than propaganda, the authors write, and formal mentoring programs can have limited value. As Livers and Caver stress in the book's preface, "Leading in Black and White tries to make much of what is invisible visible."