Joel Pérez: Dear White Leader

Joel Pérez is an executive and leadership coach, speaker, and consultant who is passionate about helping leaders and organizations achieve their goals and develop a posture of cultural humility. He has over twenty years of experience in higher education, serving in various key leadership roles. He is the author of Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility*.

We could all get a bit better at bringing a dose of humility into our work. Inside organizations, cultural humility starts with how leaders show up each day. In this episode, Joel and I examine three shifts that will help us better empower others.

Key Points

• While humility starts with an individual, it must move beyond them to improve the organization.


• Maintain high standards while avoiding perfectionism by discussing how mistakes get handled in advance.


• To prevent a sense of urgency from rushing a bad decision, consider who’s missing from the conversation.


• Listen, ask curious questions, and say thank you when receiving criticism.


• Criticism doesn’t need to be addressed in the moment. Consider reflection, other data points, and responding more in a future interaction.

Resources Mentioned

• Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility* by Joel Pérez


• Dear White Leader website

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

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• The Starting Point for Inclusive Leadership, with Susan MacKenty Brady (episode 584)


• How to Use Power Responsibly, with Vanessa Bohns (episode 551)


• How to Discover What People Want, with Tiziana Casciaro (episode 565)

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