Productive Conversations Vol II, Talking Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Bias in Women's Basketball

Following up from one of the show's most popular episodes, Productive Conversations, Nate takes on the challenging topic of Racial and Gender bias using content from the Women's Basketball Championship game which was won by LSU over Iowa.

Nate uses comments from Dave Portnoy and Emmanuel Acho to illustrate the "two sides" of this argument, and then explains his bold point of view that many media members and media companies are *claiming* to use their platform to advance the efforts of Diversity & Inclusion, but their actions may actually be counterproductive to that very mission.  He gives an impassioned plea for influencers to stop calling people OUT, and instead to start calling people IN, so that the conversation can truly be productive towards advancing equality.

Next, Nate takes a deep dive into his view on trash talk ... by creating his own Trash Talk Mendoza Line, with a 4 dimension rubric.  He then analyzes several famous instances of trash talk to uncover his own bias, finding that he exhibits several of the over 200 cognitive biases, including one that he just made up:  The Michael Redd Shooting Mechanics Bias.  You're probably thinking about bias all wrong -- it's not something to avoid, it's something to seek out.  Nate teaches you how to move from feeling guilty (or defensive) about your biases, to wanting to learn from them and interrupt them to be a better version of yourself.  

Finally, Nate examines the trash-talking actions of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, and evaluates whether they stay above or fall below his expectations ("The Trash Talk Mendoza Line").  He engages in a fictitious conversation with Nick Wright from Fox Sports, and shows you three simple steps to completely disagree with someone in a productive way, even when the argument centers around the emotional topics of racism and sexism.

If you want to see the clips of Caitlin and Angel he refers to during the show, you can find them at the links below:

• Caitlin tells Louisville Player "You're down 15 points, Shut Up" 
• Caitlin does the John Cena "Can't See Me" gesture during the Louisville Elite 8 game
• Caitlin waves off a South Carolina player, daring her to shoot in the Final 4
• Angel does the "Can't See Me" towards Caitlin with about :50 seconds left while they're on the foul line
• Angel follows Caitlin for most of the last :15 seconds of the game

This is the most challenging and thought-provoking episode Leadership Chalk Talk has published to date.  If you want to be a better leader, don't miss it.