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Culturally Responsive Leadership

  • There has been a paradigm shift, taking place in organizations related to diversity, equity and inclusion. While acknowledging and celebrating difference continue to be important in creating positive work environments, there is a higher expectation that all staff be able to identify how cultural differences impact their work so that they can respond effectively to difference. This funny and engaging session will introduce participants to overlapping concepts related to culture, cultural and intercultural competence to help staff better manage and navigate cultural differences.  

  • Over the last 50-years conversations about diversity, inclusion and equity have evolved from the promotion of welcoming spaces, to helping people accept equity as a 21st century necessity and business imperative. This session will outline historical and the emerging frameworks of diversity and inclusion providing each framework’s strengths and challenges. Participants will also engage in terminology lesson to help them better understand some of the key terms and language used in all three frameworks. Lastly, participants will be introduced to the Integrated Model for Inclusion and Equity (IMIE), to strategically implement, manage, and support organizational inclusion and innovation. 

  • Life is filled with conflict, and we experience it daily with a partner or spouse, siblings, parents, and children, friends, and co-workers. Many of us believe that conflict is driven by personality type, and while there is truth in this, many do not realize that there is also a cultural overlay prevalent in how individuals navigate conflict. This highly interactive session will focus on how conflict is manifested through culture, and participants will learn the four most prevalent styles people use globally when responding to conflict. Participants will also identify their preferred style of managing conflict and tangible ways to be more open, engaged, and responsive to styles that are different from their own.  

  • Adapted from the work of Dr. Steven L. Robbins, this session will take participants on a journey through the mind by unpacking the neuroscience behind how our brain works as well as explore the cognitive psychology of human behavior. Participants will begin to understand how and why the brain creates comfort zones, which often limit our ability to be open. They will also learn why we often resist new ideas and perspectives (i.e. why we hate change). We will also discover why our difficulty in embracing diversity is fundamentally about the cultures we create through "insider" vs. "outsider" behavior. Lastly participants will begin to understand why leveraging diversity is so important in our rapidly changing 21st century world. 

  • Your team/organization has taken the intercultural development inventory (IDI) and now knows its orientation but has no idea what to do next. Remember, becoming more Interculturally competent is a journey. This session will help participants understand what it means to be in their current orientation, and how, if they so choose, can successfully adopt behaviors that move them closer to their orientation goal of becoming a more sensitive participant, team, or organization when engaging cultural differences.

  • Individuals and organizations that desire to build their capacities to engage across difference and foster intercultural mindsets need to be cognizant of and able to engage across cultural differences. This skill set requires understanding of patterns within one’s own culture and others. This interactive session will invite participants into deeper understanding of culture general frameworks and strengthen their capacity to understand the cultural patterns around us.

  • Circles are used across cultures for dialogue. Recently a formal Story Circle model (UNESCO 2020) has been developed and utilized for intercultural competence development. The goal of Story Circles is to help participants:

    1) demonstrate respect for other,

    2) practice listening for understanding,

    3) cultivate curiosity about similarities and the differences of others,

    4) develop empathy and

    5) develop relationships with those who are culturally different from us.

    To ensure organizations understand the Story Circle model CIE/IC will conduct a session to discuss the goals, purpose, and value of this model, allowing participants to ask questions, and experience their first Story Circle together. CIE/IC recommends that organizations engage in between 3-5 story circles over the course of three-to-five-month period.

foundational
curriculum I 

foundational
curriculum II 

  • This session is an introspective look at diversity through the lens of authenticity and vulnerability. Participants will have the opportunity to understand, explore, and reflect on the many hidden barriers to engaging in conversations about “diversity,” and begin to understand how being vulnerable can support more open productive dialogue and support a greater understanding of difference. 

  • This session will delve deep into difference by helping participants understand the complexity of their intersecting identities. The first half of this all-day session will provide participants with foundational learning guidelines and a common language that will help them increase their intercultural competence and sustain future conversation about diversity. The second half of the day will focus on identity awareness and recognition. Participants will go deeper in the conversation by fully unpacking the myriad of identities we all carry, and how those identities impact the way we operate in the world.

  • This session will help build upon the previous sessions by helping participants understand how they are perceived through individual, group, and systems identities; and how these dimensions of difference impact the way we are viewed in the world. The second half of the day we will revisit the complexity of close-mindedness helping participants understand how we can begin to break the “cycle of oppression: and create a new framework for our personal and professional relationships.

  • While many of us are consciously committed to fairness and equality and be actively working against our learned prejudices, we still possess hidden bias and negative prejudice.  This session will allow participants to continue the conversation about unconscious bias, by talking about a more insidious form known as micro-inequities. Participants will be provided with clear definitions and examples of micro-inequities and how they can have a chilling effect on climate, personal safety, and productivity, as well as leave with practical ways of responding to everyday micro inequities and skills to support people who are impacted.