The Practice of Inclusion: Engaging Diversity as a Valued Resource

This highly interactive workshop will focus on best practices in successful diversity and inclusion initiatives and on their specific application in the participants’ organization.

In modern organizations, diversity and inclusion are fundamental requirements to access the full range of available talent, to effectively reach all markets, and to develop and innovate in light of constantly changing needs and environmental demands. This one-day workshop will focus on the essential elements of a successful approach to diversity and inclusion. Attracting, hiring, and retaining a diverse workforce and, more importantly, reaping the benefits of this diversity in a sustainable manner, require the organization and its leaders to adopt key strategies, practices, and competencies. Beyond diversity, organizations and their members face the challenge of inclusion: how to effectively connect, integrate, and engage with people across all types of differences in mutually beneficial and enhancing ways. Creating and fostering inclusion—the degree to which people of all group identities and across multiple dimensions of diversity feel safe, appreciated, valued, and able to be authentic at work—involves an active practice on the part of leaders and members of groups and organizations, and is a fundamental basis for building, sustaining, and benefitting from diversity.

This highly interactive workshop will focus on best practices in successful diversity and inclusion initiatives and on their specific application in the participants’ organization. Participants will explore, in light of these best practices, the meaning and importance of diversity and inclusion in their organization, the role of inclusion in reaping the benefits of diversity, key strategies for diversity and inclusion, and their own individual and collective leadership in fostering and benefitting from inclusion.

Focus

Upon completion of this course, participants will understand:

• What is diversity and how does it matter to you and to your organization?
• Inclusion and its benefits for individual, team, and organizational effectiveness
• The elements of inclusion at multiple levels: individual, interpersonal, leadership, and organizational
• Best practices for diversity and inclusion
• Leadership for inclusion and inclusive leadership – strategies and practices