Description:

More than ever, a workplace is a diverse collection of individuals proud of who they are: their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, their ethnic background, and all the other components that make an individual unique. One of the challenges for workplace leaders is how to help these diverse individuals work as a team.

We all know what happens to organizations that don’t have effective teamwork: they fail. And, failing to embrace diversity can also have serious legal costs for corporations. This one-day workshop will give you ways to celebrate diversity in the workplace while bringing individuals together.

This one-day workshop teaches participants to:

• Describe what diversity and its related terms mean
• Explain how changes in the world have affected you and your view
• Identify your stereotypes
• Use terms that are politically correct and avoid those which are not
• Apply the four cornerstones of diversity
• Avoid the pitfalls related to diversity
• Use a technique for dealing with inappropriate behavior
• Develop a management style to encourage diversity
• Take action if you or one of your employees feels discriminated against

Course Outline:

Lesson 1: Course Overview

• You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

Lesson 2: Defining Diversity

• Participants will begin by defining diversity and related terms, including affirmative action, bias, stereotype, and Equal Employment Opportunity.

Lesson 3: How Does Diversity Affect Me?

• This session will help participants identify how a changing world has affected them. Participants will also score their self-awareness inventory to identify possible areas for improvement.

Lesson 4: Identifying Stereotypes

• During this session, participants will explore stereotypes from different angles through a lecture and group exercise.

Lesson 5: Wise Words

• In this era of political correctness, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with words that have become inappropriate. We will take a look at some phrases that are considered universally incorrect and some basic guidelines. We’ll also take a look at some phrases that have gone too far.

Lesson 6: Communicating Effectively With Different Cultures

• Communications can be tricky even within one’s own culture, not to mention across cultures. This session deals with communications under the lens of high and low context cultures while also tackling various forms of body language and other types of communication skills. The session wraps up with a look at handling miscommunication through a case study.

Lesson 7: The Cornerstones of Diversity

• Diversity experts Armida Russell, Amy Tolbert, and Frank Wilderman have identified four cornerstones of diversity development: knowledge, acceptance, understanding, and behavior. We will examine each cornerstone in detail during this session.

Lesson 8: Building a Multicultural Organization

• This session deals with how to create inclusive programs for new employees.

Lesson 9: How to Discourage Diversity

• There are some practices that discourage diversity more than they encourage it. We will look at four common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Lesson 10: The STOP Technique

• Diversity expert Lenora Billings-Harris has developed a four-step technique that you can use when someone is behaving in an inappropriate manner. It’s called STOP. Participants will learn about the technique through a lecture.

Lesson 11: Managing for Diversity

• During this brief lecture, we will look at some simple things managers and employees can do to encourage diversity in their workplace.

Lesson 12: Dealing with Discrimination

• To wrap up the day, we will discuss how to deal with discrimination as a manager and an employee.

Lesson 13: Workshop Wrap-Up

• At the end of the course, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.