Cultural Competency Training
Skills Training
The Diversity Collaborative custom designs its Skills Training to help managers and employees:
- Respond appropriately when bothersome, hurtful, or offensive language and behaviors occur
- Recover from cultural conflicts inadvertently caused in communications with coworkers, colleagues, clients, and others
- Give constructive feedback that is:o Clear
o Non-judgmental
o Descriptive
o Practical - Receive feedback non-defensively
Behavioral studies indicate that in the absence of skills to respond when hurtful language or behaviors affect individuals, the response is often no response. Using the phrase “Silence implies consent,” workshop participants learn and practice skills to get beyond their own discomfort and thoughtfully address statements and actions perceived as negative. In most organizations, Skills Training follows Awareness Training so that managers and employees receive new options for communicating through cultural conflicts.
Drawing the Line: Four Hours Skills Building Workshop
Walking
through a cultural conflict - with dignity and sensitivity - requires
awareness and skill. Our research shows that the lack of knowing “what
to say” or “what to do” are among the most profound reasons employees
accused of offending their coworkers continued the same offensive
behaviors.
In this half-day workshop, participants practice
techniques to deflect fear, anger, and frustration sometimes caused by
someone else’s behaviors, or an inadvertent error in one’s own actions
or language. Participants explore some of the common issues from their
own personal background that may make it difficult for them to
appreciate people who think and act differently.
Using real
examples of common cultural conflicts, learners exercise techniques to
use their professional responsibility and personal “Response Ability”
to tactfully set boundaries and confront situations that make them feel
less than full contributors at work.
Other activities focus
on how to forgive yourself - and others - for potentially harmful
cultural misunderstandings that may result in damaged relationships and
an “unsafe” work environment.
Drawing the Line: Eight Hours Skills Building Workshop
Silence
implies consent. Researchers tell us that when an individual doesn’t
know what to say, she or his often says nothing. The lack of a response
when hurtful language or behaviors occur leaves a hurt person stunned -
and a perpetrator clueless.
In this full-day version of
Drawing the Line, participants spend more time in small groups,
practicing skills and techniques designed to “walk through” discomfort
and address cultural conflicts each participant has experienced at work
or in her or his personal life.
Few people leave their
homes each day with the singular intent to hurt the people around them.
Then again, life happens. Here, participants learn skills to recover
and heal from making cultural errors about race, gender, religion, age,
sexual orientation, and other differences.