Diversity and Inclusion Training that Provides Meaningful Business Results

Building Critical Skills and Expertise with Business-Aligned® D&I Training

D&I issue

You need effective diversity and inclusion (D&I) training that provides meaningful business results!

Success in D&I training and learning is about realizing the "opportunity" while avoiding the "trap":

Avoid
"The D&I Training Trap"

Too often, diversity and inclusion training modules or programs fail to achieve a measurable outcome or to have a meaningful impact on business results.

Common problems include:

Backlash, usually due to failure to "meet the learners" at their current stage of development and readiness.
An unclear understanding of the required business-related learning outcomes or of why D&I training is needed.
Lack of either a business-driven measuring strategy or clear objectives for diversity training.
Use of diversity and bias training activities that do not link with business purpose.

Achieve
"The D&I Training Opportunity"

Diversity and inclusion training modules or programs, when well planned and implemented, enable and engage teams to deliver meaningful business results.

Typical success factors include:

Inform people about the organization's business needs.
Implementing changes needed to grow the organization.
Provide specific knowledge, skills, and tools that people can use in their daily work.
Focus on developing peoples' intercultural expertise in leading, working in, and contributing to the success of your increasingly diverse and multicultural organization.

D&I solution

Training is most effective when it is part of a strategy focused on improving business results. The diversity training should achieve certain workforce and work environment changes that will help meet business objectives. The changes might involve developing new knowledge, skills, experiences, or action plans.

As business diversity training consultants, we design diversity training to meet your specific business needs. This starts with the up-front planning process we conduct with you.

To help ensure the best business and learning outcomes from your D&I training investment, the planning should clearly answer these questions:

What are the business goals that the training is intended to help achieve?
What changes are needed in the workforce ("who we are") and/or the workplace ("how we work together") to help meet the business goals?
How will the training help make the needed workforce and/or workplace changes?
How does the training fit into our overall diversity strategy?
How do we plan to measure the results, in terms meaningful to our senior leadership?
For whom is the training intended? For example: New hires during employee orientation? All or some current employees? New managers? Senior executives?
Do we know the participants' stage of development regarding diversity and inclusion so that we can design the training for minimum backlash and maximum benefit?

In this context, training can be a meaningful tool that has the needed business impact with each part of your leadership and employee population.

Sample learning outcomes from our custom diversity and inclusion training include:

Assess the business impact of your own culturally-based preferences, biases, and cultural norms and define developmental plans to help move forward more effectively.
Define and differentiate between diversity, inclusion, intercultural competence, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), and Affirmative Action. State their distinct and complementary characteristics, and how each is relevant to business.
Describe how you and the team in which you participate intend to work differently so that you achieve the full benefits of diversity and inclusion.
Describe what an inclusive workplace looks like and its benefits to all employees and to our business.
Learn practical skills and tools to build individual and group effectiveness.
Start your own personal action plan to help the organization achieve a more inclusive workplace.

In our custom diversity training we typically use the following learning methodologies:

Action planning
PowerPoint Presentation
Business story telling
Case studies
Experiential exercises
Dialogue and discussion
Writing note charts

Individual and/or group assessment and feedback using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) or the Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire (CWQ)
Role plays
Video
Visualization
Handouts / job aids
Distributing employee and manager toolkits

Frequently, diversity training is intended to build peoples’ knowledge and competence in communicating and working with people of different cultural backgrounds.

The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and the Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire (CWQ) are invaluable business tools in these situations. They help use inclusion and intercultural expertise to build Productivity, Innovation, Creativity, Agility, and Safety (PICAS).

IDI

Measures how a person or a group of people tend to think and feel about cultural difference stemming from any aspect of diversity, human identity, and cultural difference.
Assesses the core mindset regarding diversity and cultural difference.
Provides the data needed to design training matched to the participants’ current developmental stage.
Helps deliver the most effective developmental benefit and minimizes the likelihood of creating backlash.

CWQ

Provides insight into and helps derive tangible business value from culturally-based work preferences and tendencies (CBTs).
Increases PICAS in working with people from specific aspects of diversity or cross-cultural difference.
Is derived directly from the work of Dr. Gert Hofstede, who developed the initial version of CWQ.

MDB Group is certified to provide IDI and CWQ as part of our diversity training services.

Please call us to discuss your specific situation. We will gladly help assess your needs and then design and implement the most effective diversity and inclusion training for your situation.

We also apply these techniques in a more-focused manner specifically for senior executive team diversity and inclusion (D&I) briefings, seminars, and workshops.

Sample D&I results

See representative results achieved by MDB Group's principals at Diversity Training.

Next steps

Please call us so that together we can start addressing your specific training needs.

Your business success is our most important objective

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Resource Links

MDB Group Business-Aligned® D&I Solutions

D&I Application Note (PDF): Grow Your Organization through Business-Aligned® D&I Planning

Spotlight on Training & Development

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Our D&I training, development, coaching, and keynotes will enable and engage teams to deliver meaningful business results.

MDB Group has special capabilities dedicated to CEOs, senior executives, and Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) and other D&I practitioners. We offer D&I speakers for keynotes, plenary sessions, executive briefings, and more.

Our collaborative up-front planning process helps ensure that we meet your specific business needs. Visit these pages to learn more:

Spotlight on Building Inclusion

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Almost all organizations say they want a more-inclusive workplace. Some can define what this looks like. Very few organizations achieve anything close to “full inclusion". Why? It takes a change in mindset about diversity and cultural difference.

Growing an organization and its business through full inclusion typically demands some mix of the PICAS factors (Productivity, Innovation, Creativity, Agility, and Safety). Full inclusion requires cultural and behavioral change from the CEO to the newest employee. To learn more visit these pages:

Add-ons	Training may be added to a strategy or may provide the knowledge and tools needed for another add-on.
Conflict resolution	Addressing the root causes of conflict may involve focused awareness and/or skill training.
Diversity strategies	Training is frequently an integral part of an overall strategy.
Executive briefings and workshops	Customized briefings or workshops are one approach to executive learning.
Workforce productivity, innovation, and creativity	Training can focus on inclusive work processes that increase productivity, innovation, and creativity.