DEI Interventions and Facilitation

ORG LP788 - DEI Interventions and Facilitation

Credits: 3

This course is designed to better equip leaders in various settings (i.e. schools, corporate, non-profit, behavioral health organizations) with the necessary tools and strategies for planning and facilitating effective interventions involving diversity, equity, and inclusion topics.  Intervention and facilitation can be particularly complex when people are brought together to talk about some of the most difficult issues facing our society such as racism, power, privilege, and discrimination. Many of the strategies practitioners and leaders employ in the DEI space depend heavily on cultural competence, conflict management skills, problem-solving skills, intergroup dialogue skills, and other processes using an informed approach to manage and turn potentially difficult conversations into positive discussions with positive outcomes. Sophisticated facilitation needs to be practiced and this course, therefore, will be heavily experiential.  Students will learn by doing. Areas emphasized include planning and designing a process, creating a safe environment, communicating effectively, managing discussions, using exercises to prompt discussion, and managing group dynamics. In this course, participants will develop key facilitation skills that can be applied in a range of difficult conversations involving DEI.