Week 5: Skills and strategies for success

Introduction

Last week you looked at some of the potential challenges and barriers to your diversity and inclusion work, exploring unconscious bias, privilege and diversity fatigue.

This week, you’ll look at some of the skills and strategies that can help you to take things forward, focusing on the personal skills and behaviours needed to drive diversity and inclusion, as well as some of the professional tools, such as strategies, models and measurements, that can support your progress.

Watch this short video in which our employers describe the importance of key skills, such as self-reflection and clear communication.

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Transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 5

Craig Pemblington

You need to be able to challenge your way of thinking, actively challenge. So when you’re coming out with decisions, it’s thinking where is this decision rooted in, where is this thought rooted in. And recognise your own perceptions, cultural bias, the engagement that you’ve had with other people, your upbringing, your background, all plays into your truest version of yourself. So you need to be able to reflect on that within any conversation around diversity and inclusion.

Yusuf Nagdi

During that process, this two year program, I started changing as an individual without knowing it and probably without even wanting to, it was just happening and I didn’t realise why or how. And little comments like from home, my wife would say, you’re becoming far more reflective than you’ve been before. And what I found was I was starting to think, myself, about the bigger picture.

Craig Pemblington

I think genuinely reflecting on the self can bring so much to the conversation, because that’s as much about recognising what experiences you have that are valuable and also what experience you have that are potentially detrimental to the actions that you want to take.

Sophie Washington

With WizKids, one of the new things that I’ve started since becoming volunteer support officer is sending out monthly newsletters to our volunteers, and also hosting regular informal just coffee morning type sessions, and having that open channel of communication so that it’s possible to start those conversations, and so that people feel comfortable in bringing up maybe something that they need to make it easier for them, and actually just having that conversation, as well, so that you’ve got that awareness.

End transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 5

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Video 1: Introduction to Week 5

By the end of this week you will be able to:

• identify key skills and behaviours required to drive diversity and inclusion, and consider areas for your personal development
• describe strategic and analytical tools to aid in developing, implementing and measuring the success of your diversity agenda
• create a vision statement, strategy and action plan.

You’ll start by focusing on yourself, and the skills and behaviours that you can build and develop to support your diversity and inclusion journey.