Start here: Building Inclusive Cultures
Allyship looks like: Instead of simply asking people to join a meeting, inclusive workplaces, invite their people to speak and have their voice heard.
It goes a long way to promote a sense of belonging.
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In most settings, strong relationships are centred on trust, allowing curiosity, empathy and allyship to thrive. And in equitable workplaces, the culture is respectful, embracing the unique skills and qualities of all its people.
Many workplace cultures, however, still face challenges with inclusivity despite knowing its benefits. Often this is because of a lack of self-awareness and commitment. As a result, people revert to default settings of assumptions, bias, and projections.
By exploring simple ways to help shift perceptions from assumption-led to ones of curiosity, you can build your knowledge and practice.
As a result, you’ll become a better ally.
Why we dismiss our bias, and how we can take responsibility.
As humans, it’s inevitable we’ll make some decisions that don’t consider everybody.
Many of us claim not to treat people differently based on how they look or present themselves. There are, however, times where a lack of bias awareness leads to discrimination against others. We exclude others when we don’t have the tools or experience to recognise such behaviours.
In addition, many of our defensive behaviours stem from a ‘fear of making a mistake’. For example, we may fear that our self-perception does not match up to our behaviour. One of the best antidotes to this type of defensiveness is to take responsibility for our mistakes.
We do this by using I statements:
Shifting the dynamic starts with the individual
It’s everybody’s responsibility in an organisation to support and promote inclusiveness.
By increasing your understanding of unconscious bias you’ll develop a deeper appreciation of what it looks like. As a result, you’ll be able to recognise it, challenge it, and contribute to a more inclusive culture at work.
There is some risk in interrupting non-inclusive behaviour – as a bystander, or as the one on the receiving end. But there are ways to address it without putting yourself at risk.
This experience will help you learn how to sit in the discomfort that comes with making mistakes. It will test your willingness to be called out on mistakes and acknowledge them. More importantly, it will challenge you to ask real questions.
By putting in the work to question and unlearn behaviours, you can make changes to your approach. Moreover, you’ll start to put theory into practice and become more inclusive.
What you’ll experience
- Context. In this self-guided experience, you’ll learn a bit about each topic via short videos and written content
- Experience. Workplace interactions/conversations and encounter instances of bias and non-inclusive behaviour. These experiences were designed in Virtual Reality and have been adapted to your flatscreen
- Reflect. Share reflections on what you experienced, and how this might impact your workplace via short insights forms
- Workshop. Participate in a guided workshop facilitated by KINSPACE where we’ll enter into rich discussions and practical activities
- Action. Design and integrate strategies for interrupting bias to engage in more inclusive conversations in your workplace
Resources
To continue your exploration, check out this blog: The learning organisation: cultivating curiosity
Next step
*Tip: when you reach this point in each lesson, go back to the top of the page and click on Complete and Continue. This will confirm you have completed this and show up with a tick in the navigation bar; taking you to the next lesson.
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