Building Actionable Skills to Advance Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Conversations in Clinical, Community, and Organizational Practice

In today’s increasingly stressful and divisive world, conversations about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) seem impossibly difficult. Against the backdrop of dire issues such as racism, LGBTQ rights, immigration, wealth inequality, and climate change, among many others, our collective discourse has been relegated to vitriolic sound bites of tit-for-tat that play out destructively on social media.

The result has been deepening social, cultural, and political fractures that have disrupted our lives and relationships with one another in profound ways. This includes our relationships with clients, supervisees, managers, co-workers, employees, and even loved ones.

In response, professionals and organizations everywhere have been scrambling to enlist in anti-bias or diversity training. Unfortunately, the majority of these focus mostly on abstract knowledge and fall short on tangible, actionable tools.

This workshop will focus on the critical skills needed to have constructive DEI conversations in ways that can help advance meaningful change in our clients, teams, places of work, and community. Using a variety of teaching methods – lectures, small group discussions, and experiential exercises – participants will better understand why attempts at DEI conversations often fail, common missteps that we all perpetrate, and specific skills we can use to support conversations and repair ruptures.

Skills will be presented using a comprehensive framework (Kim & del Prado, 2019) based on theoretical influences from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Attachment Theory, Family Systems, and Buddhist Psychology. Participants will leave the workshop with an individualized plan that they can immediately implement for improving their personal efficacy in their places of work and community.

This workshop is intended for a broad audience, including clinicians of all levels, educators, managers, supervisors, and organizational leaders.