Individual Connectedness

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Starting the Conversation

Section 4.0: How Do You Start the Conversation?

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Starting the Conversation

Section 6.0: Who Needs to Start the Conversation?

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4.0: How Do You Start the Conversation? The Four B's

  • 1. Boundary Setting

Boundary setting is critical to ensuring that important voices are being heard and that individuals feel comfortable to share their stories.

Boundary setting signals to employees that organizations care about their employees’ well-being throughout the process of EDI.

What does this look like?

Before conversations begin, set up clearly defined ground rules, including:

  • A culture of respect for all participants and their place on the learning journey
  • Space to speak and be heard without interruption
  • Anonymity: Individual identities and details of the conversation that may reveal the identity of participants must remain anonymous (unless there is reason to believe that an individual’s personal safety may be at risk)
This infographic by Catalyst offers fundamental ground rules on facilitating conversations with colleagues, teams, and larger groups.
Review this guide to learn more about the rights of LGBTQ2+ employees, developed by Pride at Work Canada.
  • 2. Building Your Knowledge Base

Leveraging existing equity work, resources, and current and relevant information to continuously strengthen individual leaders’ and the organization’s knowledge basis.

What does this look like?

For conversations to be impactful and to avoid having employees from priority groups carry the burden of educating their colleagues, take it upon yourself to:

  • Better understand the needs and barriers of different groups
  • Ask respectful questions and be prepared to make mistakes
  • Don’t put the onus on the underrepresented individuals to lead the conversation and serve as the ‘ultimate authority’
Learn more about the Indigenous People in Canada through The University of Alberta’s free course, “Indigenous Canada”.
L.E.A.D: Listen, Engage, Acknowledge and Do: This framework by Deloitte explains how organizations can take action against anti‑Black racism.
  • 3. Bolstering Confidence

Frequent learning and sharing opportunities allow employees to show up authentically, strengthen their connections, and bolster their confidence and sense of belonging.

What does this look like?

To foster collaboration and confidence throughout organizations, ongoing training that brings employees along a knowledge journey should be provided through multiple channels. These can include:

  • Formal training on anti-racism and anti-oppression via in-person workshops or e-learning modules
  • Informal lunch-and-learns to build comfort with uncomfortable topics and conversations
  • Ongoing individual awareness and unconscious bias training
Case Study
Case Study
Review this conversation to learn more about disability-inclusive language, presented by the Rick Hansen Foundation.
Learn more about the equity, diversity and inclusion training curriculum and online courses offered by The Canadian Congress on Inclusive Diversity and Workplace Equity.
  • 4. Being Honest

Organizations should be transparent and honest throughout their EDI journey to showcase a genuine willingness to confront the current state of their organizational dynamics.

What does this look like?

Looking to experts within the community to support, enhance, and educate is critical to ensuring that EDI commitments remain tangible and aligned with current social expectations and movements.

  • Acknowledge your privilege as a leader
  • Understand where your expertise lies
  • Understand where your organization stands
  • Bring in external consultants, community leaders, and trainers to facilitate conversations. Along with providing strong insights and impactful training, this will also help remove any internal political or power dynamics between employees
Case Study
This six-module course entitled “The Comfortable Race Conversation Process” explores anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion conversations with peer learners.

Scenario Checkpoint 1

Welcome to your Starting the Conversation Scenario: Checkpoint 1!

Pearl recognizes that like herself, each of her employees have unique intersectional identities. While Pearl can speak to her Asian-Canadian heritage, she cannot speak to the experiences and needs of other priority group-identifying employees. Pearl wants to create a forum for people to contribute their ideas.

Pearl has a few thoughts on how to do so, but needs to decide the best way to implement them. What order should she implement these initiatives in?

a) Host one-on-one individual conversations with each of her employees to understand how she can support them
b) Host group discussions with all of her staff as an open forum for them to share
c) Implement an anonymous channel for employees to submit their feedback

6.0: Who Needs to Start the Conversation?​

It is the responsibility of all employees in an organization to ensure creating and sustaining a sense of belonging for everyone, however, there is a greater responsibility for the leaders in an organization to create spaces where others feel welcome through the provision of learning opportunities as well as their own behaviours and actions as individuals.

  • Asking the Right Questions
  • What are some systemic barriers to success?
  • How can leaders consider emotional tax? What can organizations do to alleviate the stress of emotional tax?
  • Is there psychological safety present for employees? Do they feel that they can contribute and that they are heard?
  • How can leaders amplify diverse voices? Which voices are missing and being excluded from important conversations?
  • Important Considerations:
  • Be mindful of the varying overlapping intersections that exist within priority groups. This is critical to ensuring that conversations remain safe for employees
  • There is no standardized approach. We strongly recommend you assess each scenario on its own to ensure you approach every conversation and colleague with care
  • Avoid singling people out
  • Avoid making assumptions
  • Unless they initiate or voluntarily do so, avoid burdening colleagues with the responsibility to educate you and others
  • Avoid tokenizing to carry on the conversation
This report released by Catalyst is about how Empowering Workplaces Combat Emotional Tax For People of Colour in Canada.
These are the Do’s and Don’t of Disability Sensitivity presented by the Rick Hansen Foundation.
This Infographic from The 519 is on Avoiding Assumed Use of Gendered Titles.

Scenario Checkpoint 3

Welcome to your Starting the Conversation Scenario Checkpoint 3!
Pearl has created a list of questions that she wants to use as a guide to understand her employees’ concerns and ensure that their needs are being met. As a leader, she wants to take the lead on initiating conversations and ensure that her questions create a sense of psychological safety.

What should Pearl keep in mind when developing these questions? Select all that apply.

6.1 Asking the Right Questions

A leader in an organization is someone who manages a team or several teams, and/or has an important stake in the organization and a role in making decisions that push for change. The following are some questions that you can ask the employees you lead and manage:

  • Systemic Barriers to Success
  • What are some barriers to your success in this organization?
  • Can I play a role in removing some of the barriers? What can I do?
  • Creating a Sense of Belonging
  • Whose voice or what perspective is missing from this conversation?
  • How can I help amplify your voice and that of other underrepresented voices?
  • Individual Experiences
  • Do you feel safe enough to take risks at work? To contribute? To belong to the community?
  • What percentage of your time is spent on addressing exclusion or microaggressions against you or others?
When asking your questions, consider the difference and impact between person-first language and identity-first language. Visit the Public Health Sudbury and Districts website to learn more about position statements.

When starting the conversation, creating a safe space by setting ground rules is important. Safe spaces allow individuals to feel comfortable having brave and honest conversations, where one can openly express themselves and their ideas to others on a team without risk of punishment, humiliation, or rejection.

Let individuals know the following:

  • “Confidentiality is important, and unless you want me to share information outside of this conversation, I will not do so.”
  • “It is important for me to hear your perspective and understand the various inequities faced by employees at work. Doing so, as a leader, it will help me determine ways to remove potential barriers for your success. However, you do not have to partake if you wish not to, and I will respect whatever decision you make.” (To learn more, read the Harvard Business Review article “Getting Over Your Fear of Talking About Diversity”.)
Although these questions are important to start the conversation with your employees, remember that these topics can be triggering to some. Respect the individual if they want to opt out of sharing or if they do not feel comfortable answering the question.
Explore additional resources presented by Catalyst related to having challenging conversations and talking across differences.

Considerations for Small and/or Non-Profit Organizations

Small or non-profit organizations tend to lack the resources that are readily available in larger or for-profit organizations – time,  human resources capacity or budget, etc. – to help them along their Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) journey. The following are some considerations to help these organizations to begin and continue on their EDI journey:

  • Partner with other organizations: If your organization does not have a subject matter expert on staff, seek one out from outside your company. Partner with other similar-sized organizations to pool talent and resources to address EDI within your industry and context.
  • Trainings in EDI need not be expensive or complicated:
    • Create an exchange program between organizations to access knowledge and training opportunities
    • There are high-quality, free materials online that can serve as an excellent starting point to Starting the Conversation.
Considerations for Intermediate / Advanced Organizations
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Large Organization

BMO

BMO launched its Road to Allyship training program to help employees on their own journey to allyship with the 2SLGBTQ+ community. Through the training, BMO employees have been able to have difficult conversations about how individuals can show up for each other encouraging staff to ask questions and educate themselves on the issues so they’re more aware, empathetic and active listeners.

Since completing the training program, the bank’s Chief Inclusion Office has learned that  she’s not the only employee who didn’t know what it feels like to identify with a marginalized community. “If you don’t have that lived experience, [then] you don’t know what it’s like identifying with the [2SLGBTQ+] community. The training program is eye-opening.”

Now, when employees see micro-aggressions from their colleagues, they know they can step up and speak up. Additionally, The bank continues to focus efforts on its gender pronoun initiative that provides branch managers with the tools and resources required to train employees to have inclusive conversations with customers.

Small/Medium Organization

Hero Digital

Marketing & Advertising

As a way to start important conversations, create an opportunity to exchange ideas and build team dynamics, Hero Digital started a book club that focuses on self-development and diversity and Inclusion topics.

“We’re lucky that Hero provides the book for everyone who wants to participate in order to make book club as accessible as possible. To ensure everyone has enough time to commit to reading, we only host book club three times a year, and we encourage people to attend the discussion even if they haven’t finished the book. The beauty of group reading is that it creates a natural social circle that can fill in any blanks in comprehension and motivate each other to read. Of course, you may still need to inspire the group, including by demonstrating top-down support. For instance, our CEO Dave Kilimnik read and joined the discussion at our kickoff meeting. This set the example.”

Click on the following link for more on Hero Digital’s Book Club: How to start a company wide book club that fosters inclusion.

#IndigenousReads encourages reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples through sharing literature written by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. Click here to learn more.

Large Organization

IBM

Partnering with IISB (International Indigenous Speakers Bureau)

One company that shines in this area of education and diversity training is the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) because of the depth and breadth of their commitment to Native/Indigenous diversity and development initiatives. Recognized by Mediacorp Canada Inc. as one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers for 2021, IBM is proving it is one of the leaders in diversity, inclusion and Indigenous reconciliation in the corporate world.

“At IBM, we are seeking to educate everyone in our organization to shift, shape and broaden the way decisions are made across the board,” said Sophia Dozier, diversity and inclusion leader at IBM. “We have diversity training, sure, but our approach goes much deeper than that by exposing IBMers to different cultural perspectives on a regular basis from many angles.”

IISB speakers illuminated IBM staff on topics such as the benefits of neurodiversity, Two-Spirit perspectives, and what it means to see with an Indigenous lens.

Read how IISB is shifting corporate culture through Indigenous Engagement:

Access

Considerations for Intermediate / Advanced Organizations

As you advance through your EDI journey, continuous education means enhanced people and data analytics.

The type of data being collected is critical to understand the depth of systemic barriers within organizations. This includes information on the nuances and complex layers of specific roles and responsibilities at the workplace and how it differs for women and/or non-binary people, Racialized, Black, and/or People of Colour, People with disabilities (including invisible and episodic disabilities), 2SLGBTQ+ and/or gender and sexually diverse individuals, and “Aboriginal” and/or Indigenous Peoples.

A collection of comprehensive data will give direction and provide greater equity in approaching solutions. Ask questions such as:

  • Is the self-identification data you collect specifically role-based data or just aggregate data?
  • Do you know how digital transformation or remote work is impacting different racialized, gender, and intersectional identities?
  • How might technology implementation support, or contradict, equitable hiring and retention practices?
  • Do you know which constituencies in your organization may experience job risk in the future? Do you have strategies to address those risks?

Definition

Microaggression

Microaggression is defined as: “A comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group” – Source: Merriam Webster

Definition

Unlearning

Unlearning is defined as: “To make an effort to forget your usual way of doing something so that you can learn a new and sometimes better way” – Source: Cambridge Dictionary

Definition

Intersectionality

Intersectionality is defined as: A framework for understanding how different aspects of a person’s social and political identities (e.g., gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, physical appearance, etc.) combine to create unique modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies advantages and disadvantages that are felt by people due to this combination of factors – Source: Kimberlé Crenshaw, TIME

Definition

Privilege

Privilege is defined as: “The unfair and unearned advantages individuals are granted for having, or being perceived to have, social identities that align with those deemed to be superior according to societal rules and norms. It is often experienced as an absence of barriers related to a particular social identity (e.g., White privilege, straight privilege)” – Source: Egale

Definition

Safe Space

Safe Space is defined as: “A place intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations” – Source: Merriam-Webster

Safe spaces allow individuals to feel comfortable having brave and honest conversations.

Definition

Emotional Tax

Emotional Tax is defined as: “The combination of feeling different from peers at work because of gender, race, and/or ethnicity, being on guard against experiences of bias, and experiencing the associated effects on health, well-being, and ability to thrive at work” – Source: Catalyst

Definition

Tokenism

Tokenism is defined as: “Performative policies that ostensibly promote diversity or equality (placing women or diverse groups in leadership positions), but do not truly have a positive impact on the workplace. Tokenism isn’t progressive, and it especially causes harm to tokenized individuals, causing extra pressure to succeed due to being perceived as representative of a group and often leaving them in an alienating work environment” – Source: Catalyst

Definition

Psychological Safety

Psychological Safety is defined as: “An environment that encourages, recognizes and rewards individuals for their contributions and ideas by making individuals feel safe when taking interpersonal risks. A lack of psychological safety at work can inhibit team learning and lead to in-groups, groupthink and blind spots” – Source: Gartner