Individual Connectedness
In This Section
Starting the Conversation
Section 4.0: How Do You Start the Conversation?
Starting the Conversation
Section 6.0: Who Needs to Start the Conversation?
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
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
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 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
Back to All Tiles