Courses

With an increasing use of social media and the internet, creating an online presence and an online brand remains crucial to staying ahead of the curve. This course will be a helpful guide in managing your social media in order to build a strong professional brand.

The Management Professional Certification allows students to enhance their management skills by offering training in task delegation, managing change, and other primary skills for the modern-day manager. Through this certification, students will learn not only how to direct organizational processes, but how to build and craft them as well.

Being an inclusive leader is more than hiring a diverse team, and this course will highlight that distinction and prepare learners to practice inclusive initiatives.

Resiliency is what guarantees your ability to survive and thrive regardless of any challenges thrown your way. This course explores keys that lead both individuals and organizations to success. Through use of a resiliency assessment tool, learners will identify gaps in their own resilient behavior and delve into various practices that effectively address those gaps. Learners will also examine the impact of organizational culture on personal resiliency. Finally, learners will examine case studies and best practices used to increase resiliency of organizations.

Culture is an integral part of what makes us unique individuals. It guides our beliefs, perspectives, and behaviors. However, sometimes workplace practices do not take others culture into account. Ideas, solutions, systems, etc., are proposed without fully grasping the fundamental beliefs and values of our diverse workplace and marketplace. Participants will learn, through a series of teaching methods, how to assess their cultural competence and gain insight to enhance their understanding of others’ cultural differences and learn ways to create collaborative and productive working relationships.

Thriving in an industry or practice requires some level of adaptive leadership. Adaptive leadership is a leadership framework that urges leaders to push the boundaries of their current mindset in order to better adjust to the changes and process of change existing in the world around them. This course will instruct learners on the necessary skills and thought processes to succeed in an ever-changing environment.

CEO’s are very conscious of a variety of reasons for caring about diversity. They understand that greater diversity leads to creativity and innovation. They understand the need to retain talent, and they understand the diversity of their marketplace. However, a stark gap exists between understanding and practice. This course will introduce best practice behaviors that will enhance CEO’s. senior leadership, managers, and supervisors’ leadership and accountability for D&I.

Cultural competence is the ability to understand, communicate with and effectively interact with people across cultures, and it is a vital skill in today's workplace. With increasingly diverse talent pools and the spread of globalization, being culturally competent and sensitive can make a drastic difference in effective leadership. This course will cover how one can be aware of their personal world view, how they can become aware of the differences in other cultures, and how they can not only be tolerant of those differences, but be able to positively regard those differences.

The field of Diversity of Inclusion continues to change and develop at a very fast pace. New topics are being added or getting additional focus every few years. This workshop will include:

• A discussion on what exactly is “inclusion” and why it is important
• Different theories around diversity and inclusion
• A quick review of the business case for diversity and inclusion
• A deeper look into the new and hot emerging topics within the diversity field
• Generational Diversity – four generations in the workplace
• Multi-cultural / Multi-national / Religious Diversity
• LGBT ( Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender)
• An even deeper look into the current hot topic of transgender diversity
• Veterans in the workplace
• Diversity of Thought
• The evolution of Employee Resource Groups

A significant number of Diversity and Inclusion initiatives have been put in place in innumerable organizations for over thirty years. Despite the progress that has been made, many organizations have a way to go. According to this year’s Global Human Capital Trends, research shows an overwhelming majority of organizations (71 percent) aspire to have an inclusive culture, only 12 percent have reached that goal. This course examines the gaps that exist in organizations that keep them from achieving their D&I goals and objectives. Participants will examine best practices that will help their organizations achieve true culture change.

We all have beliefs, thoughts, and perceptions that either positively or negatively affect other people in a myriad of ways. This course will help participants identify their biases and learn specific skills to reduce conscious and unconscious biases in the workplace, marketplace, and their personal lives.

Diversity and Inclusion mean different things to different generations. Millennials are redefining D&I. And Z’s will continue to reinvent it. This course will teach how this shifting paradigm affects and will continue to affect organizational systems and performance. Participants will gain knowledge and skills to collaborate, communicate and mutually benefit from the differences and assets brought about by Millennials and Z’s.

We all unconsciously and inadvertently say and do things that hurt ourselves and others – we let our biases cloud our decision-making. The result of our misguided judgements can be devastating, particularly in the workplace. But how do we control something that we do not do consciously? This session investigates the nature, impact, and resolution of implicit bias by gaining a deeper understanding of the unconscious mind, which can impact recruitment, hiring, evaluation, promotion, and retention decisions. After learning to identify our misconceptions, we are able to think and act in a more ethical and effective manner. By exploring inclusive and intentional interviewing techniques, retention tips, and training, learners will be able to provide their companies with concrete solutions to resolve implicit bias.

ERG’s play a critical role in helping organizations achieve their business strategy and objectives. This course will help ERG’s determine goals and objectives that mutually align with organizational and ERG’s goals and objectives.

The mission of the DiversityFIRST™ ERG Academy is to be a resource to both individuals and organizations seeking to start, grow or fully utilize their employee resource groups. The academy blends theory and practice over a one-day interactive curriculum, with the development of an action plan to effectively lead ERGs for greatest business impact and sustainability.

Failure to acknowledge the importance of white males as full diversity partners/allies can stall diversity and inclusion efforts. This course will address historical issues of privilege and power to better understand how diversity and inclusion is perceived as minority vs. majority needs. Participants will learn best practices to manage the polarities of D&I and to frame diversity and inclusion as “all,” in order to achieve progress.

As our country continues to become more multi-national and diverse, communications across diverse groups become more challenging and interesting. Even between generations, communications norms are very different. This workshop will cover:

• An introduction into the changing field of diversity and inclusion
• The changing demographics of our country and your state or region
• The criticality of communications / terms / words within diverse communities
• An overview of difference in communications in various cultures and countries
• A survey of “forbidden” words and terms in various constituencies
• The do’s and don’t’s of interacting with people different from you

Today’s political climate has brought about a change in society’s conversations about differences. This course will examine how organizations can take a pro-active approach to creating genuine, respectful workplace practices that can result in culture change that harness the increasing diversity of the workplace to enhance creativity and innovation.

Each generation in today’s workforce brings in their own attitudes, values, work ethic, expectations, behaviors and more, making communication between the generations difficult; i.e., what you say may not be what someone else heard. This course clearly explains the differences and provides guidance and best practices on how to overcome generational gaps. Organizations and individuals who master the “gaps” routinely experience higher morale and lower turnover.