Co-Creating a More Intercultural, Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive World with Appreciative Inquiry

Learn how to apply Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to create the social change of our time. This moment is opportune for AI principles and tools to help focus our work on intercultural competence, diversity, equity and inclusion (ICDEI) issues like #BlackLivesMatters, #MeToo, #Refugees Welcome and rise to the call to action. So, come prepared to collaboratively inquire into what’s working and what’s possible to create the change we want to see in our workplaces, communities and family systems.

This course is designed to support you in taking ICDEI actions with AI principles, process and tools. We invite you to come with a ICDEI project (big or small, personal or professional) that will ensure your learning through immediate application. We will help you identify the individual and collective strengths within your initiative, develop generative questions to engage in listening and storytelling for positive possibilities, and ensure you have an action plan to co-create a more interculturally competent, diverse, equitable and inclusive destiny.

We will share our expertise working in the fields of ICDEI and OD, including our theory of change and model published in an Inclusive Leadership book (2020, Routledge*). However, this course will not be a diversity, equity and inclusion training, an unconscious bias assessment, nor an anti-racism webinar. We will provide links to those resources, some which will form part of the pre-work, as there are incredible colleagues who have devoted their life and work to building ICDEI knowledge and skill set deep dives (for longer than the duration of this course permits).

This course is designed for all Appreciative Inquiry skill levels, whether you are new to AI or you’re an AI expert and yearning to incorporate ICDEI into your living AI practice. Come experience and learn how to apply our successful strengths based strategy and relational processes for systems change!

As a result of participating in this 4-webinar series you will be able to:

– Actively contribute to a more intercultural competent, diverse, equitable and inclusive world.
– Learn bespoke ICDEI Appreciative Inquiry practice and tools.
– Work on your own ICDEI project at work, home or in your community using AI.
– Establish a learning and accountability process and community for your AI ICDEI work.
– Create an Action Plan to make your DEI project’s destiny inevitable.

AI practitioners and AI students, consultants, coaches, collaborative group leaders, DEI practitioners interested in AI and anyone seeking to strengthen their Appreciative Inquiry practices and tools to increase their diversity, equity and inclusion work at work, home, or in their communities.

We will share a relational theory of change and appreciative leadership model applied to ICDEI. We will discuss and identify various diversity markers and explore the term intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, with an additional AI lens, e.g. “how might the term serve as a meaningful metaphor for bringing out the best of women by exploring layers of strengths and wisdom developed by living with multiple forms of inequality and disadvantage” (Thriving Women, Thriving World. 2019, Taos*). We will build understanding and trust through paired work and group shared agreements. The discussions will be informed in part through ICDEI pre-readings and personal experiences of positive change.

We will review and integrate AI principles, tools, and or process into each person’s identified personal or professional ICDEI project. Small groups will learn and practice a strengths-based peer mentoring and coaching “Spaciousness Thinking Partners” process to build, brainstorm and peer feedback on each project. The process involves amplifying and dreaming into what is possible.

We will review and explore how the projects, following asynchronous project building, can go further with deeper reflection and breakthroughs on limiting beliefs. We will craft and use generative questions to center living AI and ICDEI ethos and values in your professional and personal processes. What is emerging that informs your ICDEI future? How can this be practically applied? Where do you need further support? How can you share, learn and grow as an AI ICDEI community? What are the generative questions we need to consistently and persistently be asking to grow our ICDEI strengths-based practice?

We will conclude harvesting the projects review and exploration. We will reflect on and converge all our key insights and emerging wisdom in order to solidify a vast toolbox for practical application post course. Our DEI resolve and resilience is explored by delving into the inner condition and external relationships (with both allies and antagonists) needed for successful action.

To strengthen our community of practice, supportive materials, resources and recommended readings will be made available, as well as between-session sharing of practices, questions, and reflections into new ways of thinking.

This course will be delivered virtually using Zoom over 4 weeks with a two-hour webinar per week. By joining the course, you also automatically join our Community of Practice and have access to the growing network of ICDEI and AI practitioners who have completed this course. Prior to this event, the facilitators will email you everything you need to participate in this course, including: your login details to join our Community of Practice Virtual Platform and online collaboration space as well as the Zoom meeting login information.

Please note: these virtual webinar sessions may be recorded for asynchronous reviewing, however, due to the experiential nature of the session and the extensive time working and learning in small groups they do not count towards certification of attendance. Asynchronous learning will focus on increasing confidence, courage, and clarity through application of our unique processes. DEI resources and Appreciative Inquiry resources from the AI commons are highlighted.

Additionally, the course is designed as project-based learning, so plan on your expertise and project thriving with up to 3 hours of asynchronous group work between each 2-hour webinar. This asynchronous work is required course work as learning application happens in this space. Total time on the course to meet the intended learning outcomes: 15 hours.