Cultural Awareness & Integration

iF supports your organization in becoming cognizant of the rich diversity of your culture and understanding how it can be celebrated and leveraged to the mutual benefit of employees, the business, your customers, and other external stakeholders in order to more fully fulfill your mission.

• Training and facilitation 
• Strategic planning 
• Consensus building  
• Listening sessions
• Organizational assessments

Common Pain Point

Many organizations pursuing a DEI journey experience frustrations with their progress. Despite genuine attempts to bring everyone along, these efforts may have become strained and unfocused. The result is that well-intentioned urgency to act, including becoming an antiracist organization, can leave staff & leaders feeling: 

• Disillusioned, burned out and disengaged 
• Impatient and frustrated with peers who are perceived to be moving at a slow pace 
• Misaligned on how best to move forward 
• Unseen, unheard, isolated from the group and minimized 

A Different Approach

‍
At Intentional Futures, we believe your DEI journey can feel very different and should strengthen your culture rather than strain and fragment it. Our approach helps you to build a foundation of mutual respect, trust, shared understanding, and optimism. The trainings we provide are designed specifically to assist your organization and its members to: 

• Create an inclusive culture where all persons are valued, respected, and affirmed
• Harness the untapped potential within the institution and develop new leadership 
• Develop a framework for your DEI work by understanding race and racism in America 
• Effectively function in culturally diverse settings 
• Embed DEI in policies, processes, and practice 

Internal Connection

We bring people together to ignite interest, foster open communication, and facilitate meaningful connections that create the psychological safety needed to engage with vulnerability and accountability. This enables any organization to make tangible, meaningful progress in ways that have lasting and transformational positive impact. We can support you at any point in your DEI journey with the following: 

Fostering Empathy and Self-Awareness: 

• Establish a foundation of trust and mutual respect
• Humanize members of the organization to each other
• Learn foundational communication skills to ensure a cohesive process

Assessment of Accountability Gap: 

• Conduct surveys, focus groups and 1x1 interviews
• Evaluate the current state of the organization in relationship to its goals
• Assess feasibility of DEI goals

Universally Inclusive DEI Identity Development: 

• Uncover the strengths and assets in your organization
• Clarify your DEI mission/Understand your why 
• Create a DEI statement that reflects your organization’s goals
• Develop a framework to guide your DEI work

Co-Designing the Future of Your DEI Work:

• Team-based design sessions that activate DEI as a core value
• Develop feasible, attainable DEI goals 
• Create a roadmap for accomplishing your DEI goals 
• Identify the resources, including partnerships that can be assets to your DEI work
  

Putting the Theory into Practice:

• Create DEI governance structures and establish affinity groups
• Executive/leadership coaching
• Design system for evaluating and tracking progress 
• Technical assistance and ongoing support for DEI work

‍

We understand that DEI efforts can be frustrating and the path ahead is not always clear. Our understanding is from personal experience because we have been through our own DEI journey.We welcome the opportunity to help you regroup, refocus and re-imagine the future. Let’s work together to envision and design your future. 

‍

To learn more contact jackies@intentionalfutures.com

‍

‍