Additional Information

Dialogue Circles and Pathways to Allyship

This is a critical time for companies and organizations to step up and take meaningful supportive action for their employees by providing secure forums for their employees to express their feelings and offer mutual support while engaging in meaningful conversations about how recent events have affected them and the associated sensitive issues.  Our Dialogue Circles offer a constructive action choice. 

Primary Goals:

1.  Create a safe, supportive space to promote open and respectful exchange of personal stories, and feelings about racial inequalities and social injustice to achieve shared understanding, bridge differences, and strengthen sense of community. 

2.  Explore a range of actions and techniques serving as allies with people of color to be supportive and take action to combat social injustice and racial inequities in the workplace and the community.  

Format

Our Dialogue Circles are 90-minute virtual gatherings that provide a structured forum for employees to engage in meaningful conversations.   Our skilled group facilitators provide participants with hands-on strategies and techniques for being effective allies of people of color in the fight for social justice and increased inclusiveness at work.  Our facilitators help create a safe forum for engaging in sensitive, challenging conversations and reaching shared understanding toward mutual action. The webinar format can accommodate up to 50 participants at a time.  While the format can be customized to meet a company’s specific needs, the following is a common plan:

 *   Opening and kick-off by a senior leader who explains the rationale for the company sponsoring the session.  Some leaders have chosen to express how current events have affected him/her too. 

 *   Brief presentation by the facilitators on the roles and approaches one can use to be an effective ally byr stepping up, speaking out, and being supportive to their co-workers of color.

 *   The “rules of engagement” and “guiding principles” for participating and contributing to effective Dialogue Circles is reviewed to develop shared responsibility for effective conversations. 

 *  Participants are then broken out into smaller groups and provided a couple “prompt” questions to frame and launch their conversations.  

 *   Participants are reconvened into the large group where key learnings and insights are discussed. 

 *   The session ends with participants asked to identify an action they will take based on their learnings gained from this experience.  

Testimonials

“This was an awesome experience.  I was nervous at first but as the conversation continued I felt more comfortable and heard.”

“I really want to be supportive and serve in as ally but was really hesitant to do so because I wasn’t sure how to do it.  This session really gave me some concrete tools to do so.”

“An impressive experience.  I am grateful the company this was arranged for us.”

“I felt not only heard but supported by my co-workers.”

“What an engaging experience.  Thank you for doing this.”

“The facilitators were great in keeping the discussion on track and ensuring everyone had a chance to speak and reply to each other.”