Rising Together is a keynote or workshop designed to help participants build stronger relationships across a range of divides: gender, ethnicity, race, age, and values. Sally’s approach is positive and forward-looking, a shift from the more familiar emphasis on identifying unconscious bias. The focus is on how we act, rather than on what we think.
Using vivid, real-life examples, Sally helps participants recognize common triggers that can undermine our efforts to build strong relationships with those they perceive as different from themselves. Her emphasis is not on eliminating triggers– which usually lie beyond our control– but on managing our responses in a way that serves our interests, enables us to engage a broad range of allies, and serves collaboration and teamwork.
Triggers include:
- How we position ourselves to be visible
- How we communicate across boundaries
- How our beliefs about fairness shape our expectations
- How we engage with and develop networks
- How we use humor to bond or provoke
Sally also details a range of inclusive behaviors, from active listening, engaging across levels, and honoring the squeaky wheel to investing in our colleagues’ development, nominating, shining a spotlight, and hiring for behavior. And she shows how these can be practiced at any stage in our careers.
Rising Together can be delivered as a 60-90 minute keynote or a half- or full-day workshop. The keynote is highly interactive, mixing content with Q&A.
The workshop mixes expanded content with reflective exercises, breakouts, fishbowl coaching and opportunities to practice such techniques as interpersonal aikido, writing positive scripts and enlisting others in support of our own development. The goal is to give participants a real-time experience in building their inclusive skills.
Participants will come away with:
- An enhanced understanding of how they can build stronger and more harmonious cultures
- Tools for addressing and diffusing common triggers
- Practices that can help them become more effective leaders in a diverse environment