DiversityTrainersPlus

“Relationships across lines of difference are essential for the possibility of social transformation.”
Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD, Can We Talk about Race?

Welcome to the spring edition of The Inclusion Companion!

Enjoy!
Maureen Brown | Practice Director and Lead Trainer
 

Maureen Brown,
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Racial Mentoring: Strategies for Mentors, Protégés and Mentoring Organizations

+Table of Contents

BEST PRACTICE IN REVIEW

Bridging the Gender Gap through a Culture of Mentoring at Novo Nordisk
Notes from presentation by Eric Dziedzic

Forty-four percent of Novo Nordisk’s 28,000 employees are women. Hear how Novo Nordisk, a world leader in diabetes care did it. Read more..

Find out about IBM’s array of mentoring programs, from cross-generation and cross-cultural matching, to reverse and online mentoring.  Read more..

Find out how the more than a century-old ISS, Denmark’s largest a facilities management service provider, (world-wide the company has 450,000 staff.) is using mentoring to bring ‘New Danes’-- i.e. new immigrants—from countries such as Turkey, Poland, Sri Lanka and Pakistan into management.  Read more..

+Table of Contents

TIPS, TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Successful Mentoring Across Differences

1. Start with a narrow definition of diversity (i.e. one or two specific groups) but make it clear you will expand the target groups as the program takes root.
2. Equip all participants with skills to manage dialogue across the barriers of difference
3. Ensure that at the highest levels the program has substantial, long-term support and make sure everyone (participants, sponsors and other stakeholders) knows it
4. Encourage senior leaders to be mentored by more junior employees from diverse backgrounds (‘reverse mentoring')– this sets the tone of mutual learning
5. Measure attitude shifts by both parties and use this data to promote the program more widely

David Clutterbuck, international mentoring expert and author of several books on mentoring, including Mentoring and Diversity: An International Perspective.

+Table of Contents
 

In 2003 KVINFO, Denmark’s primary women service organization, created its Mentor Network, which matches refugee and immigrant women with women who are established in the Danish workforce. Executive Director Elisabeth Jensen shares critical lessons learned. Read more..

+Table of Contents

What happens when the mentor and the protégé are different from each other in ways such as race, gender and culture? Does mentoring across differences compromise the outcomes? Chips Klien, inventor and business woman, counts mentoring—including cross-gender mentoring—as one of the keys to her success. She shares her observations and experience as a mentor and also as a protégé: Read more..

+Table of Contents
 

This 54-page booklet offers insight and practical advice to those participating in mentoring. It presents generic information on mentoring and targeted research on cross-racial and cross-cultural mentoring. Mentoring, it says, is a delicate “dance between two individuals who come together under the glare of the mentoring program and/or their individual need to engage with each other for mutually beneficial reasons”. In cross-cultural or cross-racial relationships some see race and culture as unwelcome ‘cut-ins’, disrupting efforts to be ‘race-blind’. Others, however, view these ‘cut-ins’ as an inevitable dimension that cannot be ignored. What makes the difference in whether race and culture are welcomed or shunned as part of the context within which the mentoring relationship is taking place? What shapes the lenses mentoring organizations or mentoring partners use in deciding whether race and culture should be acknowledged or ignored? The booklet explores this question from the perspective of the mentor, the protégé and the organization. Read more..

+Table of Contents

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

Did you know…

• 77% of companies report that mentoring programs increase retention (Centre for Creative Leadership)
• 35% of employees in companies plan to look for another job within the next year, compared to 16% in companies with mentoring programs (Emerging Workforce Study, 1999. Quoted in Business Week Magazine, March 1999)
• In a 2001 Catalyst survey 70% of women cited lack of mentoring as a barrier to women’s advancement in financial services firms, while 67% point to exclusion from informal communication networks as the major cause. Response from men were 38% and 25% respectively.
• In the 2001 Catalyst survey 46% of women of color cited lack of mentoring as the main barrier to their advancement.

View more mentoring statistics here.

+Table of Contents

Tell us which possibility/possibilities you would act on.  Click here and post your answer.

+Table of Contents

DTP LATEST NEWS

Participants from a cross-section of organizations—ranging from the provincial government to small not-for-profits—enjoyed a challenging and productive day April 22 at our first Diversity Management Boot Camp. The workshop was designed ‘boot camp style’ to use tools and training provided to get straight to the heart of specific diversity challenges in their organizations. The afternoon’s ‘fun and games’ had a serious problem-solving purpose, using DTP’s 3 new interactive tools: The Bridges of Empathy Game; the Become Intelligent…Cultural Intelligent Game™; and the Communication Filter Zone Game™. Who says grown-ups can’t learn with building blocks, stick men and poker chips!
View video, pictures and rave reviews from some of our participants..

+Table of Contents

DTP Tool Shop Open

The tool shop is open! Our available offerings are small right now but keep checking in with us…many more resources are in the works, including our new tool kit containing the games launched at the Diversity Management Boot Camp which will be available for sale over the upcoming weeks.
Go to DTP Tool Shop..

+Table of Contents

Maureen Brown at Metropolis

In March Maureen Brown joined a team from Peel Region that presented on creating inclusion for new immigrants at the Metropolis Conference held in Montreal. The Metropolis theme this year was Immigration and Diversity--Crossroads of Cultures: Engines of Economic Development. Maureen’s presentation was titled: Action Plans to Build Inclusion—Lessons Learnt. Click here for presentation highlights.

+Table of Contents