Community Guidelines

Guidelines for Learning

1. Participate fully

CultureRoad provides a unique opportunity to focus specifically on your roles as managers, leaders, and agents of change. You have regular access to a team of experts and colleagues from other organizations who are all working toward many of the same goals as you: to learn, to grow, to make a difference. Take full advantage of the monthly live sessions and the comments in the modules. Show up and come prepared to share. Your voice is important; we want to hear it.

2. Explore new ideas

Allow yourself to take risks while maintaining your own level of safety. We want everyone to feel comfortable sharing at whatever level feels right for you. However, we also want you to be willing to stretch yourself and take some risks for that is where the rich learning takes place.

3. Balance advocacy with inquiry

There will likely be times when you will want to express your point of view on an issue. Share it. Also, invite others to share their points of view with you and the group. Take full advantage of the opportunity to make available your thinking with others while being willing to interrogate it.

4. Share from personal experience

Commit to using “I” statements to share your experiences as others’ experiences, thoughts, ideas, opinions, and behaviors are theirs. You can’t know how someone else feels, or what they should do, not do. Own your own comments to the best of your ability.

5. Move in, move out

We want to create a space for everyone to share. If you tend to share a lot in groups, perhaps “moving out” (giving the talking space to others) is a way to stretch your comfort zone. If you tend towards not sharing, perhaps “moving in” and sharing a thought or two is a way to help you stretch your comfort zone. We encourage sharing the space for all to engage.

6. Be open to new perspectives, and challenge your own assumptions

We understand that everyone here comes from somewhat a different perspective on how they view the world and specifically equity, diversity and inclusion. All that we ask is that for the time we spend together, you allow yourself to be open to hearing some new and possibly different ways of looking at the world and how it affects individuals differently.

We would like the discussions to center around gaining understanding, not trying to prove one person wrong or another person right. There are many different and valid ways of looking at the same situation. We want this to be an environment that welcomes and values the differences.

7. Take risks, lean into discomfort, and grant “amnesty” for mistakes

This needs to be an environment where everyone feels free to ask uncomfortable questions and make awkward statements. Without this agreement, everyone’s learning will suffer. We invite you to make the distinction between intent and impact, and assume positive intent, even if the impact may be a bit clumsy and/or awkward.

8. Give us timely feedback

Let us know right away if you are having trouble accessing any part of the program experience. We want to make adjustments in a timely manner, ensuring that you have the highest quality learning experience possible. Please get in touch by posting in the Discussion area below the relevant section or by contacting us at DeEtta@deettajones.com.

9. Respect and maintain confidentiality

Personal information or information that is specific to individuals who are present needs to stay in the session. Do not violate anyone’s confidence that is not present at this program. If you have a situation that you feel the need to share, do it in a way that leaves outside parties anonymous. Our suggestion is: “what’s shared here stays here and what’s learned here leaves here.”