Course Highlights
This diversity and inclusion training program for managers will:
- Define diversity, equity, inclusion, and equality, and explain the practical distinction between equity and equality that most managers conflate.
- Examine the natural human tendency toward sameness, the organizational dangers it produces, and the business case for building and sustaining diverse teams.
- Introduce a scored assessment for identifying the diversity management pitfalls most present in a participant’s organization.
- Address the recognition and management of bias in hiring, performance evaluation, project assignment, and team interaction through case study discussion.
- Provide a framework for immediate, short-term, and long-term DEI actions managers can take within their own sphere of influence.
- Introduce the FAIR model for addressing inappropriate behavior in a structured, constructive, and consistent way.
- Apply the full course framework to a comprehensive organizational case study requiring participants to develop a realistic DEI management strategy.
Course Overview
Diversity without management is demographics. Inclusion without structure is goodwill. This course is built for managers who need to move past both.
The day opens by establishing what diversity, equity, and inclusion actually mean in practice, and why the distinction between equity and equality matters for the day-to-day decisions managers make. It examines the natural human pull toward sameness, which creates belonging and efficiency in the short term and organizational fragility over time. The business case for diversity is presented not as a moral argument but as an operational one: the specific ways diverse teams produce better outcomes and the specific dangers that homogeneous ones create.
The middle of the day addresses the problems managers face directly. A scored assessment surfaces the pitfalls most likely present in each participant’s own organization. The bias module examines how bias operates in the decisions managers make every day, including hiring, promotions, project assignments, feedback, and performance reviews, using realistic case studies as the vehicle. The action planning module asks each participant to identify what they will do differently starting today, in the next quarter, and in the year ahead.
The Riverbrook Academy case study closes the session with a complex, multi-stakeholder organizational scenario that requires participants to apply every tool from the day to a set of real-world DEI management challenges. The FAIR model gives participants a concrete framework for addressing inappropriate behavior when they encounter it, and the final discussion addresses how to respond when they themselves are called out.
The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).
Program Objectives
At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Define diversity, equity, inclusion, and equality and explain their significance for managers.
- Discuss sameness, its natural appeal, and the organizational risks it creates.
- Articulate the business case for diversity and its impact on performance and innovation.
- Identify common pitfalls in diversity management using a scored organizational assessment.
- Recognize and address various forms of bias using practical strategies.
- Develop a personal framework of immediate, short-term, and long-term DEI actions.
- Apply the FAIR model to address inappropriate behavior constructively and consistently.
- Demonstrate best practices for responding when confronted about their own behavior.
Workshop Modules
The DEI Business Case: Why This Matters
The session opens by establishing what diversity, equity, and inclusion mean and how they function together. The module draws a clear distinction between equity and equality, a distinction that has direct implications for how managers make decisions about resources, support, and access. The group will examine the natural human pull toward sameness, which creates genuine benefits — shared language, faster trust, stronger group identity — and then examine the eight specific organizational dangers that sameness produces when left unmanaged. The module closes with the business case for diversity, presenting the operational and financial arguments alongside the human ones, and addresses the resistance and misconceptions managers commonly bring to DEI conversations.
Pinpointing Pitfalls: Recognizing Common Problems
Managers cannot address the problems they cannot see. This module introduces a thirteen-item scored assessment that gives participants an honest picture of the diversity management pitfalls most present in their own organization. After completing the assessment, the group will work through five vignettes drawn from realistic organizational situations, each illustrating a different category of pitfall in action. The discussion is designed to move from recognition to response: identifying not just what is happening but what a manager’s specific responsibility is when it happens.
Recognizing and Rewiring: Battling Bias
Bias is not a character flaw. It is a predictable feature of human cognition, and managing it requires awareness, structure, and deliberate practice. This module opens with a group exercise examining how bias is defined, where it comes from, and how it shows up in the decisions managers make every day. Five case studies then apply those patterns to specific management situations: a hiring manager’s unconscious preference for candidates from familiar educational backgrounds, a performance review that penalizes a woman for behavior rewarded in a man, favoritism in project assignments based on social relationships, assumptions about a returning mother’s interest in advancement, and culturally insensitive feedback that misreads communication style as a competence gap. For each case, the group will identify the bias at work and develop the response a manager should have taken.
Advancing with Action: Next Steps
Understanding a problem and committing to change are different things. This module moves from awareness to accountability, asking each participant to develop a personal action plan across three time horizons. Immediate actions are the things a manager can do today: expanding their circle, adjusting how they delegate, listening more deliberately to voices that are less often heard. Short-term actions address team-level practices over the coming quarter: rotating leadership opportunities, broadening feedback mechanisms, seeking diverse input in decision-making. Long-term actions address the sustained commitment required to change a team’s culture: sponsoring diverse talent, ensuring equitable access to development opportunities, and building relationships that outlast any single initiative. Each participant will identify specific commitments in each category before the session moves to the case study.
Rolling with the River(brook): Case Study Application
Riverbrook Academy is a prestigious all-girls boarding school with a hundred-year history, a formal European aesthetic, and a homogeneous student body. A transformative gift from a wealthy alumna has been accepted — and it comes with conditions that will reshape the institution entirely: a transition to a co-educational environment within two years and a mandate that at least fifteen percent of each entering class come from underrepresented racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, many on full scholarships. The school accepted because it had no realistic alternative. A fire, an embezzlement scandal, and a depleted endowment left it without one. Participants will work in teams to develop a comprehensive management strategy addressing seven distinct challenges: the cultural shift required, managing alumnae opposition, meeting the expectations of current families, supporting newly enrolled scholarship students, reconfiguring facilities and curriculum, balancing tradition with modernization, and managing the customer experience through the transition. Every tool introduced during the day applies here, and the scenario is complex enough that teams will need to make real trade-offs rather than apply a checklist.
The FAIR Model: Addressing Inappropriate Behavior
Knowing that something is wrong is not enough. Managers need a structured approach for addressing it. The FAIR model provides that structure. Focus on the Behavior means identifying the specific action or pattern at issue, gathering information objectively, and separating behavior from intent. Acknowledge and Address means naming the issue directly, initiating a specific conversation about it, and being clear about the impact. Implement Solutions means providing the guidance, resources, or process changes required to produce different behavior. Reflect and Reinforce means following up to confirm improvement and reinforcing inclusive behavior consistently over time. The module applies the model to five workplace scenarios involving favoritism, hiring resistance, cultural exclusion, performance review bias, and exclusionary social events. The session closes with a direct discussion of how to respond when a manager is the one being called out, examining the specific behaviors that preserve credibility and the ones that damage it.
Target Audience
This workshop is designed for groups that want to:
- Give managers a practical, structured approach to building and sustaining diverse and inclusive teams.
- Move past awareness and into the specific decisions and behaviors that produce different outcomes.
- Equip leaders with concrete tools for recognizing bias, addressing inappropriate behavior, and taking meaningful action within their own sphere of influence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should attend this workshop?
This course is designed for managers and team leaders who are responsible for hiring, developing, and retaining employees. It addresses the decisions managers make every day — who gets assigned to which projects, how performance is evaluated, who is considered for advancement — rather than focusing primarily on organizational policy or HR process.
Is this course appropriate for organizations at different stages of DEI maturity?
Yes. The scored assessment in the second module gives participants an honest picture of where their organization currently stands, and the action planning module asks each person to work from that baseline rather than from an idealized starting point. Groups with strong existing practices and groups with significant gaps will both find the content applicable to their specific situation.
Does this course address the resistance some managers feel toward DEI initiatives?
Yes, and directly rather than as a sidebar. The first module examines the specific sources of resistance — misunderstanding of what DEI requires, concern about how it interacts with performance standards, discomfort with the conversations it requires — and addresses each one honestly. The course treats resistance as a predictable response to be managed rather than a position to be dismissed.
How does the Riverbrook case study work?
Riverbrook Academy is a fictional all-girls boarding school that has accepted a transformative gift with conditions requiring significant cultural and demographic change. The case is deliberately complex, with multiple stakeholder groups and competing legitimate interests. Teams work through a set of specific challenges and develop a comprehensive management strategy. The scenario requires participants to apply every tool from the day to a situation with no easy answers, which is what makes it a useful closing exercise.
Can this course be customized for our organization’s specific DEI challenges?
Yes. Before the session, we gather information about the specific issues your organization is navigating, the DEI maturity of your management team, and any organizational context that would make the case studies and vignettes more relevant. We adjust the emphasis accordingly. Organizations dealing primarily with bias in hiring and promotion will spend more time in the bias module. Those managing active cultural change will go deeper in the Riverbrook case.
What do participants leave with?
Managers will leave with a clear understanding of the DEI concepts most relevant to their daily decisions, the results of an organizational pitfall assessment, a personal action plan across three time horizons, a bias recognition framework applied to five realistic scenarios, a complete FAIR model they have practiced using, and a set of best practices for responding constructively when their own behavior is called out.