Allyship & Psychological Safety
In-House Training, Available As:
- Full or half-day workshop or 1 hour interactive webinar
- In-person or live virtual
- Fully customisable
- Option to enhance with actors
- Embed learning with Toolkit Takeaways
Allyship in Action Training Solution
This dynamic and transformative course is carefully crafted to empower participants with the essential knowledge, skills, and mindsets for effective allyship. It invites participants on a self-reflective journey to examine their own privileges, biases, and perspectives, and to gain a nuanced understanding of the experiences faced by marginalised communities.
The workshop offers an engaging blend of interactive discussions, hands-on exercises, and insightful real-world case studies that highlight how to be active supporters and advocates for underrepresented groups. Attendees will emerge as empowered allies, ready to apply practical strategies and champion positive change.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand the nuances of unconscious bias and its pervasive impact on behaviour and decision-making processes.
- Identify the underlying factors that lead to passive bystander behaviour and the potential consequences of inaction.
- Learn about the transformative power of allyship and gain insights into how intentional, small actions can lead to substantial positive changes.
- Explore the complexities of privilege, with strategies to leverage power ethically to challenge inequities and drive progressive shifts in the status quo.
- Be motivated to promote safe, empathetic, and effective methods for engaging in active bystander behaviours to become a consistent ally.
- Be equipped with practical tools and a strategic framework for allyship, to promote unity, equality, and inclusivity.
Workshop Outline...
1. Unconscious Bias and Micro-behaviours: Participants will explore bias through a light-hearted Mentimeter activity titled, “Think Fast”, to demonstrate how our biases impact our decision-making and behaviour. Participants will review their understanding of unconscious bias and discuss in groups some other ways that our biases can manifest and impact people at work.
How this looks with drama: A scenario illustrates how bias can influence decisions, actions, and interactions. Participants will reflect on their own biases and consider how these biases might affect their ability to be effective allies. Through lively discussion, we will encourage participants to identify and confront their own bias blind spots.
2. The Bystander Effect: We’ll discuss the factors that influence our behaviours, and how this might impact on creating a more inclusive workplace. We’ll consider the bystander effect and how it can limit feelings of psychological safety and belonging. We’ll reflect on barriers to speaking up and how we can work together to overcome these and build inclusion.
3. Ally in Action: Through a quiz on behavioural preferences, participants will identify their “Ally Type” and connect with their preferred ally behaviours. Through a group discussion, participants will identify how they can practice these behaviours every day to become an ally in action.
How this looks with drama: In this scenario, a lack of understanding and empathy leads to a missed opportunity for allyship. Participants will reflect on the consequences of not acting, and the potential positive outcomes that could have been achieved. We’ll provide practical tips for participants to leverage their unique allyship strengths.
4. Privilege and Power Dynamics: The “Power Up/Power Down” activity highlights different types of power and their manifestations. Understanding privilege can be a daunting and uncomfortable task, but the “Skyscrapers” activity is designed to make conversations about privilege accessible and insightful. Participants will learn that leaning into uncomfortable conversations and understanding systemic inequality empowers them to advocate for change.
5. Challenging the Status Quo: We will support participants to consider, safe, empathetic, and effective ways to be allies in the workplace and beyond. Participants will reflect on the positive impact we can have when we commit to being an ally in action.
6. Igniting Action: The call to action in this workshop goes beyond simply acquiring knowledge and skills. Participants will develop a personalised action plan with specific actions they will take to create and sustain psychologically safe, consciously inclusive workplaces full of allies.
Let's Talk!
We’re advocates of crafting tailormade solutions that ensure you meet objectives and maximise budgets. Contact us to book a meeting to scope the right solution for your organisation, together.
What About Actors?
Through clever script writing, goosebump-inducing delivery and professional facilitation, we love to bring learning to life with actors…
We can select scripts from our library or write them specially for you, based on typical scenarios you see within in your organisation. For larger projects where budgets don’t allow for live acting, we can professionally film bespoke scenarios to create video content which can be used in the training as well as induction, toolkits, and beyond.
Using actors in workshop give delegates the opportunity to:
- Test out alternative ways of approaching what can sometimes be difficult situations, without the pressure of role playing themselves!
- Explore what is acceptable and what isn’t; intent versus impact; and both the subtle, and not so subtle, behaviours we see play out in the workplace
- Be immersed in an interactive learning experience that engages hearts and minds, and sticks in the long-term memory
Don't Just Take Our Word For It
Nina Darling
UoP SHCP Teaching Fellow, University of Portsmouth“The course which Paula provided was really engaging and nicely presented. The use of the actors was particularly good and actually bought the whole thing to life and made it really valuable learning. Thank you very much – it was fantastic!”
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