For one of the world’s largest companies, an active involvement in social justice and equity is not a question of ‘should’ and ‘if’ but ‘how’. They know that enhanced emotional leadership skills are paramount to better serving the racial and ethnic minorities within their ecosystem.
Since 2021, Nosworthy Group have designed and facilitated an always-on conversation series that creates safe spaces for exploration of highly-sensitive subjects in the context of D&I. By design, the program supports leadership. In practice, the majority of participants have viewed the work as an area of both leadership competence and “being a good human”.
“I have a high bar for leadership development. I developed the program at [Redacted]. It’s extremely difficult to create what you created so quickly and seamlessly, especially in cohorts of people who don’t know each other. The psychological safety enabled vulnerability incredibly quick.”
Our approach
Psychological safety
Creating an environment where participants feel sufficiently safe to engage was one of our first priorities. We designed small-group and one-on-one conversations, ensuring cross-discipline makeup of groups. Phill Nosworthy being an external facilitator was also critical, allowing for more direct and blunt feedback that participants regularly cited as “rare” and “powerful”.
An “anti-programming” modality
Conversations were both planned and responsive to the unique needs of the cohort. This enabled personalisation of the D&I experience—versus the prescription of alternative approaches.
Rigorous program evaluation
Change is a concept that must be analyzed over time and requires data comparison across the pre, mid and post evaluation periods—and so we produce monthly subjective commentaries and periodic volume-based reports with qualitative and quantitative analysis.
“This was phenomenal. A very positive experience. The delivery was excellent and effective. I expected it to be more formal and focus on tips and tricks, but it’s essential to create space first before moving right to best practices and skills.”
The outcomes
Over 270 sessions with 22 cohorts by mid-2024, there have been significant changes to the quality and volume of participants’ self-reflection, awareness of personal biases and emotional intelligence:
- Increased self-compassion
- Increased sense of shared humanity
- Increased mindfulness
- Increased perception of emotions in themselves and others
- Increased ability to manage their own and others’ emotions
- Decreased self-judgment
- Decreased over-identification with thoughts, feelings, and experiences
- Decreased experience of isolation in distress.
“From a leadership perspective, this is the best experience I’ve had at [Redacted] in my career. Absolutely phenomenal."