Equity Inclusion Consulting Offerings
Culturally-Aware Feedback Training™
A healthy feedback culture is essential for psychological safety—a shared belief that team members will not be rejected or embarrassed for speaking up with their ideas, questions, or concerns. And research shows that psychological safety is required for diverse teams to thrive. As you build a diverse organization, effective communication in all directions becomes ever more critical. True inclusion and equity cannot exist without a culture of healthy feedback and perspective sharing.
After years of teaching communication skills, we have developed a feedback training program designed to increase psychological safety across an entire organization. It’s a cohort-based experience where small groups participate in 3 participatory workshops while practicing new skills in their daily work.
Fractional Leadership Services
We’re in a critical moment in the state of the workforce. Rightfully so, existing and incoming workers are holding their employers to a higher standard than ever before. In fact, Forbes names “Employee Well-Being Is A Human Imperative” as the #1 workforce trend of 2023. The recent U.S. Surgeon General report on Mental Health and Well-being reports 81% of workers say they will be looking for workplaces that support mental health in the future. Relatedly, nearly 80% of those surveyed recently by Survey Monkey said they want to work for a company that values diversity, equity, and inclusion issues.
With new and difficult budget constraints becoming a reality, our fractional leadership services help organizations keep the ball rolling and maintain a tangible investment in:
Internal DEI efforts
Employee retention + satisfaction
Cohesive, thoughtful internal communications
Inclusive Team Retreats
In this new world of work, teams are hungry for meaningful and immersive experiences that bring deeper value to the time they spend in person together. We design and facilitate fun and engaging team retreats with an ever-present eye toward inclusion and power-sharing. We pinpoint the specific needs of each group and center the experience on the organization’s mission and/or strategic goals. We facilitate with care and humor while inviting attendees to reflect continuously on the organization's values. Whether your team is hybrid, fully remote, or all based in one location, these 1-2 day retreats provide fresh inspiration through a renewed sense of connection and practical ways of collaborating to achieve important goals. Our retreats may be focused on specific functions and/or leadership teams or org-wide.
Inclusive team retreats typically include:
Defining or updating team purpose
Interactive debrief on the previous year or quarter
Team-building games and exercises
Leadership development habits and practices
Drafting and refining future team goals
Equity-Centered Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is an important opportunity for leadership teams to create clarity, connect with their purpose, and dream into the future. Too often it feels like a strenuous or uninspired process that doesn’t result in something useful. We’re here to change that with as many equity-centered organizations as possible.
As experienced facilitators, we bring people together to create a compelling path forward that inspires them toward action. Our process usually involves these steps:
Gather insight on the past, present, and future from multiple stakeholders
Host participatory, inclusive (and fun!) conversations about the organization’s future
Integrate the organization’s vision for diversity, equity, and inclusion
Collect feedback as the strategy forms and evolves from those who are most impacted by it
Implement ongoing practices for revisiting and adapting the strategy over time
Create an accessible and easy-to-use strategic plan document
Our clients find that this process increases connection and belonging, is easy to participate in, and motivates their entire organization.
Employee Training & Education
Consistent, equity-centered employee education is an essential component of any meaningful management development track or DEI strategy. We work with organizations to design and facilitate critical foundational learning opportunities for their teams. This may include infusing existing management training programs with an inclusive lens, ensuring standards and practices that inform employee experiences are truly impacted at scale. We push beyond reactive approaches to traditional "diversity training" to help groups process and heal past challenges while building an environment where everyone can thrive. We do this with a critical focus on surfacing identity and power dynamics.
We often cover topics like these in employee education:
Exploring Personal Identity + The Privilege Spectrum
Psychological Safety in Inclusive Spaces
Practical Tools for Creating a Culture of Healthy Feedback
Inclusive Leadership Habits & Practices
Understanding + Addressing Microaggressions
Cultivating a True Growth Mindset—For Yourself & Your Team
Coaching for Liberation
Leading Empowering & Inclusive Performance Feedback
Practicing Consistent + Bold Allyship
Inclusive Decision-Making
Foundations of Equitable Strategy
Getting Started as a Manager
Group Coaching for Race Equity
Join us for an immersive and customized coaching experience that creates a safe and trusting environment for leaders to deepen their learning and take courageous action. As a cohort, we work through exercises and frameworks designed to build equitable organizations. You’ll strengthen practical new skills, deepen your capabilities as a leader dedicated to race equity, and help your organization transition into a more equitable and inclusive future.
Who is this for?
Executives, managers, and supervisors who are committed to dismantling racism in their organizations
Leaders who want to build equitable cultures and know that they can’t go it alone
Folks who believe in the power of transformative relationships and personal growth
What does the experience include?
Six 90-minute live sessions over three months
Group coaching, led by co-facilitators with diverse identities
Equitable organization design frameworks
Mind and body resiliency practices
Community of change-makers who support each other in a confidential environment
Small and trustworthy 10-member cohort of accomplished leaders
We also offer this experience:
To teams within one organization
To racial affinity groups (white leaders or leaders of color)
Empowering Performance Management Systems
We believe that if you redesign coaching, feedback, evaluation, and calibration techniques through the lens of company values and equity, you will improve performance, build inclusive culture and products, and unleash the greatest potential of every employee.
How do we do it?
Leverage leading practices for employee experience and workplace equity
Ground in our six signature design principles rooted in our quest to build equitable and joyful organizations
Embark on a tailored four-stage review + revamp process
What does our tailored four-stage process include?
Assessment: we’ll conduct an A-Z audit of your organization’s employee experience and relevant history and background, leading to the next step.
Report + Recommendation: we’ll roll up our findings and key recommendations, working with your internal team to determine the degree of redesign and continued partnership in the following phases.
Design: we’ll define the deliverables, create the associated process and toolkit, and outline a high-impact implementation strategy.
Implementation: we’ll work with you to engage all stakeholders and get them up-to-speed on the shiny new system, gather feedback and iterate on the design as needed—setting your team up for success.
Executive Coaching
Leading from a place of joy and equity can be tough. You might encounter competing priorities, resistance, or conflict within your team that seems insurmountable. You might face your own internal barriers—like fear, limiting beliefs, burnout, or bias that shrinks your effectiveness. You might feel alone in these challenges with minimal support from others.
One-on-one coaching can help you break through and achieve new possibilities as a leader. With the help of a supportive and confidential coach who’s in your corner, you can overcome leadership challenges and show up to work fully aligned with your values. As coaches, we share decades of leadership experience with our clients and offer openness, humor, and deep listening in every session. Over the years we’ve seen that visionary leaders need a full range of expert support to achieve their goals—and coaching is a powerful part of the action-driven toolkit.
As experienced guides with distinctive identities, we also offer camaraderie and unique understanding to clients who share our backgrounds and experiences in the workplace. (Viva is a cisgender, heterosexual, first-generation Black woman and Michael is a cisgender queer Michigan-born white man.)
The science behind coaching shows us that it enables clients to remain open to input and to access their own unique creativity. Connected conversation with a present and open coach has a positive impact on the brain, which in turn leads to improved relationships and a greater capacity to show up more powerfully in the world. (Read about the science of transformational coaching here.)
We typically offer one-on-one coaching to executives and people managers for a program of at least 6 months.
"Working with Viva is a privilege and a joy. She is an active listener who attunes herself to an organization's needs and then identifies where she can plug in to provide maximum support and impact. She provides thoughtful, clear, and actionable, expert feedback in a collaborative and engaging manner. Her work cannot be understated; she is a change agent and her work fosters individual and organizational reflection."
—Alexis Acciani, Sr. Manager of National Community Engagement at Reading Partners
