Designing a Cultural Competence Mini-Workshop
Often you want to deliver a timely learning and development experience but you don’t have a half day or full day for a traditional workshop. You also want the group interaction and team building of a live facilitator- led session, rather than an e-learning session of e-learning. In both corporate and healthcare settings, I’ve designed and delivered mini:-workshops, 60 or 90 minutes duration, in various settings; within a business meeting, a standalone “lunch & learn”, pre-conference session, offsite team-building retreat, and live virtual interactive webinar.
Cultural competency in healthcare describes the ability of systems to provide care to patients with diverse values, beliefs and behaviors, including the tailoring of health care delivery to meet patients’ social, cultural and linguistic needs. The multicultural makeup of the U.S.-especially in metropolitan areas-presents special challenges for medical professionals, whose job requires relating to patients on a very personal level.
It is not unusual for a doctor to have a diverse patient lineup-seeing a patient in the morning who recently emigrated from the Korea, a multi-generational family of Indian descent later in the afternoon, and a tourist from South Africa in the evening. Even doctors and nurses who work in rural areas will inevitably encounter people of various ethnicity and cultural backgrounds in their careers, especially as the U.S. continues to become more ethnically and racially diverse.
Why Cultural Competence Training
The rationale for focusing on workforce cultural competence is well described by this Harvard Business Review Article; Why More Hospitals Should Prioritize Cultural Competence. Cultural competence is the ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. In practice, both individuals and organizations can be culturally competent. “Culture” is a term that goes beyond just race or ethnicity. It can also refer to such characteristics as age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, income level, education, geographical location, or profession.
I’ve led coaching and training sessions on healthcare cultural competence sub-topics including:
- Developing Cultural Agility
- Delivering Culturally Responsive Care
- Diabetes Among African-Americans
- Cultural Competency Individual Assessments for Groups – to evaluate an employees’ level of cultural proficiency.
Mini-Workshop Instructional Design
When designing a mini-workshop due to scheduling time constraints, or, learner preference, I follow the same instructional design model as I do for workshops of longer duration; ADDIE or SAM. The ADDIE model of instructional design is probably the most well-known approach for crafting learning solutions. ADDIE stands for Analyze, Design, Development, Implement, and Evaluate. But ADDIE isn’t the only way to design. One popular alternative to ADDIE is SAM, which stands for Successive Approximation Model. If you are interested in learning more about each model, and which one to use, please do so.
No interest in learning instructional design, just understanding how to design a Cultural Competence Mini-Workshop that you can tailor and deliver for your organization? Here you are:
Mini-Workshop Design Tips
There are two (2) essential design elements for your mini-workshop:
- Icebreakers: Cultural conversation icebreakers designed as a way to help a group of people starting talking about their family and cultural traditions in a way that is safe and interesting. The questions are designed to get people talking about their own family traditions, which can lead to a richer understanding of others’ cultural backgrounds and perspectives.
- Group Activities: Essentially these activities are designed to help a group of people to engage in dialogue or reflect on concepts relating to Cultural Competence. The number of activities to include depends on the duration of the mini-workshop; sixty (60) or ninety (90) minutes.
Cultural Competence Mini-Workshop (60 to 90 Minutes Duration)
Download this icebreaker conversation starter activity.
ACTIVITY 1: Would You Rather?
Download the Would You Rather Activity
ACTIVITY 2: Values Spectrum
Download the Values Spectrum Activity
ACTIVITY 3: Ticket to Know You
Download the Ticket to Know You Activity
If you are planning a longer than ninety (90) minute cultural competence workshop, additional icebreakers and group activities can be added to your session.
Please reach out to me on social media or at HealthInclusion.com if you have questions on any of these design tips. Remember, I am a speaker, blogger, Certified Professional in Learning and Performance® and Certified Diversity Professional® who collaborates with other professionals, not a paid consultant.
Build your cultural competence with learning and development best practices!
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