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We are all in a different place in our journey when it comes to inclusion. Because there is no academic foundation to this work, we are all starting from a different place based on our own life experiences. The narrative that we hear within the media plays a big role in that too. In this day and age, everybody tends to go to their own corner, where our views are centered.
It's very easy for two wonderful people to have very different viewpoints because of the information that they have received. So it can be really hard to move the needle forward with belonging when you've got so many outside influences and how people frame the challenges that come with inclusion.
One of the things CultureConnect allows us to do is to make sure everybody's getting some of the same information—that the information is connected with honest information for people to take in.
Honest information does not mean that only one perspective is offered with CultureConnect. One of the things that we typically do is we put information out there that we think is valuable for learning, and then we will ask questions at the end of each piece of information: What do you think about this? What would you challenge this article or conversation or microlearning on when it comes to a particular topic like bias or agility? Where might they be wrong?
We like to support critical thinking about these topics because one of the challenges people have is taking information without challenging it, especially if it is already affirming something for us personally. We want people to start to naturally think more critically about what they're hearing. That goes for the videos that I lead as well—learners will be challenged to ask themselves, “What is Robert missing when he talks about a particular topic?” We want to ask those questions so that people are learning that skill of thinking critically about what they are hearing.
CultureConnect can close some of the gap between information and education, but people are still going to be learning and hearing from the outside world when they are not on CultureConnect. So we want people to challenge what they are hearing, even if it is from a trusted news source. Getting people to think this way is perhaps a bigger societal mission and will help bring people close together because we are not all hearing something that we like and then running to our quarter to defend our position.
