Inclusioneering partnered with The Communication Practice to design and deliver a powerful inclusion upskilling program for a global insurance firm, blending data insights with drama-based learning. The approach engaged both the head and the heart, equipping leaders with actionable tools for fostering inclusion and receiving highly positive feedback.
Introduction
The Communication Practice is a drama-based learning and development company committed to helping organisations build belonging. Everything they do is inclusion-informed, bespoke, and purposefully crafted to create a culture of belonging where positive behavioural change happens.
Blending the science of belonging with drama-based techniques, The Communication Practice helps organisations build inclusive cultures where psychological safety is built in and allyship is like oxygen.
The Brief
The Communication Practice invited Inclusioneering to partner with them to research, design and deliver a comprehensive company-wide inclusion cultural reset for their client, a large insurance company. The client was looking for inclusion upskilling and alignment across the business, beginning with the Executive Board and their leadership teams, followed by all people leaders. Their goal was for a learning solution that builds from evidence and data: utilising their existing data sources, as well as collecting additional data that gives evidence of the competencies and level of inclusion currently experienced across the organisation.
The Communication Practice’s experienced script writers, actors, coaches, and facilitators use drama-based techniques, including forum theatre and practice conversations, to foster confidence in speaking up, active listening, allyship, and inclusive leadership skills.
They asked Inclusioneering to complement their core strengths with our data and research expertise, for a comprehensive head and heart solution for their client.
Our Approach
We find data to have the power to open minds to the stories that the participants will hear during training sessions, and see them in a broader perspective. Furthermore, data provides not only a map pointing to the direction and priorities but is also a piece of the story to share itself. It tells how the stories of individuals are in fact shared stories of communities.
Before The Communication Practice began their training design, working collaboratively we conducted a comprehensive analysis to identify deep insights from data, including any systemic challenges.
- Inclusioneering examined the client’s existing data from their HR system, data from their engagement survey, and prior inclusion interventions.
- We designed and implemented two surveys. The first, for all employees, explored their inclusion and belonging experience, while the second was just for leaders. This was to identify their current strengths and areas for development of inclusive practices.
- And together with The Communication Practice we designed and ran semi-structured interviews, prioritising employees from marginalised communities. These explored participants’ lived-experiences of inclusion and belonging in greater depth, with 60 employees participating from across all areas of the business.
The data we gathered from these interventions provided the bedrock of The Communication Practice’s training programme, indicating particular areas of concern, as well as verbatim quotes for their lived experience recording. This recording, voiced by professional actors, uses the words of current employees. It provides leaders with an emotional pulse check as to how their workforce feel about the subjects of inclusion and belonging at work.
Outcomes
All of The Communication Practice’s sessions contain an element of scenario-based learning. Using the data gathered from the analysis, The Communication Practice created fictional pieces of drama, designed to closely resemble the client’s workplace culture. This type of learning brings the themes of inclusion to life, allowing the participants to interact with and develop deep empathy towards the fictional characters. This exercise also provides an opportunity for the participants to reflect on their own day-to-day inclusion practices.
The sessions also include discussion-based exercises, participants sharing best practice, defining what inclusive language and behaviours look like, and inclusion action planning.
As a final step, we worked with The Communication Practice to design their evaluation criteria, to capture learning from the programme to enable iterative refinements and to inform future programmes.
Photo: Syrus Lowe, Co-founder and Managing Partner, The Communication Practice
Impact
By joining forces, The Communication Practice and Inclusioneering were able to offer an approach that spoke to both the head and the heart.
Feedback from the executive board and their leadership teams has been glowing. Participants commented that inclusion of forum theatre gave a powerful reflection of situations they recognised in their workplace. It brought the topic to life in a way that enabled open discussion in a safe environment.
Enquire about a "Head and Heart" programme for your organisation”You can’t understand people’s needs until you understand their stories. We use tailor made lived experience recordings and forum theatre within our inclusive leadership programmes to ‘show’ leadership teams the current story of their culture. Doing so, emotionally engages even the most data-focussed leadership teams, helping them start imagining what needs to change.
Beginning these sessions sharing the level of data Inclusioneering captured helped us set the scene. By presenting the big picture using data-led facts up front, and then using drama to illustrate the impact of these facts upon the everyday lives of colleagues we were able to move both heads and hearts. Our client was delighted with the result and we are confident that the brief has been met, leaving them informed and incentivised to begin their cultural reset.
Working together was a great success.
Syrus Lowe, Co-founder and Managing Partner, The Communication Practice