How can you build and maintain a diverse team that represents your community?

1 Assess your current situation

Before you start building or improving your team's diversity and inclusion, you need to have a clear understanding of where you are and where you want to go. You can use various tools and methods to assess your team's current composition, performance, and climate, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or audits. You can also benchmark your team against industry standards or best practices. The key is to identify the gaps, strengths, and opportunities for improvement in your team's diversity and inclusion.

2 Define your vision and goals

Once you have a baseline of your team's situation, you can define your vision and goals for diversity and inclusion. Your vision should be a compelling statement that describes what you want your team to look like, feel like, and achieve in terms of diversity and inclusion. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) and aligned with your team's mission, values, and strategy. You should also communicate your vision and goals to your team and other stakeholders and solicit their feedback and buy-in.

3 Implement your action plan

To turn your vision and goals into reality, you need to implement your action plan for diversity and inclusion. Your action plan should include concrete actions, responsibilities, resources, and timelines for each goal. Some examples of actions are: recruiting and hiring diverse talent, providing training and development opportunities, creating mentoring and coaching programs, establishing employee resource groups, promoting feedback and recognition, and addressing bias and discrimination. You should also monitor and evaluate your progress and impact regularly and make adjustments as needed.

4 Engage your team members

One of the most important aspects of building and maintaining a diverse team is engaging your team members in the process. As a team facilitator, you should create a safe and supportive space for your team members to share their ideas, opinions, experiences, and concerns about diversity and inclusion. You should also encourage them to learn from each other, collaborate across differences, and celebrate their diversity. You can use various techniques to facilitate these conversations, such as icebreakers, ground rules, active listening, open questions, and appreciative inquiry.

5 Leverage your community resources

Another way to build and maintain a diverse team is to leverage your community resources. Your community can be a valuable source of inspiration, information, support, and feedback for your team's diversity and inclusion efforts. You can connect with your community by attending events, joining networks, partnering with organizations, or inviting speakers or experts to share their insights and best practices. You can also showcase your team's diversity and inclusion achievements and challenges to your community and seek their input and collaboration.

6 Keep learning and improving

Building and maintaining a diverse team is not a one-time project, but a continuous journey. You should always be open to learning and improving your team's diversity and inclusion practices and outcomes. You can do this by staying updated on the latest trends, research, and innovations in diversity and inclusion, by seeking feedback from your team members, customers, and community, and by reflecting on your own assumptions, biases, and behaviors. You should also celebrate your team's successes and milestones and acknowledge your team's efforts and contributions.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?