New 1-Hour Program Empowers Students...AND Captures Valuable Insight for Universities & Colleges

We've taken an entirely different and unique approach. Chiefly because the problem ISN'T getting solved.

To start, this solution doesn't come with the expectation that we all need to hit home runs. Heck, we don't even need to hit singles, so much as we need to be consistent in showing up to play.

Best of all...we never get cut from the team.

We're not talking baseball. We're talking about playing the game of life in how we interact with others. One where we utilize introspection, intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, and powerful dialogue techniques to more confidently engage with others during times of disagreements and differences of opinions.

We play this common game on 'ballfields' or mediums, such as emails, texts, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations, and with countless 'teams' or other individuals sharing those fields with us.

But unlike baseball, when we pitch strikes, make amazing catches, hit the ball solidly and drive in runs - the other team doesn't lose - they actually win too!

Because the opposition is not the other person with whom we are engaging. Rather it's the poor behaviors, actions, and habits involving incivility, intolerance, loss of respect, and a general lack of inclusion for diversity of others' diversity of thought.

Let's take a step back, in remembering the words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.:

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

This drawn-out metaphor serves to lay out a new initiative called WALKING THE RIDGE. It's a human practice meant to be learned, improved upon, strengthened, and grown to and through others by its scalable and sharing nature.

Walking The Ridge serves to take on incivility and set foundational behavior and habits that help strengthen the health of our communication, inclusion, civility, and resulting relationships with others.

The impetus for its creation rests on the many business, political, entertainment, and media leaders who simply have 'called on' or 'prayed for' all of us to be a more civil, kind, and tolerant society.

Nice soundbites for the press, right? However, these feel-good statements carry little if any meat-on-the-bone prescriptive actions for helping individuals and society as a whole create meaningful change in a time of ever-increasing toxic tribalism.

If you get a chance, take a look at some of the statistics that incivility impacts for relationships, employees, company productivity, voters, and even patient care results.

Because while many company and school leaders wait for the reactive complaints or filings, we recognize there is so much more incivility happening under the radar. Incidents, conversations, and comments that bring out feelings in others of anger, fear, resentment, depression, and anxiety that impacts personal and professional relationships.

Walking The Ridge consists of a remote, short-duration development program, coupled with powerful PDF lesson materials, and a visual 'reminder band' or 'reminder button'. The bands and buttons serve as post-program visual anchors for personal and public accountability, helping bring greater awareness to ourselves and groups of others.

The online learning program and practice combats incivility, disrespect, and poor inclusion through implementing an individualistic bottom-up and inside-out approach. It's designed as a personal learning journey that can be re-visited at any time for improvement.

The remote learning combines a powerful viewing experience from a well-supported introspection of ourselves to interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, mindfulness, as well as key dialogue techniques and an overall system to put into daily practice.

The remote program started late last year, beginning with individual use - and has extended out in early 2020 for all types and sizes of companies. The corporate program is 2.5 hours in length, through 5 modules and 23 bite-sized video lessons - along with capabilities to report back to HR and D&I company leaders. It's fully remote, accessible repeatedly for 1-year, and priced purposely low for mass use.

BIG NEWS!

Last week, we decided to offer a 'lite' or student version of Walking The Ridge for universities and colleges. It's under one hour in total length and carries 10 well-balanced and blended lessons.

The student version program of Walking The Ridge is meant to be distributed as mandatory to complete for all students. Here's why...

• It brings interpersonal soft skills for students to learn and practice upon, before they enter the workforce
• It's a very strong opportunity to fill in very real on-campus gaps in student-student and student-faculty communication and interactions.
• Students are empowered with skills and ready-to-use techniques. Plus, they also learn how to engage and shift communication that may become heated or emotional.
• Schools benefit from the program through tying in their own core values and campus messaging on inclusion, tolerance, and shared respect. They also gain an additional level of risk management to future student complaints, campus incidents involving incivility and triggerings, as well as future student-based legal actions.
• Finally, students must complete an embedded survey within the program, in order to receive full completion credit. The questions tap into student perceptions of school culture efforts, as well as faculty behavior, in a 100% anonymous manner. This allows the schools to learn, apply, and make critical changes.

CONCLUSION

Whether it's students speaking out in more polarizing ways, failing to contribute due to a lack of perceived psychological safety, or catalyzing improvement in existing diversity and inclusion campus initiatives, there are clear gaps needing to be filled in a more proper and genuine manner.

The Walking The Ridge program for students is a fresh way for schools to remotely deliver a consistent and scalable development program that can be tracked and supported for multi-party benefit, for the present and future. School Provosts, D&I professionals, and student affairs leaders are urged to reach out and contact us - and be given full-program access for proper review.

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A tireless advocate for improving civility, inclusion, and shared respect, STEVE AMBROSE is the co-founder, developer, and host of the Walking The Ridge program.

The two solutions options are for organizational and individual use OR use by college & universities.

The program also has options for placement on existing LMS and learning network systems.

Steve is also available for post-program training, consulting, and advising, plus media and podcast interviews. Best contact is: [email protected]