Culturally Responsive Supervision Techniques

Because most organizations are patterned against dominant culture belief-systems, those that work fast, write well, show up on time, prep intensely, and speak in bullet points will often be elevated as successful, while those with different learning and working styles will be critiqued and left behind. When dominant culture is de-centered, room can be made for other gifts and strengths that our organizations need.

In this session, supervisors will reflect on ways to dismantle dominant beliefs about “high performing vs low-performing employees” and translate our Supervision for Equitable Employee Development Framework into practical strategies to integrate culturally responsive techniques such as:

• Relational Trust in the supervisor-supervisee relationship
• Consistently celebrating success through concrete descriptive feedback
• Drilling into challenge areas to identify a skill to grow/develop, and designing creative interventions to build and practise new skills.
• Transparently visibilizing ones thinking about success using a matrix system - to get feedback on where dominant culture has taken over, as well as to visibilize current and desired states for an employee.