Final Reflections

As the IMI 9th Annual conference came to a close on Friday, I took what has been one of the most beneficial courses in my professional development coursework – “Back to the Basics: EEO” with Ben Alexander [who is teaching a 2-day seminar in conjunction with IMI in April, by the way]. This course truly gave me a broad understanding on how to explain, implement, and evaluate diversity programs in organizations. It was a difficult decision to attend the course, since there were others during the same session that piqued my interest, but I am extremely happy that I made the decision to!

Mr. Alexander made me recognize that “diversity” as having two realms: (1) the “unchangeable” [race, gender, ethnicity, etc.] that you are born into and cannot alter; and (2) the “exposed” [education, economic, etc.] social elements that may change based on what a person is exposed to and how their development is impacted by this interaction. Understanding that these two dynamics are at play when understanding diversity and culture is fundamental to creating a successful program in an organization.

I think that the important thing that I learned from this particular session, and why it was so important to me to take as a person who is directly responsible for human resources and employment issues in her job, is that constructing a plan that promotes an organizational culture of understanding is to not create a program that focuses on the elimination of the recognition of differences, but to foster views that appreciate them. Additionally, Mr. Alexander gave the group 10 reasons why programs fail to achieve their goals. This portion of the presentation was extremely helpful to me because as I progress through my professional goals, I expect to encounter programs that have some of these flaws, or I will be creating the program from scratch. I look forward to hearing what Mr. Alexander has to say in his July IMI Skills Institute session.

This was my first year attending the IMI conference, but it definitely will not be my last. It gave me the broad range of understanding of multicultural management and developing programs and confronting issues that will occur in professional lifestyles. I am excited to have discovered this training, and truly look forward to many more sessions with the IMI!