This week we’re thinking about: How to create belonging and understanding in these challenging times.Whether you’re leading a company, a community, a small team or a large team, creating a space where folks feel empowered, autonomous, valued and connected is essential to your success. Right now, at the time of this recording, we’re still in the midst of the global pandemic, and North American society feels more divided than ever. What if, as business owners and leaders, we had the power to create spaces of belonging and understanding in these divided times? On today’s episode Saiyyidah Zaidi is asking just that question. In a practical sense, she’s in the midst of developing and launching The Center For Belonging and Understanding, a community and platform business in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space. Saiyyidah’s learning about what it takes to build a community and a business almost from scratch, and most importantly and obviously how to create a space where belonging and understanding are at the heart of everything they do. Lucky for Saiyyidah, you and I, Jon Berghoff joined us today, and I couldn’t think of a better person to talk to about this! Jon Berghoff is the founder of the XCHANGE Approach, a scientific approach to unlocking collective wisdom in any group.As Jon says, these are extraordinary times, which call for exponential conversations. Which is why innovative leaders, like Saiyyidah and I, have run to XCHANGE as the solution for bringing together companies, communities, clients, and customers in powerful ways.Before COVID-19, XCHANGE was leaned on by companies like Facebook, BMW, and Costco, to facilitate powerful, large scale conversations... when the stakes were highest.Since the COVID-19 outbreak, change agents of every type: educators, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and thought leaders... are using XCHANGE to create connection, community and accelerated learning in every imaginable environment. Digitally, and now face-to-face again.Saiyyidah Zaidi (whose name literally means female leader) is an experienced facilitator, coach, and supervisor working internationally and across sectors. She qualified as an Architect and went on to have a very successful career in architecture before she moved on to continue her studies. Saiyyidah holds two Masters degrees with distinctions including one in Applied Positive Psychology and she is currently in the final stages of her doctorate in identity and intersectionality, where issues of power, inclusion, diversity, belonging and understanding are critically analysed.She is a firm believer that ‘words create worlds’ and that by considering the language of conversations in the Diversity Equity and Inclusion space we are able to use connection as the departure point rather than difference. Learn more about Saiyyidah and her work:
http://www.centreforbelongingandunderstanding.com/
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