Part III of “What’s the Real Plan for DEI?” was primarily about alignment with the various constituencies and interest groups at your school, completing the strategy portion or top half of the four quadrants. Part IV shifts to the third (and lower) quadrant with a focus on the preliminary programmatic issues (implicit). Once you have buy-in from most of the community, the challenge is to create a program team that will internalize the empathy and healing associated with DEI and is preparing to share its wisdom and experience in that process with the rest of the community by creating an effective program.  (Earlier in this series: Overview. Quadrant 1. Quadrant 2.)

After working through Quadrants 1 and 2, we’ll have the start of a plan and we’ll be growing alignment and commitment in the school community. Successful progress on those means the school’s leadership sees that equity is part of, central to, the mission. Changing the way we think about one another, particularly the way we open our hearts across differences, is part of the relational work both in Q2 and Q3. In Q2, our goal is to build team structures and aligned stakeholder…