September 18, 2020
Hi SIA members,
Once again, I hope you have learned a lot about yourself in these first couple weeks of your inclusion journey. Often when it comes to engaging in relationships particularly in the snow sports industry, I would imagine most of those relationships have stayed relatively the same. The opportunity within the industry in a simplistic fashion is the ability to share the snow sport that you have grown to love with others. In many cases skiing has been passed down from generation to generation and has created the ideology of exclusion which was discussed in the Town Halls. Yet, if the industry is to grow, inclusion has to be embedded in each facet of the business. How do you do that? I will assist you in discovering how.
Every organization has strengths and attributes, and particularly the snow sports industry. The snow sports industry represents tradition, freedom, and most of all nature. To understand where you want to be you must first begin to reflect on how you arrived at your current state. As an HR professional, I don’t have the luxury of excluding others, therefore I am constantly attempting to find new ways to connect. If you are wanting to know what to do first, GET CURIOUS! Begin to connect to others that are unlike yourself and attempt to understand their story.
With the material that I have provided, we are in PHASE ONE of the SWORD © Inclusion System which concentrates on understanding the individual. In this phase, we address the mind and emotions of inclusion. As you are conducting your think feel act tracker, what are you noticing about yourself? What does inclusion make you feel? What specific emotion are you feeling?
When it comes to inclusion you will have to leverage your strengths as these emotions arise. Inclusion may be slightly challenging as it may be something that has not been integrated into your daily life, but it will get better. You must be aware of your emotional triggers. Emotional triggers work to keep you stagnant as well as prompt immediate change. Yet often we want to take immediate action without doing the internal work which first begins with our frame of thinking. You will have to recognize there are some thoughts/behaviors that take effort while there are some thoughts/behaviors that are effortless. The intention with these next six months is to develop effortless inclusive behaviors, but it does require us to dive deep into our perspectives to be able to understand a differing point of view.
Here are a few resources to assist you.