The Diversity Consultant Cookbook: Preparing for the Challenge

Description

Written to advise how to get started in, and develop a career as, diversity consultants. This succinct cookbook provides the guidance to get you going and succeed. The cookbook metaphor reflects the delicate nature of diversity consulting where the little things can make a significant difference in the final outcome. As with cooking where a dash of seasoning, the choice of temperature, or cooking time, impact the final dish, so the wrong balance in creating an environment that is welcoming and constructive while addressing issues that may be disorienting for the audience can ruin a presentation before it gets started. Like a cookbook, this book is set out in small chunks. It covers the need to audit and enhance your skills and knowledge, establish your brand and what you distinctively bring to the table, develop your outreach and contacts, and learn to listen to clients to determine what interventions will achieve their long-term goals. It addresses developing your strategic plan with a clear sense of mission, vision, and values; moves on to topics such as financial planning, pricing, contracts, scheduling, and considerations about presentation styles and handouts; and gets down to the specifics of marketing, with ideas on business cards, websites, networking, and even how to dress. For anyone contemplating embarking on a career as a diversity consultant – either part-time while holding an existing position or as a full-time endeavor, this is an invaluable guide for getting started, and for keeping at your side as you develop your practice. THE DIVERSITY CONSULTANT COOKBOOK Contents Foreword 1. Setting the Table LESSON 1: The New Consultant Blues LESSON 2: Community Is Essential LESSON 3: Managing Emotion 2. Ethics Inherent in Diversity Education LESSON 4: Finding Ways to Continually Check Our Privilege and Hold Ourselves Accountable LESSON 5: Doing Good Work Can Come With a Target on Your Back LESSON 6: Justice, Not Vengeance: Overcoming the Dehumanization of Dysconscious Racism 3. Starting Your Journey LESSON 7: Effective Listening: The Secret Sauce of Diversity Consultants LESSON 8: There’s a Black Man Talking! LESSON 9: White Man Talking LESSON 10: Be Prepared for Anything and Surprised by Nothing 4. Putting Out Your Shingle LESSON 11: Stress Kills LESSON 12: Radical Politics Made Me Antimotherhood LESSON 13: Global Consulting: Challenges, Opportunities, and Possibilities 5. Don’t Try to Be Big . . .Just Do Big Things! Conclusion—Lesson 14: Fourteen Staple Ingredients in My Consulting Kitchen Afterword About the Editors and Contributors Index