Since 2022, the Teaching Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Professional Development Workshop at the Academy of Management Conference has explored innovative approaches to DEIB instruction while offering educators support and community. This article offers highlights from the teaching demos (featuring in-person exercises) and Q&A panel at the August 2024 workshop. In the first demo, the instructor led participants through a gamified learning exercise called “The Quiz Game.” Designed to demonstrate the dynamics of privilege and disadvantage, participants were separated into three groups that were given different sets of rules. In a demo of the second game—“Family Face-Off”—two teams guessed the answers to survey questions posed to 100 individuals. This game illustrates how “meta-stereotypes”—one’s belief about how others perceive their group—can negatively impact a person’s identity, school and workplace performance, and interpersonal relationships. In the teaching panel Q&A, Dr. Adam Waytz recommended bringing up divisive current events in order to show nimbleness and authenticity. When asked about managing disagreements between students, Dr. Erika V. Hall emphasized the importance of laying ground rules in the classroom. In the case of students struggling to understand the other side’s position, she recommended bringing the discussion back to specifics of the curriculum and data-backed material. Finally, in terms of teaching heavy topics or facilitating difficult conversations, Dr. Waytz cautioned against catering excessively to critics in the room who might never be satisfied.
<div style="font-size: 0.94em; line-height: 1.4;"><p align="justify">How can business school educators most effectively teach diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)? In 2023, a working group devoted to the subject held a professional development workshop on teaching DEI. This article summarizes key takeaways from the event. As the first teaching demonstration showed, when developing diversity initiatives, it’s important to create interventions and messages that aren’t one-size-fits-all. In the second teaching demonstration, the instructor set conversation guidelines that included “active and empathetic listening,” “challenge the idea, not the person,” and “take space and make space.” She challenged students to embrace discomfort, trust intent, and acknowledge assumptions, and sought to reframe conversations about DEI not as difficult but as transformational. In the third demonstration, the instructor encouraged students to think about the conditions that allowed them to grow their emotional intelligence or leadership skills. The article ends with some expert advice from DEI instructors: bring your authentic self; orient yourself to learn; and invite reflection.