ACCELERATE Leadership

This is a three-month program running from July to September 2023. During that period, there will be 7 online Inclusive Leadership Labs (i.e., workshops), each of which will require:
1. Reading prep materials (15-30 minutes)
2. Attending the Inclusive Leadership Lab (1.5-2 hours)
3. Post-Lab discussions in the online Community of Progress (15-30 minutes)In addition, participants will be asked to complete a 15-minute feedback survey each month and will be invited to attend 3 optional in-person social events - Start of Program, End of Program and CILAR Annual Power of One, Power of Us Event.

Absolutely! If you are in the early stages of your executive role, we encourage you to participate in the ACCELERATE Leadership program. Your involvement will be valuable to your organization as you apply your inclusive leadership knowledge to champion the progress of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in pursuit of your organization's current and future objectives.

Please try your best to make all Leadership Labs, however if you can't please bring it up with one of our program facilitators.

Our Community of Progress offers participants a virtual space to speak freely, knowing that what is shared within the Community remains private and confidential.If you are unavailable to attend an Inclusive Leadership Lab, your EA cannot participate in your place in order to maintain transparent dialogue among participants. Please notify one of the program facilitators if you cannot attend, and we will gladly make accommodations for you.

To create an open and safe space for learning and meaningful connections, we do not allow participants to participate anonymously. However, only other participants in the program, the program facilitators, the experts and CILAR staff will know who you are. As part of the program, we ask that everyone who has visibility to these programs, sign NDAs.Beyond that, your participation will remain anonymous (i.e., CILAR will not be sharing a list of participants publicly). You are, of course, free to inform anyone you choose that you are participating in the program with our Social Media Toolkit.Your confidentiality is of utmost importance, if you have any concerns, please reach out to opportunities@cilar.ca and we can set up time to discuss your questions.

Yes! Please spread the word about this opportunity to any executives you think may benefit. Feel free to forward any of our Call to Action emails that include a program overview and the Expression of Interest form.

First, click on the events tab located on the left sidebar. Then, at the top of the page you will see an “Attend All” button. Pressing this button will confirm your attendance for all existing events and you will receive a calendar hold for each event as well.

On the right hand side of your module, there is a circle. The green portion represents the percentage of the module that is completed, where a full green circle represents a 100% completed module. If you hover over the circle, you will see exactly how much of the tasks, action items and lessons you completed within the module.

Please email opportunities@cilar.ca for accommodations and/or accessibility requests, and we will support your learning as best we can.

There is no difference. The Inclusive Leadership Labs are collaborative, participatory workshops. We’ve chosen to call these workshops “Inclusive Leadership Labs” to emphasize that the program's focus is on exploring the depth of inclusivity in a learning setting while underscoring the pivotal role of leaders in fostering growth in the innovation economy.

This is a virtual program with optional in-person social events.

To enhance your organization's EDI competencies, you will be encouraged to get all departments involved and integrated into the process. Only you will be directly involved in the Leadership Labs and Community of Progress, though, and you will take what you learn and plan and spread it throughout your organization.

Psychological safety is a social condition in which human beings feel:
-included within society and an organizational culture with dignity and respect
-safe to learn
-safe to contribute
-safe to challenge the status quo
All without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized or punished in some way.Okay

We encourage all participants to remain on-camera during the Inclusive Leadership Labs to maintain transparent, honest, and comfortable conversation. If technology poses a problem, please let facilitators know, and we will make accommodations as necessary.

Upon approval of your application, you will be guided to our DISCO platform where you will be able to click the “events” page to hold time in your calendar for these virtual labs.

During this program, you will develop strategies for affecting change within your organization, which may require time and/or financial investment. If your organization does not currently have the budget to invest financially, our experts will help you prepare a strategy to convince others in your organization to allocate funds in future budgets. Further, our experts help you strategize about what can be done with an investment of time only while you wait for future financial investment. Remember, very few individuals begin work on EDI initiatives with a fully-funded budget; the first step is making a compelling case for investment in this important work.

No, you are not required to disclose specific programs, policies, or products you plan to develop, as such information might be confidential and/or proprietary.

The ACCELERATE Leadership delivery partners are committed to ongoing learning and open and honest feedback and accountability to all those involved in the program. Evaluation is core to this commitment. By contributing to the evaluation, you will be helping to make the program more impactful for you and for future leaders who take part in the program. You’ll also be helping to build evidence about the importance of organizations investing in EDI.

The information that you share through registration, focus groups/interviews, in the Community of Progress, and/or throughout the program will be combined with your peers’ in order to determine what worked well in the ACCELERATE Leadership program, what could be improved going forward, and how the program affected those involved. These results will be fundamental in defining what the ACCELERATE Leadership program will look like for future participants who engage in the program. Please note, the findings will be shared at a group level with no personal identifiable information (PII) or organization information shared in our analysis or reporting.
These indicators and survey answers will be kept anonymous and used strictly for the data analytics

Personal data will be stored in the strictest confidence and only shared with the specific project team at CILAR, Blueprint and KDPM. All of these organizations will store any personal data in encrypted files, which will be deleted one year after you have completed the program.

The ACCELERATE Leadership program is designed to foster the conditions for all employees in Canada to succeed. Therefore, it is important that we understand who is participating in the program and what life experiences they may bring. This will help us to better understand who this program is best suited for and whether we have reached our intended audience. That being said, we encourage you to share only what you feel comfortable sharing with the project team. Your participation in the evaluation will not impact your experience in the program. You can ask us at any time to remove any information from our data collected.

The evaluation activities will help us make real-time modifications and improvements to the ACCELERATE Leadership program to ensure it is relevant to those engaged in the program. It will also help us to understand whether the program was effective in achieving its intended outcomes and what changes are needed to improve the program for future participants. Finally, the overall learnings will be shared with the funder, Future Skills Centre, to help advance the work underway in the Canadian skills ecosystem.

Recognizing the value of your time, we have done our best to integrate the evaluation activities into the main components of the program. As a result, we have limited the direct evaluation activities to short post-lab check-ins (5 questions) and a post-program interview or focus group. Blueprint will also analyze the information shared through the Community of Progress.

Please contact Molly Doan, Director of Inclusive Practice at Blueprint - mdoan@blueprint-ade.ca. She would be happy to answer any questions you have about the evaluation.