Introducing Critical Cultural Competency Workshop

by | Feb 19, 2025 | Blog | 0 comments

In times of strong social division, we at Crossroads often hear people say, “I am a good person which is why I don’t have any biases or act in biased ways.” Many of us think that our good intentions and actions mean we are not responsible for biased outcomes. However, psychologist Dolly Chugh suggests that wanting to be seen as good people with good intentions might be part of the problem of bias. This belief can stop us from seeing and addressing our personal and social biases.

Crossroads’ Critical Cultural Competency workshop invites participants to explore the cultural stories that shape us and how they affect our views and actions. The workshop aims to challenge and question common ideas that, despite our good intentions, can lead to deeper community divisions and unfairness.
Culture simply means the ways groups of people live together. The workshop encourages participants to think about what happens when well-meaning members of one group believe their way is the right way and are shaped to not see the communal imp
act of this belief. Finally, the workshop invites participants to consider how our lives, communities, and organizations might change if, instead of protecting our perceived goodness, we focused on working together to create inclusive, just, and self-critical ways of being.
Outcomes
Crossroads’ Critical Cultural Competency workshop seeks to meet the following outcomes:
  • Articulate what Critical Cultural Competency is and what it requires
  • Understand how culture works and is maintained in the United States
  • Examine how culture can both strengthen community and cause communal fractures
  • Recognize that one can only be truly competent is one’s own cultural shaping and how it impacts the ways one navigates the world
  • Understand why a growth mindset is key to being critically culturally competent
Critical Cultural Competency can be delivered as an in-person or digital workshop – it can also be presented in a one-day, 9am-5pm, format, or as a split-day, in two 4-hour segments.
We have two public offerings of Critical Cultural Competency scheduled in the coming week:
Interested in bringing Critical Cultural Competency to your institution? Use the link below to schedule a conversation with a Crossroads Organizer.