8 minutes
Why this is the next step The floor named Minimization. Acceptance is what the map says comes after sameness-as-fairness.
What you’ll be able to do Identify the practical implication of “Why this is the next step” and apply it to one live DHS decision connected to Acceptance in DHS Work. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: How should the team use the concept? Document a next step for Why this is the next step: Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed. Minimization said we are all the same. Acceptance says difference is real, and ranking people is still the wrong move. Where you are on the map — as work, not as a grade The Intercultural Development Continuum (IDI, LLC) is a published map of how people and groups orient to difference. This program uses it as a map. It does not test you. Minnesota DHS, as diagnosed, defaults to Minimization : sameness-as-fairness. The organizational aim is a pathway toward Adaptation : change the work.
You do not skip a step by hanging a poster. Acceptance is the orientation in between: you can see that people are not the same, you can be curious, you can name who a process was built for — without making colleagues into good and bad people.
In this lesson Place Acceptance after Minimization and before Adaptation.
Know this course will not score you or report a stage.
See why noticing is a professional skill, not an attitude.
Know the next course (From noticing to shifting) is where the channel changes.
The spine of Curriculum I — as work habits Denial — Difference is not really here We do not need a breakout. Everyone is the same applicant.
Polarization — Difference is a ranking Us/them. Who gets it. Who is evolved. The process disappears.
Minimization — Sameness-as-fairness The floor. Identical portal, blended average, blank toolkit. DHS default.
Acceptance — This course Difference is real. Name the who. Do not rank the room. Not yet a new channel.
Adaptation — The next course Change the work: channel, breakout, date, or honest identical default with the who written.
You cannot adapt a process you still insist is the same for everyone. Acceptance is how you stop insisting.
Apply this Write one sentence your unit uses that means “we treat everyone the same.”
Keep it. This course will ask you to notice who that sentence hides.
Put this lesson to work What you can change You control whether why this is the next step changes a live DHS process connected to Acceptance in DHS Work or remains information on a page.
What to watch for The team completes the learning, keeps the same default, assigns no owner, and never checks who carries the burden.
Your next step Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Carry this forward The floor named Minimization. Acceptance is what the map says comes after sameness-as-fairness.
You control whether why this is the next step changes a live DHS process connected to Acceptance in DHS Work or remains information on a page.
Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Completion is shown by a scenario decision, a knowledge-check response and a saved one-minute commitment.
Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Browse and download only. Course notes are not typed or saved on this page.
Reset this lesson
Course overview Next lesson Carry this into practice Notice difference without ranking it — and without pretending everyone is the same.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
