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Explore a resource and the leadership decision it can inform.
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People grow. Leadership grows with them.
Bring your experience, your curiosity, and the kind of leader you want to become. Develop a practice that makes equity, inclusion, and accessibility part of how DSD works.
Explore equity in the practice of leadership—whether you are discovering your potential, supporting a team, or shaping the division's future.
Find your starting point →
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility shape how we interpret experience, distribute opportunities, and make decisions. This One DSD experience brings One DHS learning into the employee life cycle, with room to examine assumptions and improve the conditions in which people work.
Explore a resource and the leadership decision it can inform.
Separate what you observed from what you assumed. Consider whose perspective is missing.
Try a supported change or work through a realistic situation.
Seek feedback, examine what happened, and decide what to keep or change.
You can begin through your own curiosity, an encouraging conversation, or a desire to strengthen your current practice. No nomination or minimum service is needed to explore this learning experience.
Leadership can begin in how you listen, explain a decision, or make room for another person's contribution. Through an equity lens, the question is also whose experience informs the work and who can access the opportunity to shape it.
You may already bring relevant experience from community work, professional practice, caregiving, or collaboration. Connect that experience with a specific capability and test it in a manageable situation. Feedback helps you see both your contribution and what you want to develop next.
See how your experience connects with the wider program and the people around your work.
Explore program orientation →Begin with a welcome, a conversation, or a process you can help make clearer.
Explore welcoming and orientation →Bring a question to a Learning Lab or find a peer conversation that helps you reflect.
Visit the Learning Lab →A DSD possibility: Map a confusing onboarding handoff in DSD. Ask what information colleagues needed, draft a clearer welcome map, and invite someone new to review it.
A shared learning area
From role design and recruitment to development, retention, and succession, each stage offers a practical way to grow. Use these situations to explore the capability you chose in your development map.
Choose a stage that connects with your work. Each offers a leadership question, a DSD practice situation, and room to reflect.
Can people begin growing before someone selects them?
Mentoring offers perspective; sponsorship helps people access opportunities. Development should make room for self-expressed interest and different career aspirations.
An interested employee is new to state service and cannot yet meet a formal institute's eligibility requirement. They can still develop through a supported practice opportunity.
A fictional example
A colleague wants to become more comfortable facilitating a conversation across teams. These replies offer different kinds of support.
| Part of the conversation | A possible reply |
|---|---|
| The colleague’s interest | “I would like to practice making room for different perspectives in a cross-team conversation.” |
| Mentoring: offer perspective | “We could review an agenda together and think about questions, written contributions, and ways to invite quieter voices.” |
| Sponsorship: explore an opportunity | “With your agreement, I could ask a host whether co-facilitating would be useful. We would still need to agree the role, preparation time, access needs, and feedback.” |
What would make the conversation useful, and what support would make a practice opportunity workable? An introduction does not promise selection or an assignment.
Who gets invited to develop, and who has to discover the pathway alone?
Something useful to bring back: A development plan linking a capability, supported practice, feedback, and a next conversation.
This voluntary learning experience has no minimum service requirement. Choose a question that fits your role and interests. Formal training programs and job opportunities have their own requirements.
Notice a barrier, facilitate a thoughtful conversation, or help make a process clearer. Practice listening across perspectives and explaining a decision with evidence.
Try co-facilitating a Learning Lab.
Apply the same equity lens to hiring, feedback, workload, recognition, and development. Ask colleagues what helps them contribute and what needs to change.
Try reviewing how a development opportunity is offered.
Connect equitable workforce decisions with strategy, resources, and continuity. Use the actual duties of a role to identify what you need to practice and demonstrate.
Try an options brief on a cross-team workforce challenge.
For a supervisor considering a director role, a useful roadmap begins with the role's responsibilities: compare them with demonstrated experience, choose a supported practice opportunity, seek feedback, and build examples of what changed. Advancement also depends on the applicable qualifications and selection process.
Bring your development map. Discuss the capability you want to practice, an opportunity that fits, the time and access you need, and how you will receive feedback. Mentoring can help you think through the experience; sponsorship can help make an opportunity available.
Explore mentoring and peers →You can also bring a question to a Learning Lab or a colleague. Agree on what may be shared, and focus feedback on the work and its effects.
Find a learning conversation →A personal development map can connect with a wider continuity need. When colleagues can practice critical work with support, they build experience while the division strengthens its ability to carry that work forward.
Begin with the work that must continue. Connect it to an open development opportunity, the support people need, and a practical way to check what they have learned.
A team wants more than one colleague to be able to prepare a recurring review. The example follows the work and its decision points.
A useful readiness check observes a task with its support in place. This learning plan does not designate a successor or replace a selection process.
A clearer aspiration, an opportunity they can access, a skill they have practiced, useful feedback, and a work example they can explain. Growth may mean greater contribution in a current role as well as interest in advancement.
Clearer criteria, more accessible development opportunities, follow-through on staff feedback, and critical work that more than one person can carry forward. Examine appropriate aggregate patterns with the responsible partners; course completion alone cannot show these outcomes.
Reflection becomes richer when it connects with another perspective. Bring a practice question to the One DSD Team, explore mentoring through Amplify, or follow a resource into the wider program.
These references informed this original program experience. Examples are learning situations, not accounts of named staff.
Minnesota context for connecting workforce continuity and employee development.
Federal practice reference for job-related questions and consistent assessment; not a DHS policy.
Federal practice reference connecting early development, individual plans, and succession.
Explore formal development opportunities alongside this voluntary DSD learning experience.