Course FAQ

This is a new certificate created for those in leadership roles who are seeking strategies to support their teams and workplaces to be cohesive and effective during these unprecedented times of global crises and political division.

To get the certificate you must complete the following four courses:

Psychological Safety: The Foundation for Team Leadership (live webinar only)

Facilitating Dialogue: Decision-Making on Divisive Issues (live webinar only)

Navigating Polarization: Handling Sensitive Topics in the Workplace (live webinar only) 

Deep Diversity: Adopting an Inclusion Mindset (self-directed, on learning dashboard)

By taking this certificate you will:

• Understand how psychological safety, resilience and inclusion are interlinked, and how to create and maintain psychological safety;
• Develop polarity management skills to deal with divisive issues;
• Learn essential facilitation processes to manage conflict and sensitive topics on teams;
• Adopt an essential equity mindset to support increasingly diverse teams and workplaces.

For one we have updated our content to meet the current times. Attacks on DEI, political polarization and the erosion of traditional democratic institutions mean that we are now in very different times. New skills are required for navigating these challenges.

Our new courses do not have preparatory work. Only the Deep Diversity: Adopting an Inclusion MIndset is available on the Anima learning dashboard. The other courses are not listed on the learning dashboard..

Please reach out to us and let us know what you have completed. We can register you in the new courses so that you can receive the new certificate.

If you are reviewing the courses and uncertain which one might be best for you please contact info@animaleadership.com and we can send you information sheets for each course. If after you review that information, you still are uncertain, we would be happy to discuss your needs with you.

You can arrange for a bulk purchase of seats. If you have 30 or more participants we do offer in-house training for all our courses. Please contact info@animaleadership.com to learn more.

When you register for a course you are automatically placed into the course the first time it will be offered after you register. If you register for the Leadership for Troubled Times Certificate you will be enrolled in the courses the first time they occur after you register. 

If you register but cannot attend the course when it is offered next, please reach out to us immediately and we will shift you to the next available cohort. As an example: You register for Psychological Safety in October 2026 and realize you cannot attend. You can reach out to us and let us know so we move your registration to 2027. 

We cannot move you to another course offering with less than 30 days notice.

An automated email and a receipt should be sent to you (the purchaser) immediately following registration. If someone purchased the course on your behalf you may want to check with them to see if they received any information.

We also reach out to course participants about four weeks ahead of the course, a week and the day before as additional reminders. Please feel free to contact us at info@animaleadership.com if you registered and did not receive anything from us.

Our refund policy is to offer a 50% credit for another course with 30 days or more notice. Unfortunately we cannot issue refunds or credits if you let us know in less than 30 days.

We can offer immediate refunds for a course if you let us know within 24 hours of your purchase. If you made your purchase on a weekend or holiday we will refund on the next business day.

Please let us know immediately within a 24 hour window. We can cancel your order so you can register for the correct course.

Each course has 10% of spots reserved for sliding scale payments. If you have income constraints but would like to register please reach out to us at info@animeladership.com with any information that would be helpful such as what you would be able to contribute as a payment.

Our course policies are listed here.

For Psychological Safety, Facilitating Dialogue and Navigating Polarization, please make your purchase on our website and then send a list of participants (names and emails) to info@animaleadership.com so we can include them in the registration list. 

If you want to purchase the Deep Diversity: Adopting and Inclusion Mindset a course for your colleagues you can easily manage this on our website. This allows you to invite and manage the participants. If you have been invoiced you can select “payment as previously arranged” and we will approve the order.

Select the course as you normally would if you are purchasing for yourself. Then select the number of seats. Once your purchase is processed and payment is received you can invite participants who will receive a notification to register. Should you need to remove or add a participant this can be done through the dashboard.

The only certificate course that will be listed on the course dashboard is Deep Diversity: Adopting an Inclusion Mindset. Through the dashboard you can access the different modules for this offering.

All materials for the other courses will be distributed by email or in the webinar itself. 

To be eligible for the certificate you must attend at least three of the four sessions. You can still participate in the course if you must miss some sessions, but we really recommend attending as much of the learning occurs through discussion and exercises–you will also not be eligible for the certificate. For non-certificate courses we still recommend you attend the webinars. There is no preparatory work or resource videos for non-certificate courses and all of the learning takes place in the webinar itself so by not attending you will miss a lot of content.

These are small groups to allow course participants to discuss, learn, and reflect on concepts and scenarios with each other. There will be a guiding question or exercise to work through. Groups usually have 4-5 participants with one person taking on the role of note-taker and another person reporting back to the larger group.

Occasionally a participant may not be able to attend a group. Please let us know ahead of time (before the webinar or just at the start) if you will not be able to join. Leaving the webinar just prior to the groups breaking out can create issues with group numbers if enough people do it. If you are not feeling well or have another commitment we can leave you in the main room or place you in a group room by yourself.

We organize the discussion groups during the first 30 minutes of the session. If participants arrive late or depart early it can create challenges to creating effective groups. If you are going to be late or you do not plan to be participating in groups, please let us know ahead of time. If you arrive late we cannot guarantee that you will be added to a group.

For some of our courses we create groups for BIPOC identifying people. These groups are meant for BIPOC identifying participants and not white participants who are curious or supportive of BIPOC experiences. We can also create LGBTQ2S+ groups and for those with disabilities if enough people are interested. Requests must be made prior to the course start. Please note that we may not be able to create a specific identity group if not enough people express interest. 

While we can try to accommodate some group requests (e.g., requesting that employees not be in a group with their supervisor) we cannot ensure that people from the same organization are in the same group. In large live online  group settings this can be challenging to manage in addition to other group requests. We also encourage course participants to meet people from other organizations.

If you wish for people from your organization to work together on scenarios or concepts, we encourage you to organize this between the webinars. You could also purchase a harvesting session. A virtual in-house harvesting session can be scheduled and facilitated after the course has finished. Harvesting sessions are an important follow-up to help consolidate individuals’ learnings and plan next steps for implementation. This includes

• Reviewing the elements covered in the course
• Reflecting the themes that came up through the training
• Discussing application at individual, team and organizational levels

No, there is no preparatory work for the webinars. You can, however, familiarize yourself with concepts and work by:

• Reading Fire and Silence: A Roadmap for BIPOC Leaders by Annahid Dashtgard
• Reading Deep Diversity: A Compassionate, Scientific Approach to Achieving Racial Justice by Shakil Choudhury
• Visiting our cafe library
• Listening to our Youtube channel

Yes, we do record the sessions for future reference. The video will be available on our video platform following the session. Since the sessions are in Zoom, if Zoom recording fails the  recording will not be available for that particular session.

While we recognize there may be useful information in the chat and session video we do not allow downloads of this nature. This helps protect the privacy of individuals participating in the course who may not wish to have their thoughts and observations shared outside of the course context. Discussing equity, diversity and inclusion can be sensitive for some people who may wish to not have their words shared beyond the scope of the learning environment.

We prioritize creating inclusive and welcoming learning environments by expecting all participants to show up with cameras on (unless inaccessible), to listen to other viewpoints, to ask questions and to actively engage in the learning process throughout the course. At Anima, we aim to facilitate an experience of inclusion as much as develop inclusive leadership skills.

We encourage participants to be open to the extent they are comfortable doing so in the interest of building a comfortable learning environment (rather than a politically correct one). Our courses are also a space where we encourage making mistakes as we know this is the only way learning occurs.  Prioritizing learning means that sometimes toes (or identities) may be inadvertently stepped on. Please extend compassion and before deciding if someone is being disrespectful, ascertain whether they are aware or unaware of their behaviour.  If they are unaware, we encourage you to share with them directly as often the richest learning occurs participant to participant.  Of course, participants are always welcome to approach course leaders at any point for support.. us know

If you complete a course which is part of the previously offered Inclusive Leadership Certificate (i.e. Authentic Facilitation, Authentic Management, Brave Conversations, or the Deep Diversity Institute) you will receive a course badge and certificate. There are no certificates offered for the individual courses for the Leadership for Troubled Times Certificate.

You will have 90 days to access the material for the course following the last webinar. For Deep Diversity Self-Directed you will have access to the course for 90 days from the date of your purchae. After that the course will be removed from your dashboard, but it will still be on your account as completed. If you finish a course which is part of the Inclusive Leadership Certificate (i.e. Authentic Facilitation, Authentic Management, Brave Conversations, or Deep Diversity) you will receive a course badge which will be visible under the “badges” tab of your account. The new courses for the Leadership for Troubles Times Certificate will not be on your course dashboaurd.

Please complete the technical support form if you need assistance: https://animaleadership.com/course-technical-support/

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Please complete the technical support form if you need assistance: https://animaleadership.com/course-technical-support/

Please complete the technical support form if you need assistance: https://animaleadership.com/course-technical-support/