Background
What is the Diversity Icebreaker (DI)?
Diversity Icebreaker is a tool used in team building, with similarities to the personality tests MBTI and DISC. However, it is not rooted in psychological personality theory, but individual communication styles. Diversity Icebreaker was developed in a Norway and has been the market leader there for the past 10 years. The questionnaire component is now available in 19 languages, and more than 450,000 people have taken it. Approximately 12,000 DI workshops have been conducted in the past 20 years.
From Norway to the rest of the world
Diversity Icebreaker is now used in more than 80 countries and is the only original Norwegian HR concept that has been so successful. Internationally, a number of academic institutions have been customers, including IMD, INSEAD [maybe spell out what these are?] and the Centre for Creative Leadership, as well as global organisations such as the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn.
A combination of several professional traditions
The Diversity Icebreaker concept can best be understood theoretically by combining several more modern academic traditions beyond personality psychology. These include sociology, linguistics, and pedagogy. The Diversity Icebreaker concept has been presented at numerous professional and academic conferences since 2006, and numerous research studies, articles, and books have been written internationally..
Structured workshop format
The Diversity Icebreaker is a structured seminar format that starts with participants answering a questionnaire, which maps their communication preferences in neutral color categories: Red, Blue and Green. These three dimensions are then applied in group exercises—sometimes in groups with the same communication preferences, sometimes with mixed preferences. Participants co-create a common language of diversity with categories of equal value, complementing each other in a balanced and respectful way. The seminars end with a collective reflection on how the participants have created meaning together. This promotes a culture of inclusion and learning.
Research in new areas
Diversity Icebreaker's internationalisation began in 1999 when Bjørn Z. Ekelund of Human Factors AS brought the concept to create a common platform across cultures in the context of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe´s mission to develop democracy in Bosnia. Our latest international research is led by Rob Elkington at Trent University in Canada, who seeks to understand alternative world views based in collectivistic cultures relevant for a more sustainable and ecologically orientated future. He has led qualitative research studies In Norway based upon how Kwame Dako, a Norwegian-Ghanaian leader in the municipality of Sandnes in Norway, has integrated philosophy from South African in the Diversity Icebreaker seminars for more than 2 500 employees.
