Bridging Divides Badging & Microcredential Program
Bridge-building skills create better leaders and problem solvers while strengthening and restoring relationships and interactions. These skills can improve our ability to collaborate with our own teams as well as people "outside our bubble."
Our ability to build bridges is not innate. It takes time and dedication to cultivate skills that can help us practice the art of bridge-building. We tend to avoid things we don’t know how to do. That includes building relationships with people who are different from us. Thankfully, all it takes is a desire to connect and a few basic skills.
Be a Leader
Everyone plays a leadership role in some way. Being an effective leader requires us to listen, understand and work with people and ideas different from our own.
Be a Problem Solver
Complex problems require innovative solutions. Those solutions are better when we are open to different opinions - even if we disagree with them.
Be a Relationship Builder
Contempt destroys relationships. Gain skills to help you heal relationships and open doors to communication and understanding.
You can bring people together across differences.
We created a pathway for you to acquire the basic skills you need to be an effective bridge builder in your home, workplace, and community spaces.
Listening
Dialogue
Collaboration
For each skill you acquire, you will earn a badge. Receiving a badge indicates that you have learned and applied best practices that are core to the skill. Examples of best practices include: Building understanding; Listening with curiosity and empathy; Creating conversation agreements; Reflection; Building Community and Belonging; Collaborative Problem Solving; Depolarization, and others.
The process is easy. The modules can be completed at your own pace so you earn badges one at a time. We encourage you to share your accomplishments on LinkedIn and other platforms. Completing all three badges will lead to your receipt of the Bridging Divides Microcredential, a testament to your commitment to bridging divides in an increasingly polarized world.
Being a skilled bridge-builder in a time of polarization requires effort and courage. Your microcredential signals your readiness to show both!
This program is endorsed by the Bridging Movement Collaborative, a collective leadership effort to erase toxic division from our civic culture while building productive civic engagement. It is also endorsed by Bridge Alliance and supported by the National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation.
We are piloting this microcredential program with the Listening skill. Dialogue and Collaboration will launch over the next 6 months.