An Advanced Learning Lab for White Male Leaders: Learning to Disrupt and Rebuild Mindsets, Behaviors and Systems

In-Person | Glenwood, WA | September 9-12, 2024

In 2022, we turned 25 and celebrated with a return to our roots: Our cofounders Bill Proudman and Michael Welp joined forces to co-lead our signature program, our renowned White Men’s Caucus, in the place it all started—Bill’s home at the base of the pristine Mount Adams wilderness.

The experience was so successful that we’re repeating an updated version of it this year—An Advanced Learning Lab for White Male Leaders: Learning to Disrupt and Rebuild Mindsets, Behaviors and Systems.

This Advanced Learning Lab creates breakthroughs for white men in leadership roles to become more effective DEI change agents: This includes raising white men’s skill and confidence to better partner across difference and to better engage other white men in their organization around DEI issues.

Many diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have become stuck operating from a common misperception that progress with DEI comes at the expense of white men. Our experience is that white men gain tremendously from immersing in DEI learning and change work.  

In this Advanced Learning Lab, leaders experience how DEI work benefits white men personally and professionally, moving through fears, perfectionism and other barriers to action. Leaders will experiment and explore new ways to be change champions to both disrupt and inspire shifts in their team and organization.  

This residential retreat invites WMFDP | FDP Global alumni and committed inclusive white male leaders to dive deeply into what it means to be a white male leader and change champion in a post-pandemic and polarized world.

This Advanced Learning Lab will be an intimate, immersive, intensive experience, intentionally free of distraction. We’re going to go deep in order to go far to answer today’s call for leadership that matches the magnitude of our times. 

The work starts and continues with disrupting leaders’ own blocks to learning, continually seeing with new eyes and finding their authentic voices in co-creating partnerships and cultures where everyone thrives. 

There has never been a more critical time than now to sharpen skills to lead organizations in leveraging the power of democracy and diversity as an antidote to the polarization and fragmentation in the US and beyond. What is needed is to fuse old and new skills into a new way of leading and to step beyond inaction into experimenting in an emergent way as we create a new future in each of our organizations. 

Participants have the opportunity to:

• Gain an understanding of where they are on their DEI learning journey, how to leverage their own story to engage others and clarify what their current learning edges are and how to address them.  
• Build resiliency to more fluidly and authentically operate as leaders and partners as they navigate the complexity, emotional topics and conflict around DEI.
• Become more confident and skilled at intervening with others, particularly other white men, many of who often don’t see the win-win of creating and sustaining inclusive work cultures.
• Develop specific personal and professional action plans to address their continued growth and impact change in their organizations.

Before the Advanced Learning Lab: Once enrolled, participants will be mailed a copy of Michael Welp’s book Four Days To Change and given access to a series of eight companion videos that supplement the book material. 

The book is a compilation of true stories from over 20 years of White Men’s Caucuses. For alumni, this will be an opportunity to reconnect with their learning and transformations. For leaders new to WMFDP | FDP Global, this will be an introduction to foundational work so that during this special gathering, participants move directly into advanced topics.

Participants will also receive The Role of White Male Culture in Engaging White Men to be Inclusive Leaders by Michael Welp and Ed Schein, a chapter from the book Inclusive Leadership
Transforming Diverse Lives, Workplaces, and Societies.

After the Advanced Learning Lab: Participants will be supported in their re-integration and application via two small group coaching calls with Bill or Michael. These group calls will be opportunities to reconnect with the learning and transformation and to troubleshoot real-world application. 

The Advanced Learning Lab Schedule: 

• Day 1: 4pm-9pm PST (includes meals and breaks)
• Day 2: 7:30am-9:30pm PST (includes meals and breaks)
• Day 3: 7:30am-9:30pm PST (includes meals and breaks)
• Day 4: 7am-2:30pm PST (includes meals and breaks)

Your facilitators: Bill Proudman & Michael Welp

Cost: $4,800 per person including lodging and meals