The modern workplace is a rich salad of diverse cultural backgrounds and races. By acknowledging and celebrating the richness of different cultural ways of being, companies can create a cultural mosaic to fuel innovation and unlock the true potential of people and businesses. At the same time, building a solid organizational culture with anti-racism at the heart of leadership goals is essential. With a well-rounded cultural strategy, HR leaders can determine and cater to employees’ spoken and unspoken expectations.

When people bring their authentic cultural selves to the workplace, it makes way for healthier, more open work environments that ensure increased productivity and employee morale. Baker Consulting is established on this very foundation.

Baker Consulting is a full-service organization that helps employees identify and express their authentic cultural voice within a workplace. The company provides an array of services, including coaching, consultation, facilitation, workshop session series, and keynote presentations, to foster racial inclusion in workplaces and ignite personal and professional growth in employees.

“We are making a difference by driving culturally responsive thinking into today’s multicultural corporate world,” says Kevin Baker, Principal Consultant at Baker Consulting.

An Advocate for Communities of Color

Baker Consulting delivers its services through the lens of cultural responsiveness and race equity to large and small for-profit and non-profit organizations, community-based providers, and government agencies. Focusing its services on diversity, equity, and inclusion, the company helps eradicate code-switching and white normative culture that not only harms the personal and professional well-being of racially marginalized groups, it also harms white people.

It creates work environments for all people, regardless of their race or ethnicity, using the principles of race equity, accessibility, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (READEIB). The company provides organizations with capacity-building technical assistance and strategic planning while enabling them to maintain racial equity and ensure the health and well-being of employees.
However, companies often misconceive organizational change as a technical problem, where they can use power and authority versus collaboration, consideration, and compassion to achieve the task.

“Companies need to understand that organizational change is an adaptive challenge. They need to transform their thinking, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors to succeed in their organizational change endeavors that currently operate under white normative behaviors in the society,” says Baker.

When it comes to instilling change, people often think of it as needing to separate their personal and professional lives. Wherever a person goes, their mindset goes with them. It is their mindset that defines their personality and behaviors, and not the place. Baker Consulting focuses on changing the prevailing dichotomous perception and facilitating continuous developmental processes so clients can learn, grow, and sustain change.

Powering Organizational Change Endeavors

Baker Consulting ensures effective organizational development by coaching C-Suite and other executives in self-reflection, cultural reflection, and critical thinking in leadership development, enabling them to move from a hierarchal to a relational way of being, which helps employees easily and more comfortably approach and converse with leaders.

By tapping into the power of emotional intelligence— “leadership of self”—Baker Consulting prepares individuals to deal with their emotions during critical conversations and conflicts. This way, they can communicate more effectively and move toward solutions instead of resorting to dissolution or destruction. It conducts training sessions to walk clients through this process and provides them with a clear understanding of emotional intelligence.

The Baker Consulting team also equips clients with relevant skillsets to facilitate organizational change. Employees learn to look internally when dealing with critical workplace situations through a self-reflective process. Organizations can foster collaborative, supportive, and safer work environments with a culture entrenched in compassion and empathy.

“We are not afraid to have honest conversations about ingraining racial equity, diversity, and inclusion into the work culture, and we are always true and genuine to ourselves and our clients,” says Baker.

Handholding Clients throughout their Organizational Change Journey

Baker Consulting follows a holistic approach to helping people drive personal and professional growth, and development. The company begins by surveying clients’ employees to understand their belief systems. Insisting on not using Google to answer the questions, Baker Consulting aims to get genuine and realistic responses.

The response data is searched for common themes, and a strategy for organizational change is devised based on Baker Consulting’s training methodology. It examines the influences of historical trauma due to racism, poverty, and other issues, and conscious and unconscious biases through the method of shared analysis of “what,” “why,” and “how.” By conducting various activities focused on reflective practices and conversation-style dialogue, the company helps clients create brave workspaces where employees can express themselves honestly without shame, blame, or guilt.

As Baker Consulting implements a continuous development model to help clients sustain long-term results, it conducts sessions that last anywhere from six months to five years. The company also assesses the progress of organizational change endeavors by reviewing its work and checking if clients are paying attention to the initiatives by asking them relevant questions.

What enables Baker to deliver on his commitment to fight against social injustice and promote a culture of equity and belonging is the therapeutic and listening skills that he developed through his professional experience. With Baker’s thought leadership, Baker Consulting is at the forefront of transforming workplaces by creating a sense of belonging and building authentic relationships to help people achieve their personal and professional development goals.