• All breakout activities for today can be found on this page.
• Please keep the tab open for ease.
• Scroll to each new activity when the time comes.
• Please make sure that all voices are heard and select a speaker to share a summary of what has been discussed. 

Breakout Activity One: Reclaiming Career Confidence

Paired Discussion (10 minutes)

Instructions

Share one or two examples from your Confidence Audit audit with a partner.

Partners help by identifying additional strengths they hear in the story.

Prompt:

Listening to your partner, what strengths or capabilities do you hear that they may not have recognised themselves?

This step helps reinforce external validation, which is powerful for confidence building.

Purpose

This reflective activity helps participants reconnect with their strengths, achievements and lived-experience capabilities. Many people underestimate their value because they focus on barriers rather than the skills they have developed through navigating them.

The aim is to help participants recognise the expertise they already carry and translate it into career confidence.

Additional Questions (if you have time):

• What strengths surprised you?

• What capabilities have you underestimated?

• How might you communicate these strengths in career conversations?

Breakout Activity Two: Moving Forward

Team Discussion (10 minutes)

Instructions

1. Your team leader is the person born in the earliest month of the year. Guide your team through allocated questions.

2. Participants discuss allocated questions and select a speaker to share a summary on return to the main room.

3. Please ensure all voices are heard.

Team 1 (Room One)

Team 2 (Room Two)

Team 3 (Room Three)

Team 1 (Room One) – Organisational Systems

1. How does your organisation currently identify or develop future leaders?
2. Do these processes rely on informal perceptions or visible confidence, rather than evidence of impact?
3. What barriers might disabled staff or other underrepresented colleagues face in being recognised as leaders?

Team 2 (Room Two) – Reframing Leadership Potential

1. What alternative leadership qualities might organisations overlook? (For example: empathy, systems thinking, problem-solving, collaboration.)
2. How might lived experience contribute to leadership capability?
3. What strengths do disabled or other underrepresented colleagues often bring that could strengthen leadership teams?

Team 3 (Room Three) – Moving Forward

1. What changes could help organisations recognise leadership potential more fairly?
2. How can individuals advocate for their leadership potential?
3. What role can allies, managers and sponsors play in recognising and supporting diverse leadership talent?

Additional Breakout Activity: Common Biases that can be present in Job Interviews

• Discuss the definitions below with your team and write down the type of bias which relates to each definition. Matching a letter (definition) to a number (type of bias)
  
• For example, your first answer is A6: First Impression Bias
• No speaker is needed for this activity.
• If you finish quickly, discuss any examples of these biases you may have witnessed.

Your first answer is A6. First Impression Bias - related to how a candidate presents themselves and behaves in the first few minutes of an interview. It’s one of the primary reasons behind bad hiring decisions. When you initially like someone, you tend to ask easier questions and look for things that confirm your positive impression.

B. It’s natural to feel more at ease with someone who shares similarities with you. These differences exist in how we express our emotions, too. According to a 2019 study by Lucy Zhang Bencharit., the way candidates share their excitement has a profound impact on hiring managers’ decisions. Candidates who shared a similar background with the recruiters—and expressed emotions similarly to them—were hired more often.

C. related to how you perceive candidates’ body language, the way they dress, and diverse non-verbal cues. These can include their ability to maintain eye contact, the strength of their handshake, or their posture, among others. For example, you might feel that a weak handshake is a red flag, but in fact, it doesn’t relate to candidates’ knowledge and experience. 

D. the assumption that someone will perform in a specific way in a job because they belong to a given group. These can be related to the candidate’s nationality, ethnicity, gender, age, among other characteristics. For example, you could assume that a 50-year-old system administrator is not knowledgeable of the latest trends, but their age has, in fact, nothing to do with their skills.

E. when you believe that what the candidate did once would be what they always do in a similar situation. For example, if they were nervous during the interview, you might assume they’re always nervous. 

F. remembering your last candidates better, while not clearly recalling the first interviews you did for a given position. This could mean that the last person you see might feel like a better fit for the job—simply because you remember them better. Take detailed notes and review them often to not fall prey to this bias. 

G. related to the perceived attractiveness of candidates is most often unconscious—but might be particularly strong.

H. means that you’re prone to comparing the last candidate to the one you interviewed before that. You anchor their performance and your expectations to the performance of another interviewee, which means that your judgment is not neutral. If the previous candidate did poorly, the next one might seem a much better fit—even if they’re not actually qualified for the role. 

I. We hear all the time that we should trust our instincts. In the context of hiring, however, this is actually an expression of unconscious bias and shouldn’t be the reason that motivates your hiring choices.