Question: What do you think about pre and post assessments?
Let me start by saying I’m not an assessment person. So, I would talk to the folks in the organization that do that as part of their job. I like to give people reflections questions a few weeks before the training, like: Think about ways you already effectively create equity & inclusion in everything you do; Think about one or two situations that happen in your day-to-day life that have to do with equity & inclusion that you want some more tools and skills to effectively engage.
You may want to give them socialization questions, such as: Think about the messages you heard growing up as well as the interactions you had with respect to race, gender, disability, class, etc. So, think about what’s the content you want to teach and then develop a few reflection questions for participants.
I’ll often ask people to think about, “Where do you feel stuck? What are the skills you wish people you work with had?”
I build my foundational workshops so much around storytelling and so if you want to have people do some pre-work and you don’t want to have an assessment, some reflection questions may help them come in ready to tell some stories and be more open to learning.
QUESTION: How might you coach someone who is the only one in the organization and they’re exhausted?
ANSWER: I bet some of you all can relate. And, no one else is really stepping up and they keep getting more requests. It’s not their job, but this is someone in an apparent minoritized identity, they have some pretty good capacity around equity inclusion and they’re like, “What do I do?”
So, I have a couple of initial thoughts:
You will keep getting asked/used for these one-off trainings until (a) you say no or (b) the organization feels enough pressure that they need to do something else. So, I would encourage you to think about how to increase the pressure in the organization which you could do in several ways.
One is, you could review the recent survey data from employees and the customers you serve and see if there’s anything in there about climate, satisfaction, the need for greater cultural competencies in leadership as well as employees. You can also go talk to the folks that are doing HR and just generally see what the climate and the culture is like. This is how you can find out if there is anything – not specific examples – but some patterns that would be useful for for leadership to know about around climate culture dissatisfaction.
Another approach is to talk to your leaders about:
What are the competencies that they think people currently have
What are the competencies they want people to have to better serve the increasingly diverse clients/customers you serve while also creating an inclusive work environment.
And then, you can ask them, “On a scale of zero (not at all) to ten (completely), where do you currently think people are?” Follow-up with asking, “Is there any way that we can assess this?” Maybe you can talk with supervisors about what dilemmas that they run into? As well as some of the difficult situations employees talk about.
I have a tool that I call the Self-Assessment for Inclusion Practitioners that might be useful. Some people send that out to their entire department to have people reflect back;
Here are my current skills
Here’s where I want to be
Here are my gaps.
What you want is any kind of assessment that could help build the “leadership case”, i.e., the case for why more resources are needed, either investing in building your capacity, or doing a train-a-trainer to get more people equipped to deliver training. So you’re not the only one (or one among a few) who are doing this as a second or third job beyond your other daily functions and responsibilities.
Question: “I’d like to design a 200 or 300-level course, how do I assess the learning needs of participants?”
Answer: The 200-level workshops are for going to the next level. You may want to think about learning outcomes and start with “what would you do if?” since you already have the foundation laid. Have them come up with three more difficult situations they want some peer feedback on. I would create not only High Five buddies, but also a core group or a cohort of four to five people that meets a few times in the session.
You can begin in the large group, sharing one or two examples where someone shares a scenario, and everybody writes down what they would do and then you discuss. I recommend having PAIRS on the slide to reinforce it and also have it in the packet again. After one or two scenarios with the large group, put them into small groups with ten to fifteen minutes where they can work through two or three scenarios. Alert them every five minutes so that they keep moving through the examples.
After having participants to enter from “what would you do if?” then talk about times they didn’t react effectively. You may want to offer my four Fs; fight, flight, freeze, flounder, so they can talk about situations they did not handle as effectively. This can help create a learning environment where it’s okay to not know everything.
Even though it’s called a 200-level, it still needs humility. Once you have had them talk through this a bit, ask them to write out a situation they did not respond to very effectively. Then you can fold it up, trade it, and bring them back to that same group to read the notes aloud or read all twenty aloud and then invite people in the small group relate in. You’re not asking them to fix it, but to say “yeah, I had that situation too, and I have felt this”. Then have then identify possible ways to address similar situations in the future.
I would also focus on the Unproductive Privileged Behaviors and Attitudes worksheet and have people in privileged affinity spaces identify and share about which ones they have panned, which ones they have done, and ways to effectively interrupt these behaviors and attitudes in ourselves and in others.
For a 201 or 301 level workshop, you may want to use triggers work from my book, Navigating Difficult Situations, with a focus on their reaction. You could focus on how you navigate your own reactions to situations where you trigger yourself into the four F’s and then teach them some of the skills to navigate themselves.
The 300-level could be the next step. It could be based around what to do when someone else is triggered. There are a lot of tools and skills both in the book, Turn the Tide, and also in webinars, Navigating Difficult Situations.
If someone is at a 300 level, then I would want them to be doing role play scenarios and “what would you do if?” examples. Sometimes in 200 and 300-level groups I still have them come up with a scenario that’s relatively difficult. Not something that needs HR intervention, but on a scale of how difficult (zero to ten) like a three or four. Something that can be resolved with a few interactions, some sharing, some interrupting, some dialogue.
I would have each group come up with a demonstration, where they develop to the point of conflict or when things get tricky, and then in pairs of two teams, team A does their demonstration to the point of conflict, while Team B has a moment to write down what they might do. Then you can discuss what they might do. After the discussion, team A redoes the demonstration with two people from team B who have volunteered to be the facilitators. The facilitators then try to figure out how to navigate. After they have completed the demonstration, you debrief it and then you switch.
Team B shows their situation up to the conflict, Team A gets to write down what they would do, talk about it, etc. Notice that I am scaffolding the capacity for them to do it. Now, when you have Team B redo the scenario, you know they’ll probably throw in a few more things, and it can be one person or two who engage and try to work through it. Then, again, you’ll debrief it.
The live role-playing activity encourages movement from “what would you do if?” to then practicing it, debriefing, and getting more tools for navigating increasingly difficult and triggering situations.
What if you get asked to train, but have never done it before?
Question: “Someone asked me to do a training on diversity, but I’ve never done one before. I just happen to be a person of color, so of course they thought I could do a diversity workshop. I don’t know where to start.”
Answer: I would start by going back to talk to the person that asked you to do it and ask them some basic questions like, “Where do you think the organization wants all employees to be? What kinds of skills, knowledge, capacities do we want them all to be able to do? And Where do you think they are now?”
And then ask if they can break that down maybe by level: leaders, middle managers, entry level folks, folks that have maybe one-year, five-year, ten-year experience in the organization. You don’t have to do all of these, but you really want the person that asked you to outline where they think our folks are, the vision they have, their strategic plan, and what they want people to gain in the time frame of the session.
Then you can negotiate what you can do in the time frame they have asked for. If they really say we only have an hour, you may want to see if you can do a series. I hope that most organizations will realize that these skills are just like budgeting and supervision – they are long-term investments in people that happen over time. People come to equity, inclusion & diversity with all sorts of pre-determined ideas, feelings, and life experiences.
These workshops are different than learning how to budget, though people come in with triggers around budgeting, but there’s even more when you start talking about diversity and inclusion. So, what you can do is highlight the leadership case and why it’s important. You may also include some “what could you do if” scenarios.
When I think about the design, there’s act one, where you warm people up and think about why are we here? This may include a leader introducing and framing the day – here’s why we’re here, here’s how it relates to the strategic plan, here’s our expectations of you, so when you go back we want you to meet with your supervisor and talk about what you’ve learned.
Then you will introduce yourself. You can tell some stories about how you used to be less aware/less skilled, what happened, and maybe a little more about your capacity. But I think it’s great as facilitators and trainers if we include a story in the design, that shows how recently we were not very effective, how quickly we learned, and how we’re now more effective. The goal is not to try and be the expert, but to highlight how I’m just like you; I’m on a learning journey and we’re on this learning journey together.
Early in the design workshop you want to get people moving and reflecting on the current state. I like to do things like talk about a time you really felt you mattered in organization and what was it that helped you feel valued and respected. Talk about a time you felt marginalized and what was that like. Not using any names. Have people tell those stories in maybe groups of three and then share them. What you’re doing is creating a container for authentic conversation, engagement, telling stories. That’s what I think is creative about designs.
When I started out thirty-five years ago, I would find a really fun activity and think I could just do it. I didn’t strategically think about where the participants were, how ready or willing they were to engage in a level of work they need to do. I didn’t think about their current capacity. But I’ve learned that you can be willing and want to learn, but if you’re very early – say skill set is zero to ten. Zero being nothing, and mis-respond to every kind of diversity dynamic and Ten is knowing everything and being very effective. Many people in the workshops that I do will say that they’re six, seven, eight, but once I start working, they’re maybe to two, three, four. And I think that’s a pretty good guess of where people are.
When you’re designing, get to know who they are, what the leaders want and then explore what kind of activities might help achieve the learning goals. Mostly, it’s about scaffolding the learning in ways that keep people engaged. Pretty early I might give them a list of ten critical difficult situations/microaggressions that happen in the organization. You can collect those from your colleagues, from employee resource groups, from customers and just take all the names and indicators out.
An early ice breaker, after they warm up a bit, could put them into small groups and ask them to pick a scenario. Ask them how confident and competent they feel that they could respond effectively in the situation. Have them write down what they might do.
Some of them may be surprised or feeling unsure what to do, but they don’t have to stand up and tell you how they would do it, it’s just about helping them recognize that these are the kinds of situations we’re going to talk about today so that we can create an inclusive work environment and serve our increasingly diverse customers, and help them be much more effective in serving our customers.
Question: I’d like help with new and engaging design ideas.
A common trap is to overuse the telling and teaching styles: giving information, whether it’s statistics or data about the organization and the clients you serve, or the leadership case & why we all should be doing more about diversity, equity & inclusion. While this information is useful, people will not remember most of it AND they may resent having to sit through another boring workshop.
I believe we need to be much more experiential & engaging in trainings. Start by doing a thorough needs assessment to find out what participant want to learn, what are the dilemmas in the organization, and what skills people want. You can ask them for the types of situations they needs skills to handle better either with colleagues or customers.
You can ask them what they already do to successfully to create inclusion as well as what issues of diversity that they want to know more about. Also ask them how they like to learn, how they learn best.
This type of pre-work may get them more willing and interested in attending.
And their input will give you many ideas for activities that get them engaged, such as: role playing ways to respond to difficult situations, case studies to analyze how to engage, common microaggressions that occur in the organization and how to interrupt them. In the course we will review 50+ experiential activities that can spice up workshops, including: stations activities, fish bowls, simulations, etc.
If it’s a two or three-day event, I might have them do a pre-reading and then give some reflection questions. Then in between day one & day two, I would have them do some homework. And even if it’s just a two-day event or a day-and-a-half event, that overnight can be a critical time for having people reflect on what they learn and practice some of the tools form the workshop. The I have them start the next morning in pairs to share their reflections and observations.
Too many organizations do one shot trainings. A better approach is to set-up a series that people attend over time. This way, you can give them homework in-between sessions.
A new idea is to make short video clips for people to watch in-between sessions. In short 3-8+ minutes clips you can describe scenarios or case studies and have them to apply the skills and concepts covered so far as they think about how they might engage/resolve the situations.
You can also send out videos of people responding to common workplace situations with the caveat that these are just a few ways to respond, not the perfect or only ways. And ask them to reflect how they might respond differently?
If you anticipate that people may enter feeling resistant, you could give some videos clips or written scenarios as prework and ask them to come prepared to discuss ways to engage effectively. If they review the prework, they may get a flavor for you as well as the workshop content; and may come in less resistant and more open to learning.
What I find is if I give more than 10-12 pages of readings, I don’t think most people do it. So, I tend to make the workshop so full and engaging that people leave wanting more and then, they want to do the follow up activities that I send them.
