jen briggs

I have been more often a proponent of training that promotes respect vs. scare-tactic regulatory mindsets. These two cases of women in male-dominated industries explain why we need to think deeper about bias, harassment, and discrimination training. Often we lump these three things together and don’t fully consider the intricacies. But, in doing so, we may miss the point with the people that we are trying to develop. Consider these cases –

Profile – female, millennial, Hispanic ethnicity, a multigenerational American citizen, monolingual English, educated. In a male-dominated industry of residential construction. Job: customer service, supply, and material sales.

Let’s get the harassment matter off the table right away. Her supervisor and male coworkers are respectful and even protective of her when it comes to harassment by customers. She’s tough and will go toe-to-toe with any man. She draws boundaries and will shut down any rude flirting or any other degrading behavior. It is a tough situation when it is the customers who make inappropriate comments, but she’s able to be direct and honest while keeping the sale. For her, this is a non-issue.

For her, what makes it harder is when you know you are experiencing discrimination and you don’t know why. It is those subtle and not so subtle interactions when she knows she’s been labeled and marginalized. For example, she has customers who will approach her speaking loudly and slowly. Because of her brown skin and more ethnic features, people treat her differently sometimes. These people want to make sure she can understand English. Perhaps these people think they are constructive by helping her to understand. But, the biased inference that she needs the help is beyond disrespectful.  I have yet to figure out why people think they can be understood better when they speak louder. She reacts by pulling out her best English vocabulary and responding with a strong intellect. Then there are the male customers who will walk right by her and go to one of the male employees because women don’t understand construction. She loves it when they are routed back to her because she is more knowledgeable and able to provide great service.

But, then there are people who treat her generally poorly. She wonders if it is her Hispanic look or her gender. There is also the issue of class. She is on one of the bottom rungs of a big-corporate machine. Being in a perceived subclass of poverty workers is the ugly icing on the cake of labels gone wrong.

All of her situations are with customers. Not her fellow coworkers. In this instance, the team is filled with respect and will bond together and support each other when customers act badly. There is no special training being done, simply healthy team dynamics, and a caring team leader. The team gives her emotional support to deal with these customers.

I sit and listen to her stories and my heart breaks. Perhaps it is time to differentiate the big three – harassment, discrimination, and bias – and develop training for each. There are different objectives and impacts needed based on the circumstances and style of the team and company. There is prescriptive training based on an unhealthy culture while another training is preventative. The best route is to be proactive in building healthy work relationships.  Labels and training categorization serves to help build basic understanding, but once we move beyond the basics they only obscure the complexity of the lesson and the broader, more ideal outcome.

The piece that underlies all of this is respect. When we are with another person, simply respect them. When we see someone being disrespected, we need to practice a gracious form of correction with love. The optimist in me wants to believe that the people that treat this woman poorly are not aware of their bias rather than believing they are just idiots. Regardless, there needs to be a change moment. We are capable of seeing each other as human beings. The labels we hold are fast becoming obsolete, but we continue to use them. The millennial generation is blended with 30% identifying as 2 or more races (see article), gender fluidity is common as is the mix of men and women expressing traditional masculine and feminine traits in different ways. Our old taxonomy of identifying ethnicities, races, genders, generations, religions, orientations, etc. needs to be challenged and changed, but this does not change the obligation of respect. It demands it.

In another instance, a woman working in beer distribution has an opposite situation. This company has gone heavy on harassment training. Now, she has noticed that the collegial team bonding meetings have been nearly eliminated for fear of something stupid happening. I’ve worked in the alcohol industry at a brewery and as a bartender for nearly two decades and stupid things have happened and it is an issue. But, this training focus in this specific instance is having a divisive impact on men and women. The men will now go out informally and are acting with great caution around their female colleagues. Rather than driving solidarity and respect, it is driving fear. Becuase of these now off-the-books team building sessions, women are at risk of being left out of the informal, yet important, work and industry information that is powerfully transmitted in informal settings.

When it comes to employee-specific training, there is the risk of focusing so much on the regulatory harassment type training that it starves the culture of respect and feeds the culture of fear. There are three main underlying forces at play. First, unconscious bias. We are all wired, and it affects how we interact. We need to surface this and deal with it. Second, respect. Respect can be expressed and received differently and more narrow norming of what respect looks like may be necessary. Third, power. Sometimes the wrong people are in power and create an environment of control and tacit approval. Sometimes power is condensed and needs to be distributed.

Some things to think about if you are in HR or Management:

• Be very cautious about doing check-the-box training. Don’t do a fear centered training driving divisiveness.
• Develop your model of corporate citizenship – your collective agreement on how people will show up in your work-world every day. What attitudes and actions will people aspire to live up to daily? What attitudes and actions are unacceptable? Set boundaries, cherish role models, and be disciplined about living them. Design structures of accountability and consequences as part of your model. Don’t be afraid of letting a results achiever go if he or she does not live up to the behavioral agreements. Redefine high performance as high results AND high behaviors.

If we can come together as business communities and create healthier, high performing companies I hope that our customers will follow suit and see that human dignity matters. For the many people with negative biases that leaked into their psyche from their stress or background, maybe, just maybe, we can set a new stage for new thinking. There is a case to be made that this type of human development is a good candidate for a CSR (corporate social responsibility) program that has an intent broader than the employee set. It can be a social intent that companies can lead and ripple through their stockholder and stakeholder communities.

I love it that this young woman in construction service is strong and sassy and can pull out her bag-of-comebacks to the people talking slow or going to the dude for “better” service. She is also able to do this will grace because she has a strong, healthy team standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

I wish we all lived in a world where discriminatory to harassing behaviors didn’t happen. It is up to us to create this world together and it’s not going to happen in training. Ready to take it on? You should be. Every day we build the bridge to our future, and we get to define what is on the other side.