More on Training and Microaggressions

 I was talking to a classmate of mine and what she said made me think of the dynamic between educator vs clinician. In my organization, we have trainers who have worked for many years in the field (or on the work site) and become trainers vs those who were trainers and have not been in the field. 

The trainers with field history have terrific, real-world stories about life and work in the field over many years. The trainers create zones of psychological safety, know how to reinforce concepts, and keep the class engaged. We get complaints many times about "story time" occurring too often in one case, and material being too dry in the other. 

Additionally, a recent survey showed that around 30% of our workforce in our learning community was non-native English speakers, yet our trainers are not allowed to train in anything but English. Speaking of analogies that might be lost by the intended audience, story time can easily lose our non native English speaker and in many cases the non native English speakers can't understand the content much less the stories. 

There's a movement to change this dynamic to help non native English speakers be more involved in courses especially by having training in their native language.  

Regardless, we have the same war between professional trainers with little practical experience and field workers with experience galore and they struggle to be effective trainers as many organizations. I wrote in a microaggressions paper about a presentation that a speaker gave to primarily English speaking executives, except he gave the entire presentation in Spanish. He asked them to understand that this is how it felt to a non native English speaker in some of our classes. I wonder if we had some of our trainers take classes delivered in a different language, or if they used analogies and stories that were from far outside our industry if that might help our trainers become better, more effective trainers. 

Then there was the perspective around analogies. As one who has bandied about my share of football or other sports terms, I need to be more circumspect and careful in making sure my terminology is understood by everyone. For some reason, I thought about different pockets of cultural and gender dominance in my own workplace. Unlike where I used to work, contracting in the energy industry (which is 90%-95% male) the non-profit training organization I work with now is the exact opposite (90% female) and interestingly enough predominantly hispanic. I am a white male executive, and when I was VP of operations I had about 10 men and 45 women reporting to me. 

Most of the men were former field workers who I could speak to easily and use similar colloquialisms, but the women were predominantly Hispanic and new to the workforce, most of them under 25 years old. I’m sure they felt their share of times where after talking to me they wondered “what in the world did he mean when he said that?” But I know I’ve felt the same in reverse. So often I’ll find myself in a conversation with two native Spanish speakers and be left totally in the cold. Just as others have to adjust and come to appreciate those things which were foreign to you to get along (football and sports analogies) I too had to adapt and overcome. I started taking Duolingo Spanish just so I could keep up with many of the conversations. I still have a ways to go. How much of the challenge is dependent on the non-dominant person or group to keep up and catch up do you think? vs how much is it on the dominant group to ensure everyone is getting it?