Respecting Diversity in the Training Environment

In a train­ing room, as in the work­place as a whole, peo­ple have dif­fer­ent views, back­grounds, pref­er­ences, and learn­ing styles. When you facil­i­tate a train­ing event, respect­ing the diver­sity of your group is essen­tial to the over­all suc­cess of the ini­tia­tive. You have only a brief amount of time to ensure that every­one feels com­fort­able, and to set a tone of mutual respect among the group.

Below are some help­ful tips:

• Always treat par­tic­i­pants fairly and equally.
• Encour­age all par­tic­i­pants to share their thoughts and ideas.
• Call on par­tic­i­pants to respond to one another—not just to you.
• Each time you put par­tic­i­pants into pairs or tri­ads, cre­ate new work groups (rather than have them always work with the same people).
• Truly lis­ten to what each of your learn­ers has to say. Don’t dis­count any ideas or comments.
• Be aware that some par­tic­i­pants nat­u­rally learn a new skill faster than oth­ers do but that this doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean they learn it “better.”
• Encour­age every­one to see the worth of ideas that are not their own.
• Do your best to cre­ate a learn­ing envi­ron­ment in which every­one feels wel­come and important.

When you have a diverse train­ing group, it’s impor­tant to make sure from the out­set that every­one is on the same page regard­ing what’s expected of them and what they expect to gain from the train­ing. Start­ing out with a brief activ­ity in which they ver­bal­ize their expec­ta­tions (things like “no cell phone calls,” “come back from break on time,” etc.) can help to cre­ate a con­sen­sus regard­ing gen­eral guide­lines for a good train­ing experience.

A train­ing envi­ron­ment is an ideal place for par­tic­i­pants to learn from each oth­ers sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences. The fact that every­one is diverse and unique makes your learn­ing envi­ron­ment that much more col­lab­o­ra­tive. It would be pretty bor­ing if we were all the same!