Teams & Leaders

Diversity and Inclusion Fatigue — by Mauricio Velásquez

HOSTILITY

Do we have to keep talking about this?  Oh, a diversity workshop… why? You are ruining the workplace; we can’t have any fun anymore!”  Have you heard these wonderful, welcoming, open, pro-learning comments lately?    I had one participant (in front of all of his buddies) recently comment – “This session will probably be about the KKK, right?!”  Another participant in the same session said – “This is going to be a total waste of time (in front of HR)!”

Another participant even said to me (walked right up to me) recently – “Good luck keeping me awake.”  My response to all of them – “Now I am fired up, all of you are in the right workshop!  You have a bias about a workshop on bias?  This Bud is for you today!”  I just get fired up when I hear comments like these – like I am getting a shot of diversity steroids and nuclear waste mixed together.  Hecklers, you have to love them.  If I hate them – I am a huge hypocrite.  Understand don’t judge!

I turn into the incredible diversity training hulk – ha, ha – when I hear these kinds of comments.  Of course the easiest way to “push back against the hecklers” is to point blank ask them what they know about the workshop today that leads them to challenge me, the course content, the intentions of their employer, before the workshop has even started.   I specialize in hostile audiences and lately I am seeing more hostility than usual.

UNDERLYING FACTORS

You just have to read the newspaper or listen to the radio or tune into the “angry talking heads” on television every night to see what I am talking about.  Why are the “hecklers (hate mongers) coming out of the wood work?”  Why so much hate, so much vitriol, so much disrespect and a total lack of civility in the workplace?

• Change is upon us – demographics are our destiny and 2010 Census Data is sobering

• Struggling economy – money problems make some people “turn ugly”

• It is an election year – passions flare

• Domestic current events – school violence, hate crimes (always newsworthy), class issues

• International current events – terrorism, Arab Spring, tribal and religious conflict, class warfare, war,  strife, etc.

• Immigration issues are hot all over the world and finally,

• Diversity and Inclusion Fatigue!

Mauricio Velásquez
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