Tag: diversity training

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Coaching Is Not Mentoring: Underrepresented Employees Need Both

In a recent meeting with a major client my consultant team and I were faced with an unusual request.

A transgender executive working for the organization had been facing a series of small but cumulatively damaging setbacks in her career after many years of success. Her slow-motion derailment was harming the performance of her team, which was tasked with a high-stakes, high-visibility project. She had transitioned (from male- to female-presenting) two years earlier and she believed the perceived lag in her performance was not about her actual results, but about her now more-visible gender identity. The organization wanted to invest in the executive’s development and needed help finding her a coach.

It turned out I was the only one in the room who had experience working with transgender clients, but before I could gather more information, one of the leaders jumped in eagerly with a suggestion: “Well, why don’t we call up the local chapter of the Human Rights Campaign and see if anyone there can coach her?” Several heads nodded.

My heart sank. These educated, well-intended professionals had just made the same error too many of our clients make — confusing coaching with mentoring.

As a professional coach and former fitness instructor, there are parallels between the two disciplines that can be helpful in making a distinction between coaching and mentoring.

Before the modern fitness movement first began in the U.S., gyms, sports and various forms of dance and exercise already existed. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, programs such as Jazzercise emerged, and Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda helped popularize a whole new form of intense, rhythmic exercise done to upbeat music.

In those early years, almost anyone who was charismatic and a good dancer could lead an “aerobics” class. However, driven by increasing popularity, the exuberance of innovation soon gave way to widely varying levels of quality among aerobics classes and instructors, some of which seriously injured participants. Over time, the industry developed standards, ethics and certification guidelines so that today, fitness instructors are mostly well trained and accountable, and class participants enjoy both safety and effective guidance in meeting their wellness goals.

Coaching is similar in that the term “coaching” existed long before the coaching field, and some aspects of what we today refer to as “coaching” have always been performed by skilled therapists, bosses, clergy, healers, elders and even close friends. However, these similarities, as well as the recent explosion of the coaching field, have contributed to both confusion about what coaching is and widely varying degrees of quality among coaches even as the field has adopted certification procedures, a code of ethics and credentialing requirements.

The Elements of Professional Coaching

“Professional coaching” is not coaching like we see happening in sports. It’s not directing. Simply put, coaching is the facilitation of self-discovery in another person. This self-discovery is achieved through powerful and provocative questions, insightful feedback on what the coach is noticing, and a clear plan for action and accountability. Effective coaches are extraordinary listeners, highly creative, extremely agile and masterful at self-management — skills developed over months of training and years of practice.

Coaching is not giving advice, telling someone what to do, or showing someone how to perform a task. These functions are more accurately described as advising, mentoring or even consulting. Mentoring is a form of advising, in which the mentor’s role is to impart what the learner doesn’t have — knowledge, wisdom, skills and connections. Coaches can be effective even with minimal experience in their client’s field or industry, because the client possesses the “self” the coach helps them unlock and act from. In mentoring, the mentor has the answers; in coaching, the client has the answers.

Effective advising, mentoring and consulting often have coaching elements to them, but they are not technically coaching. It’s also true that some coaches incorporate advising or consulting in their work — for example, debriefing the results of an assessment or 360 — but when they do, they aren’t necessarily coaching. When I incorporate advising into my coaching, I always ask permission to do so, and verbally indicate when I am stepping in and out of coaching mode.

Being clear about what coaching really is, it is not about nitpicking semantics. When advising is called coaching, or mentoring is conflated with coaching, everyone involved misses out on the unique transformative power of a professional coaching relationship. People think they have experienced coaching, when they have not.

Professional coaches are to coaching what certified fitness instructors are to the fitness world. Here are some of the requirements:

  • Many professional coaches have completed a certification program, often accredited by the International Coach Federation, which requires up to 125 hours of training taking place over several months or longer. Some certification programs also require an exam, completion of hours observed by a mentor coach, and receiving coaching from a senior level coach. Coaches who complete certification become certified professional coaches or another designation bestowed by their certification program.
  • Some coaches, certified or not, choose to complete a credential, usually with the International Coach Federation. This requires at least 100 documented hours of coaching experience, passing an exam, and in some cases (depending on the type of credential and selected path), mentor coaching and/or the submission of recorded sessions for evaluation. Credentialed coaches (ACC, PCC or MCC) must complete continuing education to maintain their credential, which must be renewed every three years.
  • In sum, all credentialed coaches are trained, many credentialed coaches are certified, but not all certified coaches are credentialed. The latter case is similar to that of a social worker that has completed their MSW degree but is not yet licensed as a counselor.

Being clear about the qualifications that professional coaches possess is not about denigrating those who aren’t certified or credentialed. Many coaches who are not certified or credentialed are very skilled. But many of them are not. Some of them are not even doing coaching, and they are neither held to a professional code of ethics nor required to meet continuing education requirements.

Our clients trying to support their struggling transgender leader had good intentions, but have a common misunderstanding of what coaching entails. Suggesting that a person from the Human Rights Campaign would be qualified to coach a transgender executive just because they’re LGBTQ is like saying a person who’s good at arithmetic is qualified to do your tax returns, or a person with nice hair is qualified to cut yours. Professional coaches have a specialized, often highly developed skill set that should not be devalued or dismissed.

Both coaching and mentoring are critical to developing employees from underrepresented and marginalized identity groups. While we do need insightful, validating facilitators of our self-discovery, we also need competent role models to show us the way.

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Diversity Training in the Era of Trump

A few people have emailed me since the election wanting me to write something scathing and heated about the outcome, but I didn’t for two reasons. One, the less I talk about that situation the better I feel. I have to live it, as do many Americans, and that’s more than enough. Two, politics has its connections, but not necessarily a place in this workplace diversity-themed blog.

That changed when I ran across an NPR article detailing the drama diversity trainers are facing post-election. The piece, from writer Kat Chow, described it as a heightened sense of us vs. them, and spoke from multiple diversity consultants’ perspectives.

For instance, consider Dorcas Lind. As the election results rolled in and it became clear that Donald Trump would be the next president, Lind, founder and president of Diversity Health Communications, wondered if she should think about another career.

Lind was shocked when she saw how many people supported Trump — “the stretch of red in her district, a New Jersey suburb, which she said had once been celebrated for its diversity.” She experienced feelings of hopelessness and futility as she contemplated the amount of work that needed to be done and her marked lack of interest in doing it.

Like many, Lind associated a vote for Trump with a vote for intolerance, the antithesis of strategic diversity and inclusion practice. But Chow wrote that many consultants are expecting an increase — however slight — in calls for business in the near future. Why? “The corporate world is a microcosm of the larger world. People who voted for Trump work at the same companies as those who voted for Hillary Clinton or other candidates. And with a contentious post-election environment, employees will inevitably clash over matters of race.”

Basically, HR and business leaders will be super busy, and many have little to no experience dealing with the kind of problems that will crop up thanks to the political polarization in the country right now. Lind said leaders will need to create an entirely new language to deal with the election aftermath. It sounds exhausting.

Chow also interviewed Luby Ismail, head of Connecting Cultures, a diversity consulting business in the Washington, D.C., area. Ismail, an Egyptian-American Muslim, helps companies like Sodexo, Nike and Walt Disney Co. better understand American Muslims and Arab-Americans. She said the quandary in the workplace — should we talk about politics and religion or not — is tricky because right now, since people actually need to talk about these things. They’re actively processing what’s happened and what are the potential implications for them and for their families.

wf_1216_atwhitsend_usthem760There is no if. That us vs. them feeling, Trump vs. Clinton, or whatever camp you may fall into, will filter into the workplace. To ignore it, feeling that avoidance of this particular issue is possible because professional courtesy will mitigate or suppress issues, simply won’t work. To coin the popular vernacular, people are feeling some type of way about the current state of political affairs. And that’s putting it mildly.

Now more than ever diversity executives have to ensure that everyone’s concerns are addressed — including white men, said Doug Harris, head of the Kaleidoscope Group, a Chicago-based diversity company. “I think right now there’s a temperament within society of exclusion on both sides of the table,” Harris said. “And those who may have been seen to have been historically included are feeling just as excluded as everyone else.”

On the one hand, that shared sentiment might be used as a connector, common ground — however wretched and ill conceived — but it doesn’t make things any easier for diversity trainers and consultants who have to deal with this angst on top of historically rooted bias, ignorance, racism and all the other dimensions of diversity that we shake our heads over.

Lind said one can’t think of all challenges as equal because the rhetoric at play is, “One side has lost, one side has won, and everybody needs to get together and move forward for all Americans in the country.” Diversity executives and consultants are left to walk a very narrow and rocky line to keep everyone engaged in productive dialogue and to promote positive action and behavioral change.

Even using the word diversity before the word consultant is a problem for some. Leah P. Hollis, president of Patricia Berkly LLC in Philadelphia, specializes in workplace bullying. She said as soon as she uses the word diversity “she loses the room.”

It’s tough. Rather, it was tough before, and it’s even tougher now. Diversity executives have to not only pursue their individual missions to advance equality and tolerance and strategic diversity management for their respective workforces and businesses, they have to navigate a sticky layer of political sensitivity as well. I don’t envy them the task.

It reminds me of an old Guns N’ Roses tune, “Welcome to the Jungle.”

Kellye Whitney is associate editorial director for Workforce. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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Why Cultural Sensitivity Training Is Ineffective and Insensitive

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12Lately I’ve been getting inquiries about doing cultural sensitivity training. Such requests usually rub me the wrong way and prompt my curiosity. What’s underneath is usually benign and sometimes inspiring, but requires some education and exploration.

Cultural sensitivity rubs me wrong because it’s ineffective and even insensitive. There are three reasons. First, it indirectly calls out a limiting belief that the solution is that “we” need to be more “sensitive” to “them.” This belief is well-intended, but often has negative effects. Typically it carries an unspoken, even unconscious racial tone — a belief that white people need to be more sensitive to people of color, or to a particular racial or ethnic group. It reinforces a perceived or real power imbalance — a notion that the solution to a problem is that I be more sensitive to you. This implies that you are fragile and need to be handled gently so you don’t break. It also implies that the success of our relationship is entirely my responsibility — perhaps because you are incapable of being a full adult or equal partner. My colleague Simma Lieberman makes a strong case for how sensitivity training is patronizing and even damaging to the targets of the sensitivity.

The “we need to be more sensitive to them” belief is incomplete and imbalanced, which is why white people tend to eye roll or resist anything called sensitivity training. Also, communities of color and non-dominant groups in general don’t want cultural sensitivity training, nor do they want to be the subjects of such training. They don’t want more compassion. They want meaningful action, tangible results, an inclusive culture and equitable treatment — a work environment where everyone feels safe and welcome to bring their full and best selves to work. Perhaps in your organization the intended subjects of cultural sensitivity want something else. Have you asked?

Second, not only does “cultural sensitivity” training (indirectly) place responsibility entirely on white/dominant group members, but it also doesn’t usually build new skills. Participants are given generalized, sometimes stereotypical information about cultural or racial groups, perhaps walked through ways to build awareness, then sent back to their job duties tasked with being more sensitive. This can create an environment of walking on eggshells that is a barrier to effective communication and authentic relationships. Because what does “sensitive” mean? What does it look like? How does it feel? What are the behaviors that come across that way? Those are the key, more meaningful questions to ask.

Rather than just learn about other groups, we need to develop intercultural effectiveness — the ability to be creative and flexible, connect authentically and equitably, and communicate effectively across human differences however and whenever they show up.

Third, cultural sensitivity training rarely has clear goals that get at the root of whatever problem needs to be solved. What is the problem that cultural sensitivity training is intended to remedy? Often it’s poor morale, communication disconnects, the fallout of a conflict, customer complaints or any number of human relationship problems. And what are the undesirable outcomes stemming from this human relationship problem? Attrition? Low productivity? High rate of major errors? Lawsuits? Lost market share or profit?

Getting clear about the problem allows you to get clear about your goals. What is the intended goal of the cultural sensitivity training, or your desired outcomes in general? Implementing a training program that has no goals, measurable results or clear outcomes tied to organizational mission and values is a waste of time and resources and one reason they fail. Is the goal more effective communication and authentic relationships? More joy, ease and humor in the workplace?

And what will you have once you have those things, that the organization values? Improved efficiency? Greater employee or customer satisfaction that leads to better results? Being better equipped for growth or change? Wilder innovation and creativity? Larger market share and higher profit? Once you know the goal, the next question is: What will get us there? Leadership coaching, better accountability or process improvement may be the answer, not training.

Knowing the true problem that cultural sensitivity training is intended to address, the organizational and business goals that will be served once that problem is remedied, aligning good intentions with positive and equitable impacts, and building effective communication skills across your organization will set you up for better success. Who knows, you might not need cultural sensitivity training after all!

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3 Surprising Reasons Diversity Training Fails

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12One of the most common requests that companies like mine receive from organizations is to do training. When done right and well, training increases knowledge, builds awareness and teaches effective behaviors. When done wrong or poorly, training is a waste of money at best, and harmful at worst.

To be effective and provide a high return on investment, diversity training should:

  • Be directly and clearly tied to measurable, meaningful business goals.
  • Yield a measurable improvement in participants’ awareness, knowledge and skills.
  • Be conducted by a company or individual who:
  • Conducts a thorough needs assessment around your training request, listens well and makes specific, well-supported recommendations that will meet your goals (which may look different from what you initially requested).
  • Is a good fit for your organization’s culture, values, goals, geography and stage of the D&I journey you’re in.
  • Is a strategic partner in meeting your needs — which means he or she will advise you and even push back in service of your goals and excellent results!
  • Demonstrates a concrete, meaningful return on your investment of dollars and the time participants spend in training. (If your training partner doesn’t know what a level 3 or 4 evaluation is, find someone who does!)
  • Build skills that are supported and sustained by your organization’s culture, systems and processes.
  • Be only one element of your organization’s broader commitment to excellence and high performance.

 

Having these elements in place will probably get you a B or B+ training. But to obtain a high ROI and an “A grade” diversity training, ensure the training includes at least two of these three additional surprising — yet critical — pieces:

  • Knowledge of how our brains work and why “bad stuff” persists despite all “the good stuff” we do. Exciting advances in brain science and evolutionary biology give us new and inspiring insight into our mammalian and primate heritage, and how most of our behavior is driven by unconscious biases outside our awareness, control and intention. Educating participants about how unconscious bias works and why our brains function the way they do opens up dialogue, awareness and receptivity in a way that the old “respect each other and be sensitive to differences” script hasn’t. It also tends to inspire buy-in, individual responsibility and meaningful change as long as unconscious bias training includes teaching effective behaviors that mitigate the negative effects of bias.
  • Sufficient work on the necessary internal self-awareness and emotional skills which build long-term competence that can apply to a variety of situations. A training that provides lists of tips or “do’s and don’ts” is narrow and even dangerous. Not only do such lists tend to (unintentionally) narrow our thinking or provide a false sense of security, they can reinforce stereotypes. They can also be incomplete or simply inaccurate since any identity group is extremely diverse and cultures are constantly changing. Effective training should build emotional intelligence, critical thinking, resilience, creativity, problem-solving abilities and a well-stocked toolbox of communication skills.
  • Attention to power differences and how these affect relationships, communication and outcomes. True, the workplace isn’t a democracy. But ignoring the existence of power imbalances — in your organization, on your team and in the world at large — is a tremendous blind spot. Poorly navigated power structures and ineffectively wielded power are demoralizing, inefficient and expensive. Looking at power differences and how these are working (or not) may be messy, but offers tremendous potential in clearing a path to the brilliance and excellence that are the rewards of a meaningful commitment to D&I.