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Soft Skills – Communication & Sensitivity, An Overview:

Related to respectful communication is our next soft skills – Diversity and Inclusion.  You may not think of this as a soft skill, but it really is because it’s about sensitivity and that’s not something you teach / master / and are done with. This skill needs to be developed  and maintained within ourselves.

Diversity starts at the beginning of your training development. From the artwork / graphics you choose to use, location, training dates, and more. This lesson asks us to explore our own approach to incorporating diversity and inclusion into our training, and how we might better do so in the future.  Our programs need to acknowledge the diversity of our learners, and we need to be able to encourage them to express themselves and learn together. So let’s take a closer look at this important topic.

Developing Training with Diversity and Inclusion in Mind

Post #5 – Share on the discussion forum the challenges of teaching a diverse audience. Share some of your experiences / solutions with one another as well.

(Share your thoughts below in the comments section.)

• Incorporating Diversity – The Center for Teaching Innovation, Cornell University
• 3 Ways to Make Your Training More Inclusive
• Harvard Implicit Association Test – This website provides a variety of IAT tests you can choose from to explore your own implicit bias’ – those you may not be aware of.

DIVERSITY CHECKLIST

This exercise is designed to help us understand the many facets that may impact who we are, our beliefs, our values, and more. Download the DIVERSITY CHECKLIST here, and follow the instructions.

These are all characteristics that we tend to “group” people together by, and may influence our assumpotions about them. Now multiply this by the number of people in your training, and it is easy to see how diverse our audiences are.  Unfortunately, as trainers we often develop content / activities as though everyone were like us.

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