We diversity and inclusion trainers are in the persuasion and influence business with the task to change the hearts and minds of adult learners. This is a difficult proposition since as we get older, we tend to not embrace change very well. You will have to maximize your efforts to help your pupils, many of them who are set in their ways, to manage the volatility, uncertainty, constant change and ambiguity that come from inclusive workplaces. It almost sounds counter intuitive but we trainers must make change work even while the work is changing.
The difficulty of convincing grown-up people who need to change their beliefs and behaviors over time has the potential to wear you down. You will be tempted to fall victim to group think, imposter syndrome, what will people think phobia, emotional terrorism and your inner glass ceiling as you begin to trash talk yourself. You unleash your inner tyrant.
Your inner critic will take over and cause you to doubt your ability and existence as a trainer. You may succumb to a fixed mind set which suggests that your potential is pre-determined by the criticism you receive as a trainer. That the feedback you receive from your presentations feels overly personal. You become risk adverse, play it safe and stick solely to things that you know. You start to see your work as a threat instead of a challenge.
Our inner critic becomes louder and louder as we step into the courageousness that our role as diversity and inclusion trainers demands: (1) Am I willing to be uncomfortable; (2) Am I willing to make other people uncomfortable and (3) Am I willing to be wrong?
As Joe Gerstandt, a diversity and inclusion consultant once said: “We should all have the courage to live a life true to ourselves and not the lives others expect of us.”
I saw this on someone’s t-shirt recently. “I may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I would rather be someone’s energy drink.”
I have found that courageousness can be nurtured by embracing a growth mindset. I make peace with the fact that I may fail from time to time but will view these setbacks as learning opportunities. I will listen to my inner champion which suggests that my growth potential is not controlled by others but by me. As a result, I will welcome feedback both constructive and non-constructive because I have embraced the fact these experiences will help me grow.
I also learned to stop being such a people pleaser. If we look deep inside ourselves, we would probably conclude that we are all people pleasers. It starts as soon as we come out of our mother’s womb when we set out on a life long journey to please adults and authority figures in our lives. I quickly found out it is impossible to please all my customers. I had to make peace with the possibility that it is likely I am going to disappoint someone during a training. I learned my long-term objective should be excellence not perfection. I accepted the reality that I was going to make some short-term mistakes. I had to guard against those vulnerabilities turning into long-term failures.
Despite all the conditioning I did to strengthen my training muscles, there were times when my fuel tank ran on empty. Occasionally when I did not look forward to providing a training I grinded through the event just to get it over with. Sometimes I was micro-managed by a host supervisor who was trying to tell me how to do my job. At other times I had to provide training when training was not the right remedy for my clients. You will have days when you must check off the box with your C-game. Just make sure those moments are the exception rather than the rule. View these bumps in the road as bouncing forward instead of backward. Understand that failure is a short-term journey to greatness waiting to happen.
One thing I do when dark clouds encircle me on the training circuit is to get back on the saddle and drown myself into getting better at every phase of diversity and inclusion training. I remind myself that to be the trainer I have never been, I need to do things that I have never done before.
What soon follows are words of appreciation from my customers that I place in a “gratefulness folder.” I use these impact statements like investments in a bank account. Fully realizing that interest rates go up and down just like my experiences as a diversity and inclusion trainer ebb and flow. Whenever things get tough for me in the training arena, I make a withdrawal from my thankfulness account that transitions me through a drought period ever confident that happiness is close by with the next training.
I also rely on my love of exercise to keep me balanced in my career as a trainer. I try to run every day normally after my trainings are done. I find that jogging not only strengthens me physically but allows me to release all the stress and cortisol my body has built up over a long day of training.
Find what works for you. For some folks, meditation or yoga gets them back into the game. Maybe you have a network of friends, staff or family you can decompress with. Possibly a walk in the park with your pet will do the trick. At the end of the day, it is important to take care of the trainer, so the trainer takes care of our most important people-our customers.
