photo credit: PRSA National
Managing Diversity In The Workplace
After a relatively quiet summer, I’ve headed into a string of paid speaking engagements for the fall with types of organizations ranging from colleges to non-profits groups with some further opportunities with corporate businesses. The interesting thing is that the majority of these groups have requested my ‘Kick Down Diversity Barriers For Success’ presentation so it seems that so far, it is still groups that recognize the importance of managing diversity in the workplace or college campus rather than individuals.
What I mean here is that whenever I get a request or inquiry about my diversity training presentations, it is always related to an organization in some way. The organization, whether a college or company, sees issues with diversity with internal and/or external people on a day to day basis.
Individuals Still Do Not Really Care About Diversity
Individuals on the other hand, still do not really care about diversity, at least not as much compared to organizations. For groups where there is a collection of individuals from many different companies, ie., a more personal development focus, diversity is still not considered a topic of prime importance at least with respect to topics for guest speakers.
A good example of this is Toastmasters. There are still Toastmasters clubs that request my motivational keynote based on my book, The Life Champion In You. Individuals at Toastmasters recognize the importance of personal development and motivation. Diversity on the other hand, is not viewed as an individual training topic. It is viewed more as a training topic for a company to get involved with.
Individuals see organizations like companies or colleges are the ones who have to be managing diversity in the workplace rather than as a personal development issue. Of course, after people sit through my diversity training, they realize that this viewpoint is not correct. Diversity training is very much indeed valid as a topic for personal development or personal growth.
Just to illustrate another example of this type of perception contrast, the topic of investing would be one that more individuals would be interested rather than organizations. Investing is geared towards the individual rather than entire companies (unless it’s about institutional investing). I see this type of contrast with diversity topics.
Position Diversity Better For Individuals
Perhaps what I might do in the future is position my diversity training presentation better for individuals in addition to organizations. When I organize bigger events in the future where there are multiple speakers and presentations, I may slide in my ‘Kick Down Diversity Barriers For Success’ talk somehow but position it in a way that individuals will still find it worthwhile to attend.
If you have any ideas on how to do this, ie., making individuals realize that diversity is indeed an important topic not just for big organizations, please feel free to share in the comments.
To see my current presentations available for different types of organizations, see my speaking programs section.
