Let’s talk about what matters →
I sat down with the manager of a 300-employee office in blue-collar Arkansas. She had a new employee who was non-binary and intersex, who used they/them pronouns, and whose legal gender marker was “X” for “other.”
She didn’t want to have to have this conversation. She wanted the employee to just show up and work, and be treated the same as everyone else – but legislators writing laws way over her head made that impossible, and she needed help.
Her biggest challenge was not being provided DEI training to help the other 298 workers in the office learn to be respectful – yet she still had to enforce HR policies to ensure respectful treatment of the transgender employee. Many of her employees felt confused but had no one educated on the subject they could ask:
“Should we ask about their pronouns?”
“Should there be an office-wide announcement?”
“What bathroom should they be allowed to use?”
“What if I overhear someone making jokes about them?”
“I just don’t understand all this trans stuff. It doesn’t make sense.”
“What does ‘queer’ mean? Why is it okay for them to use that word but I can’t?”
“People are afraid of saying the wrong thing and ending up in HR, so they say nothing at all, and that makes [the new employee] feel excluded and unwelcome.”
“How do I update their HR file since our company only has two options and neither one matches their legal sex?”
“How do I enforce dress code appropriately?”
“Is wearing a pronoun pin okay?”
“Is requiring a pronoun pin okay?”
“How can I hold my staff accountable for what they’ve never been taught? Many of them never learned to be respectful toward folks different from them. I want my employees to get along like reasonable adults, but I’m a general manager, not a psychologist,” she expressed at the end of a two-hour, one-on-one consulting session to help her understand what “transgender,” “intersex,” and “non-binary” mean, and to understand the needs of her new employee and relevant EEOC-approved (at the time) best practices.
“You don’t understand how difficult some of these guys are to talk with,” she said.
I very much do understand. I’ve dedicated my life to learning how to reach, connect with, and teach difficult people about all the subjects named on this page above.
Whether talking about gender or race, the barriers are similar and so are the solutions. Working through these challenges is essential to psychological safety, and psychological safety is essential to your team’s success.
Please take a deep breath and trust that we can all move forward in a healthy way together. A little loving communication can go a long way.
Book a complimentary consultation today to talk about how we can transform your workplace together into one of peace, efficiency, and sustainability.
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