Not only scientific and technological careers are beginning to open up to new learning. Universities and business schools are also exploring how to teach the complexity of organizations in which individuals with diverse, visible and invisible singularities participate. Apart from the social and moral reasons that justify inclusion by themselves, there are reasons based on competition: inclusive companies are more prosperous.
“Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion can be complicated,” begins Laura Guillén, professor in the Department of People Management and Organization at the Esade business school. But it is worth it, she assures, not only for moral and social reasons, which already justify it by itself, but also because the templates reach their maximum potential.
So many reasons. However, how is this taught in a classroom?
Esade is one of the many institutions (business schools, universities) that work with Moving Stories, an organization founded two years ago by the young Dominique Steinebach, and which has branches all over the world.
They propose an activity that is as simple as it is difficult to put into practice: a real conversation, “of those that matter”, between the students and a person who has felt excluded because of their appearance, their identity, their disability or their shape. to think or love This is not going as a victim but as an expert in receiving and avoiding prejudice.
“Many of us think that we are open and inclusive people, but these sessions give us the lie: we are not always aware that we have stereotypes,†says Steinebach.
Last Tuesday the business school held a session with 40 former students. They were divided into eight groups and worked with the classic case method by which a specific situation is exposed whose resolution is shared among all. The cases were high voltage. They were based on personal stories: a woman with autism, a transgender, a man with tattoos and piercings, a migrant minor, a girl with chronic depression, a woman who suffers gender violence, a young man with cancer, and a multiple sclerosis patient. .
They received a brief explanation of the story of the testimony and questions specially designed for the type of group (managers or businessmen): how do you think the administrative staff, who was in charge of maintenance and therefore knew all the workers, felt when she arrived at your job title as a woman when you were a man in previous years? Would a woman who has recurring depressions have to tell the company before being hired, then shut up? If she in the trial period she has an episode in which she only needs to be gone for 3 days, would she weigh in the decision to hire her? Is it the manager’s responsibility to help someone who has depression? After cancer, a young man looks for a job. Do you communicate his situation because he has appointments with the hospital? Or is it better to work as a freelancer? Should we ignore, as colleagues or bosses, that a colleague is mistreated by her partner?
After 45 minutes of discussion, the person who has suffered this exclusion arrives. And from there the conversation begins. It turns out that the transgender was not sad or withdrawn when she went to work, but happy, because for the first time she expressed her identity publicly. That the woman with depression was not hired on several occasions for communicating her situation when colleagues had the flu with a five-day absence.
“I have been struck by how many things we assume without asking,†says a former student at the end of the session. “I thought that it was not my reality and I have seen myself reflected in the testimony,” says another. “I have realized that this is not about others, it is about us.” So what can we do to bring this to our organization? Steinebach asks.
There are 80 different testimonials on Moving Stories. “And they grow after each session,” explains the founder of this social initiative (she reverts the benefits to non-profit organizations). The sessions with the youngest are the most emotional because in a few minutes the Instagram mask falls off. “Some say they feel alone because they don’t have friends, others are burned out, or don’t talk to their parents, or are afraid of losing their partner… it’s very necessary to talk about fragility,” she says.
