It is assumed that corporations considered work-friendly have trained managers about sexual harassment, and that schools provide workshops for teachers.
Workshops tend to be about the law, which can be harsh, and employee handbooks, how to communicate the wisdom behind the laws to employees so that they don't cross them.
The active ingredient in the workshops that work is engaging participants, somehow making it so interesting, so accessible, that they want to talk. But who is willing to talk about harassing anyone? Or having been harassed? Work isn't an encounter group. It isn't where we need to go to get therapy.
So the better workshop is about every day situations, what we might call, every day miss-steps. Because like those statistics, every five minutes someone is being raped, every ten seconds someone is being beat, probably every day people somebody is putting a foot in a mouth.
Call it sensitivity training, call it empathy training. Whatever you call it, it is about watching what we say. SO not easy.
