"The tools we use"

This week, even today, you are probably using some kind of tool with your team, or in a group skills-building event.

I know I am. Many.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if these tools are inclusive, or if they hold inherent biases in their very construction?

These are questions that more and more people will be asking. So, let's think about it for a moment, together.

Consider this:

In our social and corporate discourse the terms diversity and inclusion are being vocalized daily in reference to people’s and organizations’ behavior.

Sometimes these words are used as fashionable lexicon, sometimes for corporate decoration, and sometimes for the desire for real systemic analysis and change.?

However, I rarely hear the words *diversity* and *inclusion* used to identify and describe the tools we use in training, facilitation and skills-building environments.

Perhaps it is due to a type of “blindness” and conformity that we all cultivate, in any culture, about what a tool is and their assumed use as innocent helpers, as simple means-to-an-end.

A tool is just an instrument — we might think — a technique or system that one uses to carry out a particular function. To get people from point A to point B. To get to the right answers or solution.?

Yet, stop and think about any of the tools you have right now as an HR department, facilitator, trainer or practitioner.

Such as:

Psychological assessment tools

Personal growth tools

Problem-solving tools

Change management tools

Value proposition tools

Leadership profile tools

Psychometric tools

Communication tools

Some are parts of methods, some are visual, some are text-based, some are to be filled-out, some are facilitated by experts, and most are hinged on groups of specific questions.

All of the types above are used in my current European and USA-anchored professional environments.?

And all of these tools were constructed by people.

People submerged in a specific context: cultural, economic and historical.

And this means that their tools, by definition, come with the same ideological, racial, social, monetary, linguistic and gender context — or biases — that their makers have.

The tools are extensions of the particular truths of their makers.

X produces X. It’s simple sociological math.?

So, as a tool-maker myself, and creator of a method to help people communicate with clarity and story, I have been thinking a lot about this lately as I introduce my method and tools into different cultures.

Specifically as I prepared a week-long training to be delivered to a group of medical coordinators in Ethiopia, called “Leadership in Health Training Program”.

Ethiopia was a culture I knew very little about, I had never been there, and was not even sure what language was spoken in the region I was going to.?

(All that is all different now.)

The tools I would use are part of The Storyboard Method and were to be the key learning vehicles. So, I needed to take a good hard look at their capacity to be used in a completely different culture than the culture they were born in.?

As I tried to analyze and think about this, sitting in my office in Barcelona, I felt vulnerable, and very curious.

What would I see?

What biases would illuminate themselves before my eyes?

The last thing I wanted was to gallop into Ethiopia, a USA-born white woman living in Europe, with a fist full of tools and teachings on communication that would not be useful or understood, and could possibly be a mechanism of constraint or oppression.?

Yes, oppression. You know the kind I mean: good old-fashioned, unconscious,?I-will-save-you-with-my-knowledge type of oppression.

Or a mind-set of: just-apply-my-truths-and-everything-will-be-much-better.

So I began to ask myself questions about the components of the two key tools I would use: the Audience Map and the 4-Question Grid.

I deconstructed them, juxtaposing the questions asked in the tools with what I had researched and learned about Ethiopian culture and the professionals I would be training.?

I asked myself if each part of the tools would truly help my specific audience strengthen their ability to think and communicate.

Or, condition them ideologically to fit into a preconceived hierarchy or box-of-culture that did not reflect their own reality, values or systems.

Or smother their agency.?

And in the course of this analysis, I made a few changes in one of the tools: I added a question, eliminated two, and rephrased another.?

The exercise gave me a sense of coherence and strength.

I believed that the tools were now able to be used in a culture other than my own and maintain their critical and creative purpose.?

However, the true test would be in-situ with the medical professionals in Gondar, Ethiopia.?

Our mission, together with two other trainers, was to help identify specific problems in their hospital environment, offer tools that would help problem-solve and make decisions, and other tools to help them communicate strategically to particular audiences.?

They would practice it all in our week-long program.

It was an intense five days for us all.

And it was exhilarating.

The results, according to the participants, were excellent. The tools were embraced, understood and practiced. The participants enthusiastically used them during the training to build new skills in communication and leadership.?And they were eager to apply them in their daily work settings.

It was clear that their particular world of values, resources, and professional realities were respected — no external ideology was imposed. No hidden biases charged in and took over.

It was deeply satisfying.

So, fellow tool-makers, facilitators, trainers, managers, leaders, HR professionals: the tools we use can be inclusive and respect diversity — our task is to be open to look at them and ask ourselves new questions.

And be curious and courageous enough to discover the answers and make changes if necessary. Or even decide that a particular tool has evident biases and no longer has a place in our traveling toolbox.

The Ethiopia experience brought me and my team great joy and pride — the tools we use are inclusive.?

And we are ready to introduce them into different cultures across the world. To help people create strategic, connective and story-driven communication.?

To empower people. With respect, humility, and heightened awareness of our diversity.

This is an important conversation to be having together — those of us who are facilitators and skills-builders.

I invite you to take a look at the tools you use with a critical eye. It takes a bit of courage to be prepared for uncomfortable answers.

Yet it is the only way we can be "constantly cleaning our own house" as one of my philosophy professors used to say.

Constantly cleaning our own toolbox. And deciding which ones you should pack in your suitcase as you travel to different cultures.

And which ones you shouldn’t.