Published on: July 8, 2025 at 3:52 pm
Academy of Management Scholar Keimei Sugiyama of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a management researcher and professor, said that to move the needle with diversity training requires hard ongoing work, not a one-time workshop to check a box. Diversity trainers have to navigate the emotionally charged minefield of educating people about bias and bridging cultural and demographic differences.
Sugiyama, who worked as a human-resources (HR) and talent-management consultant and diversity trainer before becoming a professor, offered the following tips for HR managers and diversity trainers to improve the effectiveness of organizations’
diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training sessions. She included comments from trainers she has interviewed.
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1. Don’t be afraid to share details about who you are
Trainers who are comfortable talking about their own identities during sessions can build their own self-confidence while fostering connections among their coworkers or even strangers. To break the ice, share details about your own race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities and disabilities, mental health, cultural background, socioeconomic status, and spiritual beliefs (to the extent that you’re comfortable doing so).
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2. Marshall identity resources
A diversity trainer told Sugiyama: “I realized I’m more than just African-American, that I enjoy some privileges that other people don’t, and he [a trainee] said, ‘I am so … glad that you acknowledge it, and you can say that out loud.’ I thought, OK. It made me feel good that … I wasn’t true to some stereotype he had about African-American females, that I showed him something different. That, again, we are not all the same, if you see another African man or woman, we all don’t think the same, we all still don’t feel the same.”
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3. Seek to understand and accommodate others’ identities
A diversity trainer shared: “Usually I listen for a comment like, ‘I haven’t thought about this in years, but when I was six years old and I was at the grocery store, someone asked, ’Oh, is this your real mom?’ Things like that where people are really digging into where they learned things from, or the first time they realized they were different. … And those are the moments where I feel like those realizations are being primed to come out more, and to kind of like snowball into, ‘Oh, maybe I want to be involved in something and I didn’t think I was going to do that while I was here.’”
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4. Seek to understand and accommodate others’ identities
A diversity trainer shared: “Usually I listen for a comment like, ‘I haven’t thought about this in years, but when I was six years old and I was at the grocery store, someone asked, ’Oh, is this your real mom?’ Things like that where people are really digging into where they learned things from, or the first time they realized they were different. … And those are the moments where I feel like those realizations are being primed to come out more, and to kind of like snowball into, ‘Oh, maybe I want to be involved in something and I didn’t think I was going to do that while I was here.’”
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5. Encourage trainers to build identity awareness
A diversity trainer shared: “I think I try to understand my effect on people as a black, African-American male and an older person, and so I try to make sure that I’m relaxed or comfortable and asking questions and also sharing some of my experience that’s relevant to what we’re talking about. But, at the same time, I feel like I’m always learning because I’m not 18-22 … and there’s a lot of experiences that I didn’t have that they’ve gone through that I can learn from, and that helps me figure out better ways to be proactive with … the next group that I talk with.”
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6. Model identity work
“I wouldn’t ask somebody to do something that I wouldn’t do, so I try to share at the level where I feel would be appropriate for the type of group that we’re in…. So, I try to create some, ‘This is how far you could go if you wanted to.’” Continue adding to your repertoire: “Every time someone tells a story, that’s something new I can add to my repertoire.” Broker self-efficacy: “I came into a field where I don’t have the personal experience. People share stories about when they first learned this or first learned that, and those, I think, don’t come to me as a white male until much later in my life. I feel like I’ve had to do a lot more homework, a lot more catch up. So, I’m the old one here, but it’s been amazing because it’s made me better.”
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