Whatever the merits of his case, Douglas Hart deserves gratitude, and not just because he challenged an especially odious example of sensitivity training.
Hart is the air traffic controller who is suing the Federal Aviation Administration, claiming he was sexually harassed when he was groped by women during cultural diversity training. But the lesson here goes beyond the obvious inanity of trying to instill sensitivity by inflicting humiliation.
Hart’s lawsuit can inspire a general reconsideration, not just of sensitivity training, but of all training, and that reconsideration can only lead to these two conclusions:
1. There is too much training.
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2. There is too much sensitivity.
Just how much American businesses and governments spend on training is impossible to gauge, but it may run into the billions. The National Speakers’ Association estimates that at least 40,000 Americans are employed making speeches and conducting private training. Go to a midsize hotel on any work day and the chances are you’ll discover a training session, with anywhere from 30 to 300 employees of some company or agency stuffed inside a room listening to a pontificator, usually armed with slides or films.
Most of these performers are independent consultants who earn their keep wandering around the country holding forth on. . . well, on what?
On motiviation, mostly, as well as on inter-personal skills, cutural diversity and, needless to say, self-esteem.
In other words, on nothing of any substance.
Sometimes, the performer is not in actual attendance. Instead, he or she is in virtual attendance, via videotape, for which companies often pay thousands of dollars-yea, even unto the tens of thousands.
Which explains why some of the trainers and speakers have gotten rich and famous, though as it happens some of them were already famous. For some reason, former athletes and present and former coaches, especially of football, glide into the corporate speaking dodge. Executives hire them to motivate a sales force, often by instilling self-esteem.
But who would hire an unmotivated sales person? And who would want one with self-esteem? Like a good comedian, a good sales-person should be a mass of raging insecurities. That’s at least as important as knowing the territory.
Well, it’s an ill wind and all that. These sessions do provide gainful, if useless, employment for the trainers and speakers, who are obviously incapable of doing anything worthwhile, and who otherwise would be tempted to join gangs, go to karaoke bars or engage in other anti-social activity. It’s the private enterprise version of the no-show government job.
Still, we’d all be better off if companies spent that money improving their products, or (don’t get upset now; not long ago this was common practice) paying decent wages and benefits to their workers, who then might be sufficiently motivated without traning sessions.
But if training in general is a boondoggle, sensitivity training is especially objectionable, not because it can’t be effective, but because it might be, and because sensitivity is dangerous.
First of all, it interferes with muscular analysis, already in short supply.
Worse, it encourages group-think, and the whiney, woe-is-me-I’m-a-victim version of group-think at that. This might not be the case if current sensitivity-training had anything to do with sensitivity toward individuals, an admirable attitude. Instead, “cultural diversity” training focuses on sensitivity toward groups of people based on ethnicity, sex or sexual taste.
Though unobjectionable, this is unnecessary. Whites and blacks, men and women, need not be sensitive to one another’s peculiar needs and fears. They only need to be polite to one another and to refrain from racial or sexual discrimination. How they feel down deep is nobody’s business.
Finally, sensitivity is an enemy of responsibility. There is nothing wrong with blaming people when they are blameworthy. True, they should not be blamed because of their skin color, their last name or their gender. But neither should they be excused on those grounds when they have done something wrong or stupid. By dwelling on what may have driven people to act as they did, sensitivity training threatens to provide excuses.
There are no excuses, though there are explanations. There are also rules, equally applicable to everyone. Among the rules is this old one-don’t treat other folks in ways you would not want them to treat you. Stressing and enforcing that one precept could replace the training programs, the consultants, their video tapes and their slide shows.
Cheaper, too.