Below is a project that I did for this class which involved me taking the content from two chapters of the textbook and turning it into a program for an imaginary audience of my choosing.
INTRODUCTION
I am Kent Vensland, a forty-six year old non-traditional student at Old Dominion University. I will receive a B.S. in occupational and technical studies with a training specialist emphasis and a minor in psychology in the spring of 2016. I am taking this course to gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by women in the workplace and as learners in the corporate classroom so that I may better relate to them as peers, students, and clients. In the future I intend to apply to a graduate program in either I/O psychology or in instructional design and technology. Currently I use my consulting business to teach courses limited to hands on technical training and an OSHA sanctioned safety course for my customers. My future goals include expanding my curriculum and with that, expanding my business. In order to expand my consulting curriculum I would like to better understand how to eliminate biases from the courses that I develop and the research that I hope to perform. I chose to develop this program with that goal in mind.
ROLE, AUDIENCE, PROGRAM
For nearly twenty-five years I worked in an industry dominated by men. First as a sailor in the United States Navy and then, eventually as a project manager in the ship building and ship repair construction industry. The majority of the women that worked with or around me were typically cleaners or fire watches, and more recently sailors. However, there were always women who broke the mold and chose different career paths. Some of those women were welders and others managed to buck the system by becoming cable installers, then electricians, and then working their way into managerial positions. Those women who broke the mold of the more mundane jobs were often stereotyped or seen to be as either lesbians who were more masculine than most men or as women who would use their feminine guiles to gain an advantage over men at the same level by sweet talking their way to better pay or promotions.
My role in this project will be as the owner of a small business. I am going to expand my training firm and am seeking to hire trainers who have worked in the ship repair industry. Not only do I want to reduce my own biases, I would like to encourage my trainers to be aware of biases that they might unintentionally form. My audience is my employees. These employees are the face of my company and will represent my company every day.
I will be using chapter six, Gender and Emotion, and chapter nine, Women and Work. I chose chapter six because I would like to educate my employees about emotional gender stereotypes, gender differences in emotional expression, Emotional Intelligence, and about the socialization of emotions in the workplace. I chose chapter nine because of legal and ethical issued that need to be in the forefront of all employees at my firm in order to protect my business from lawsuits. I want to educate my employees about the stereotypes of women who work, discrimination in evaluation, pay equity, empowerment and potentially many other issues that my employees might encounter professionally.
DELIVERY
I think that I will deliver the content as a spoken presentation with power point slides followed by a question and answer session. Before the presentation I will use a poll anywhere web 2.0 tool as an anticipatory set to prime my crowd by asking questions on the topics that I will be presenting. This will serve to generate interest in the topics and to tell me how much work I will need to do to change stereotypical attitudes. I would also like to summarize my presentation with a handout brochure to reinforce the main points. I enjoy role playing, so I may ask some women from the audience to participate in my presentation and act out the stereotypes as I put slides up on the projector screen. At the end I will test the knowledge gained by my audience and use the same poll anywhere questions to evaluate them and myself.
Chapter 6 Program Content, Importance, and Order of Presentation
Because emotional gender stereotypes in the workplace contribute to how roles are assigned, there needs to be an effort made to identify and acknowledge that these stereotypes exist. If one could acknowledge when a stereotypical heuristic is being used then one could conceivably mentally not assume that what they see is real. This mental acknowledgement could also lead to better communication and interpersonal skills that would allow out employees to connect with students of either gender and potentially create an environment more conducive to the transfer of knowledge and learning.
Studies have shown that men and women have a stereotypical bias when reflecting upon a facial expression of either a woman or a man. Because of these gender differences in emotional expression there are categories that might be seen as male or female depending upon the observer. Some of these stereotyped emotions that are perceived to be feminine are awe, disgust, distress, embarrassment, fear, guilt, happiness, love, sadness, shame, shyness, surprise, and sympathy. The stereotyped emotions that at perceived to be masculine are anger, contempt, and pride. Our trainers need to be acutely aware that males and females express all of these emotions but may not externalize or verbally acknowledge them. In order to prevent an assumption by our trainers we must always ask whenever we suspect that emotion may be hindering the transfer of training. For example, an expression may be stereotypically perceived as sad in a female or anger in a male. The trainers’ stereotypical heuristics may also cause the trainer to assume that the learners are either more emotional or just having a problem with a situation depending upon their gender. Asking would be the only way to determine accurately what the emotion is or the cause is. One method our trainers could use might be to pull the student aside and say “You look like you are sad, is there anything that I can do for you?” In the previous example the word “sad” may be substituted with any emotion that is perceived by the trainer. Asking what the trainer could do opens the door to revealing the underlying cause and prevent the trainer from misreading the learner’s emotions.
Emotional intelligence is something that the trainer should always try to practice and improve. The self-regulation of ones emotions and the proper expression of accurate emotions should allow the trainer to communicate more efficiently with the learners. Additionally, the trainer should be aware that women are more emotionally intelligent and can read others emotions better than men. It would benefit the trainer to be honest in all interactions with student learners because depending upon the learner’s level of emotional intelligence it is conceivable that a learner might pick up on negative emotions from the trainer which may influence the learners’ willingness to accept the training.
Just as in socialization at home and school, the trainers must be aware of socialization at work. This socialization may cause trainers and learners alike to hide their emotions and lead to a toxic work environment. It should be the goal of the trainers to create and open environment, not only for the sharing of knowledge, but also for the sharing of feelings. This is because the effects of emotional labor and hiding feelings could have a seriously negative effect on the learning environment.
The Presentation
In addition to the content being presented by a speaker, I think that a discussion panel would be beneficial. This panel would be beneficial because it would allow the trainers to ask questions. Additionally, the panel might be encouraged by the presentation to inject their own opinions, to talk about their own experiences, and to potentially bring up other ways to deal with situations that have worked for them in the past. I would also like to experiment with role playing or slides of facial expressions to demonstrate the differences in perceptions between the males and female in the room.
Chapter 9 Program Content, Importance, and Order of Presentation
As a small business owner I intend to embrace diversity in hiring practices of employees and hopefully the diversity of innovation that follows. Because the majority of women work and at least one half of the workforce is made up of women, I expect that nearly half, if not more than half of my employees will be women. In anticipation of the employee demographics my business needs to raise the awareness of the employees to the potential stereotypes and of the possibility of discrimination toward women within my business.
Some of the stereotypes that I would like to address are that women only work to supplement income, ambitious women can succeed if they want it bad enough, and women can’t be leaders. First off the thought that women only supplement the income of their spouse is laughable. If women constitute almost half of the American workforce, then all of those women cannot possibly be married to the other half of the male workforce and supplementing that income. According to statistics eighteen percent of American families are supported by the woman with no husband present, and in twenty-seven percent of American families the woman earns more than the man.
The next stereotype to be addressed is probably even more important. The stereotype that ambitious women can get ahead even in the face of discrimination. Discrimination in my workplace cannot and will not be tolerated in any form. It is the goal of my consulting firm to seek out and eliminate any real or perceived discriminatory practices. One activity that should be examined and kept in mind is that there are inherent biases when examining and evaluating the work performed by a female. It seems as if even females will rate other females lower than that of comparable males. Another practice of discrimination in the workplace that will not be tolerated in pay inequity. It is the goal of this consulting firm to develop pay scales based upon comparable worth and to ensure that a man and a woman working at the same level within the organization will be paid equally. When hiring advertisements will be examined to ensure that there are not biases in the wording as it is the goal of this firm to ensure that an equal amount of qualified applicants enter the hiring pool from both genders. Furthermore, promotions will be handled by committee to try and ensure that there is no biased influence and committee members will undergo training to raise awareness of biases before making a decision.
Lastly, this program will address the leadership stereotype. It has been my experience that women can be very effective leaders. Because of my experience, it is a primary goal of this consulting firm to fully support any women hired or promoted to positions of authority. Regular awareness training and mentoring programs will be implemented to ensure that there is neither a glass ceiling nor a labyrinth that will hinder the progress of a woman through this organization. A regular review of company policies will investigate if women in positions of power have the same organizational power to reward and discipline as that of men at a comparable level within the organization.
The Presentation
In addition to the content being presented by a speaker, I think that a discussion panel would be beneficial. This panel would be beneficial because it would allow the trainers to ask questions. Additionally, the panel might be encouraged by the presentation to inject their own opinions, to talk about their own experiences, and to potentially bring up other ways to deal with situations that have worked for them in the past. As an exercise I’d like to perform sample grading exercises with examples of anonymous work done by men and women to see if biases exist and to raise awareness of those biases.
Presentation Format and Outline
Because one of my goals as a business owner is to provide high quality training for my customers with trainers who are experienced in the field, my audience analysis is critical to a successful training experience. I imagine that the majority of my audience will be older workers who are either members of the Baby Boomer generation or of Generation X. The generation is significant because the Baby Boomers and most Generation X learners will prefer a directed learning experience in a classroom environment. Additionally, Generation X members are early adopters and will most likely have the technological tools like tablets and smartphones. Conversely, the Baby Boomer generation members will most likely bring flip phones without wireless connectivity and paper notebooks with pens or pencils.
For the previously mentioned reasons I will provide a slightly hybrid training experience tailored to the audience. My objective or purpose as stated to the audience will be, “Provided with examples of stereotypes, identify strategies to prevent or reduce biases as described in several different research studies”. Once presented with the learning objective, it is my intention to give a 10 question multiple choice pretest using pencil and paper to test the knowledge of my audience. The pre-test will give the audience an opportunity to see what they do not already know and what they need to learn. (See sample multiple choice question from pre/post-test appendix A.)
After grading the pretest by having the audience grade themselves, I will start the discussion. I plan to use Power Point to facilitate a question and answer panel discussion and to reinforce learning. One of the Power Point tools that I plan to use is Poll Everywhere. Because Poll Everywhere uses audience texts as responses, all audience members should be able to get involved no matter the generation as long as they have a phone. This is significant because, as I mentioned earlier, those in my audience who are from the baby boomer generation will most likely not have a smartphone with a browser and internet connectivity. After the responses are tabulated I will present the correct answer using the next Power Point slide and begin a facilitated discussion on the topics. The topics that will be discussed include stereotypical heuristics, perception and stereotypical biases, emotional stereotypical biases, emotional intelligence, the perception of why women work, the glass ceiling, bias in evaluating work, and how my organization views all of these topics. The maximum discussion time for each topic will be 30 minutes and the training should last no more than one half of a day. (See sample Poll Everywhere discussion starter, appendix B.)
Upon the conclusion of the training I will ask all participants to take the post-test. The post-test will be identical to the pre-test. Because the post-test is identical the learners should experience some form of self-efficacy in the hopefully improved score that they will receive after the conclusion of the training session. Lastly, I intend to provide beverages, a light breakfast, snacks, throughout the training session and a catered lunch which will allow for a continued discussion at the end of the session.
