The Difference Between Training "Respect" vs "Anti-Harassment"

You are walking into your organization's annual training. You see the session is going to be discussing "Respect." You hear people making comments such as "Here we go again: telling us what not to do" and "Don't we get enough anti-sexual harassment training?" and "I'm not a Harvey Weinstein. Why do we need to go to these?"

Except this time is different. No one is in front of the front of the room making you feel shame or guilt. No one is focusing on statistics. No one is boring you with PowerPoint after PowerPoint. The company is not just presenting a "Check the Box" keynote to prove they did the bare minimum to legally cover the topics.

The opposite is happening. You are being asked genuine questions about how each of us engages with each other. The expert talking is admitting their own struggles with everyday choices around treating each other with respect. You find yourself drawn in and looking in the mirror at your own patterns of behavior. You are discovering little choices you make that with a small adjustment could have much more positive outcomes on the lives of those you work with and live with. You are gaining specific wording and steps for making more caring choices moving forward.

You are excited to getting back into the office and back home to put these new strategies into action with your coworkers, your kids, your friends, and your partners. As you exit, people are saying:

• "This was full of life skills we weren't taught growing up."
• "Amazing and a mirror into what we all need to work on."
• "Eye opening"
• "Empowering"
• "Strong, uplifting presentation designed to establish a minimum of respect in relationships with an end goal of fostering amazing interpersonal relations."

What happened in this organization's keynote that was so different? The company made a choice to have an open, honest conversation about what EVERYDAY RESPECT looks like in our lives. When you build an organization's foundation on everyday respect and each person is holding themselves responsible to that core value, people speak up when colleagues are being mistreated, teammates intervene when inappropriate comments are occurring, and everyone speaks up when voices are not being valued.

You are building a future for your organization where anything less than respect for all is not tolerated by the masses. You have an organization building mutually amazing relationships in the workplace.

Rio Tinto Kennecott is a company that made these exact choices for their annual training in 2022. They knew simply telling people what "Not To Do" was not going to be effective. They wanted an interactive, engaging, thought-provoking, and positive "How To" approach for all their employees to be able to help live their core values of Care. Courage. Curiosity. I am grateful Rio Tinto Kennecott chose me to present the "RESPECT Revolution" keynote to provide that experience. Getting to share with the employees of Rio Tinto Kennecott has been inspiring.

And the employees have responded!! The feedback has been full of gratitude and individuals sharing how much they are looking forward to implementing specific skills and choices for living a life built on respect. One of the most rewarding outcomes has been how the employees are sharing what they are going to do differently in both their professional and personal lives.

How do we know what the employees attending feel about the program? At the conclusion of each keynote, employees participate in an online survey on their phones asking what they are going to use from the keynote and how they would describe the keynote. Both questions are open-ended and so all answers are based on "Top of Mind" thoughts of the participants.

Rio Tinto Kennecott is leading the way for changing how these conversations are occurring in the workplace and most importantly for equipping each person to help build mutually amazing relationships in the workplace.

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**Want more information on the "RESPECT Revolution" Keynote and/or having Mike Domitrz speak for your organization, click here.