Proactively Training Business Students in Confronting Sexual Harassment
On September 9, Perspective Exchange, a community dialogue project, had the privilege of working with undergraduate students at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. We facilitated a dialogue with these future business leaders on the importance of proactively creating language when you face sexual harassment of yourself, a peer, or a direct report. As an organization, we are thinking about being proactive when it comes to making incremental changes to the ways that business leaders are trained when thinking about sexual harassment. What better place to start than in the actual classroom?
The purpose of this dialogue was to get these college seniors to think about the language they might use when dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace. Because this is such a sensitive topic, it is important to think about the situation ahead of time, so that when you are in the moment, you have something from which to draw for a response. We did not offer any possible answers but probed the students to think of their own. The students engaged with this difficult topic with very thoughtful responses outlined below.
What to do when first confronted with harassment
Students were clear that the use of “I” messages is important when first encountering…
