Why e-learning is THE way for effective DEI education

If you've been around me for a while, you've heard me talk about how deeply I believe that online diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (or DEIB) learning is not merely a substitute for in-person learning; in fact, online learning often provides opportunities to learn more deeply and in ways that better support habit formation and behavior change that cannot be achieved in a single day session.

Of course, this is a fascinating proposition to anyone interested in truly moving the needle on their organization's DEIB goals. How can this be true? How can it be possible to simply sit down at a computer and, a few hours later, emerge a totally different person?

Which leads us to the central point I'm going to argue today: the most profound purpose of any DEIB training is behavior change. Behavior change is what allows us to see everything we're looking for when we engage in a DEIB learning journey:

• Decreased employee attrition and turnover (and the associated financial costs)
• Increased collaboration, both across and within teams
• Empathy that translates into both product development and new market exploration

The list goes on. There's no shortage of advantages to pursuing high-quality DEIB work. That's another post, though! This post is about making the fundamental case that online trainings are more effective at doing this work, which, of course, causes us to articulate exactly what it means to "do this work well".

"Behavior change" has some implications

If we accept that the most profound purpose of DEIB trainings is to inspire behavior change, then it follows logically that to lay the foundation for unlearning unskillful habits and replacing them with more skillful habits -- which is the only way to result in true behavior change. The bottom line, then, of any conversation about online trainings is this: let's talk about how online trainings create an effective environment for this process of unlearning and replacing.

One of the most powerful ways this happens is by dispelling something called "impression management". Think about what might happen if your high-school child came to you and asked you to perform a cartwheel with them. Maybe you've recently performed a cartwheel yourself (in which case, kudos!), but I suspect it's more likely that it's been a bit since you've turned a cartwheel.

Now, imagine yourself practicing turning a cartwheel in two different situations. In one scenario, your high schooler and their friends are watching you. Maybe they're not saying anything (you've raised them to be kind!), but your mind is unhelpfully supplying an endless narrative of what they might be thinking watching you try.

In the second scenario, you're given an hour or so by yourself to practice turning a cartwheel before you join anyone else.

Which scenario feels higher-pressure? In which scenario are you giving yourself permission to take more risks, and to try things more than once, or in more than one way? In which scenario are you concentrating more deeply on how your body feels, and on what works and what doesn't... versus concentrating deeply on what others might think of you as you learn to do something uncomfortable?

This is impression management, and it occurs whenever we're focusing on, and spending a lot of energy on, controlling what other people think of us by carefully curating how we show up. Impression management, for many of us, is a deep barrier to overcome! As DEI learning providers, we can never assume that everyone on a team will be able to overcome it, and it takes up a lot of space in any room where a group of people are learning together.

Online learning allows us to bypass this problem of impression management altogether. Instead to construct environments that allow learners to focus deeply on the information they're receiving, and on practicing applying the new habits they're learning... which, as we've established, is the only way to support true behavior change, and to reap all those benefits we listed above of engaging on a deep level with your organization's DEIB journey.

This piece detailing impression management is the first in a series of articles which will break down the components of an effective online DEIB experience. We hope you'll stick around to learn more -- and, as always, if you'd like to experience this work on your own teams, reach out to info@bemorewithanu.com!