Sounds counter-intuitive? No. When employers tell you they are going to build trust -- mistrust them. "Corporate team-building" uses Sensitivity Training, which aims to promote diversity even as it enforces uniformity. Never trust a thing that is actually being its opposite. Better to do the real opposite: Insensitivity Training.
How would that work? It would do what 19th C investigative journalist & magazine editor Ida Tarbell recommended: practice not minding things that you can't change anyway. In the workplace, stop minding that everyone's not the same. Some will be a pain, some delightful, some in-between: diversity.
1. Resist group-obsessing about skin colour, ethnicity, and diverse ableisms.
2. Forget "identities".
3. Drop the word "racism" (especially after the adjective "systemic"). Also drop "harm", "triggering" and "stigma".
4. In the name of freedom of expression, appropriate whatever you like. (Let's call it intersectional creativity.)
5. As far as respect is concerned, respect the right to privacy.
6. Let no manager harass and bully you into giving up your right to introverted non-participation in group whining and parroting.
7. Understand that the core of democratic liberal humanistic civilization is acknowledgement of other people's right to express opinions you despise. Then, ignore them. (You'll get better with practice.)
8. While it is unkind to express hate, there are times when hearty dislike is unavoidable.
9. Forget micro-aggression, make your just aggressions adult-sized. Share them when appropriate, and then retreat into dignified silence.
10. Don't get drawn into competitive victim-narratives.
11. Embrace the Enlightenment ideal of merit. Who wants to live in a shabby, meritless world of self-obsessed equitable mediocrity?
12. Claim your right to walk away from offensively invasive staff "training" meetings to the safety of your own desk.
