In 2018, I witnessed a crash involving a car and a child, probably 8 years old. I was the first on the spot, trying to help the victim the best I could while completely unprepared. Luckily, it was at a busy intersection and quickly more relevant people took over: a first aid trainer, a nurse, eventually an ambulance passing by before the emergency services I called arrived. I remember vividly the stress I experienced: the accident was not so bad, but I was panicking not knowing what to do. Two months later, I was attending a first aid training: I did not want to experience again the panic of not knowing how to assist people in distress.

I did not face such a dire situation since. However, just two days before the training I witnessed an unacceptable comment from a man (“The only chicks worth dating are the ones you can punch without consequence”). And this is just an example: inappropriate comments and discriminations seem to happen around me much more frequently than car crashes or heart attacks. And yet, even if the stakes are different or even lower, I face the same discomfort: the urge to act without knowing how to exactly. So when I received from the EPFL training department the offer to attend a “male ally training”, I registered almost immediately. If I happened to regret booking a whole day for it before, these regrets completely vanished after the training.

What I learned during this training.

First, to cut short to all naggers, this course was not a feminist propaganda to shame white males and their behavior. If the class started with a presentation of the advantages for an organization to maintain diversity and how discriminatory behaviors could impair it, it quickly moved to the core of the problem: how can a bystander assist a person targeted by discrimination. I guess everybody would agree the example I mentioned in the introduction should not be left unaddressed: these situations are the situations we need to train for. However, the point is not to act against the will of the person targeted by the problem, but to bring our support: thus the term “ally” in the title of the training.

One of the first problem when witnessing such a situation is the bystander effect. This entails all the rationalization processes that would come to our mind to push us not to act : we are not legitimate to act, somebody more able will do something, we misinterpreted the situation… So the first way to help is to notice when there is a problem and consciously decide if and how to act. A good tool to identify a problematic situation and is to “flip it to test it” : would we find the situation problematic if roles were different? Another valuable technique is to learn to listen properly to people targeted by problematic behavior: active listening helps build the trust of the person and makes them express their feelings.

Once the problem is identified, it still remains to address it. For this, the workshop focused on a set of tools, the “5 D’s”. In case of a discrimination, one can Directly address it on the spot, or Distract the target or actor so the target at least does not feel isolated. A bystander can also Delegate the action to somebody more relevant and who would have more impact on the actor: a superior or a relative, for instance. Alternatively (or in addition), the situation can be Documented for later, in case of recidivism or to help the target defend their case later. Lastly, an ally can Delay its action to a later moment when the actor and/or the target would be more receptive for instance. Other techniques were also presented: how to remain cold headed in such a situation, how to amplify the voice of people discriminated…

Be prepared to help

The parallel between this training and first aid training, besides the stakes that are different, is striking to me. First of all, in any case, these trainings have nothing to do with politics or propaganda: you face a situation you feel you have to act, and you ideally want to be trained for it in order to do so appropriately. When it comes to discrimination, you would do so to prevent such a situation to happen again and to show the target but also surrounding people a specific behavior is not okay. In both first aid and this training, we saw how to assess a situation and how to act, and practicing the techniques in scenarios. And again, in both cases, with a systematic approach and clearly defined ways of action, I feel more confident facing again such situations and do the right thing. For this reason, I am especially glad I registered to this workshop. And I now wonder, how comes I received a mandatory training on fire safety and basic first aid when starting my work at EPFL, which for sure are valuable to face such high stakes situations, but I had no mention on how to face more frequent situations that also constitute a problem and (in the long run) a threat to our organization?

To go further :

Most references were provided by Bettina Palazzo, the coach who dispensed the training : - "The 5Ds of Bystander Intervention" https://righttobe.org/guides/bystander-intervention-training/ - "How to Respond to an Offensive Comment at Work" by Amy Gallo : https://hbr.org/2017/02/how-to-respond-to-an-offensive-comment-at-work - Teaching bystanders to intervene | Jennifer McCary TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iY_X4O-wno - Don't be a bystander, a spoken word film by Gary Turk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sDF-mPHfLs