Sensitivity Training

The goal of sensitivity (or sensitization) training is to raise participants’ awareness of the overall or context-specific sensitivities of those that they interact with at close range or at arm’s length. That is to say, the motivation in such training is to make them (or to become) more acutely aware of other’s manifest, understated or hidden (inconspicuous) sensitivities, and to act accordingly.

Candidates for sensitivity training are not necessarily innocent offenders of others’ sense of propriety and (mutual) respect. They may quite deliberately set out to offend. And yet some offend without meaning to – being unaware that certain of their utterances display prejudice or bigotry – and suffer short-term and long-term repercussions without quite realizing why or since when.

Viewed that way, sensitivity training is a knowledge-based solution for the negativities that an insensitive actor may encounter in a diversity-predicated social arena, or at the workplace. Such negativities may hamper individuals’ work-performance, jeopardize organizational operations and goal-attainment, and make for a lousy workplace.  By definition, these negativities and insensitivities play out in group settings, and are thus lodged in the broader notion of group dynamics. Thus, sensitivity training and group dynamics training overlap, at least in part.

Group dynamics, as seen by Margaret Mead, is “The social process by which people interact and behave in a group environment… [It] involves the influence of personality, power, and behaviour on the group process. [It seeks answers to these questions:] Is the relationship between individuals conducive to achieving the group’s goals? Is the structure and size of the group an asset in pursuing both the task and maintenance functions of the group? How is formal and informal power used to build consensus or reach decisions? Does the combination of individuals produce the right culture?”

Answers to these and related questions yield to researchers and trainers extant patterns and ‘regularities’ which are crucial to clarifying the status of “group effectiveness” and plotting re-design modalities.  

 Well-designed sensitivity and group-dynamics training programmes – including role-play or role-reversal, and group dynamics training – can help make amends.