SAN ANTONIO, TX, UNITED STATES –
In an effort to foster honest conversations about sexual assault with service members, U.S. Army North hosted Mike Domitrz, from Center of Respect, to host interactive training events with senior leadership within the command.
“If your focus is telling people, ‘don’t rape…’ that approach can be highly offensive and disengage people,” said Domitrz, whose philosophy focuses on culturally changing the mindset surrounding sexual harassment and assaults.
Domitrz hosted three interactive virtual training sessions with Soldiers at Joint Base San Antonio. These interactive training sessions targeted senior leadership to help them with skills, knowledge in attribute to have honest conversations with the service members they are responsible for leading with the goal of preventing future behavior.
“Instead of telling people what not to do. How are you teaching them what to do, what does consent look like? Do they actually know what it means to ask first, what it would look like? What would healthy look like,” asked Domitrz.
Leading conversations with “consent is the bare minimum”, Domitrz created an interactive platform.
“We're trying to shift culture is deliverability matters. And for too often, that wasn't the focus, it was get the content out, not through deliverability. Both are critical,” stated Domitrz.
Domitrz’s training session provides leaders with actual language to engage their Soldiers.
“The wonderful thing is we're seeing it because the post evaluation, the post, event evaluations are showing that they're taking away the actual skills we're teaching, which is what matters,” said Domitrz. “That's what's key that people are getting specific language, not theory.”
Ensuring that participants are walking away with more than just theory is what success looks like to Domitrz.
“What happens if they only get theory then they go ‘well I don't know how to language this,’ so they don't say anything, because they don't want to say the wrong thing,” Domitrz explains. “We focus on giving them the exact language. So that in that situation, they feel confident. ‘Okay, I know the wording, I know exactly what to say, in this situation’… That's a big shift for a leader to say, hey I've always thought to tell him what not to do. Now I'm going to tell him what to do. That's a massive step.”