Posted by Ask a Manager
https://www.askamanager.org/2025/11/im-being-asked-to-lead-a-training-with-no-expertise-coworkers-keep-taking-calls-on-speakerphone-and-more.html
https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34401
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. I’m being asked to lead DEI training with no expertise in it
I’m very happy to work for a company that remains committed to DEI, even in this strange time. The direction coming down from many levels above me is that the company will be implementing DEI training for all employees. And because my colleague and I have experience conducting training, the powers-that-be have decided that we will present the DEI training, even though we have no expertise in DEI.
We’ve had a chance to preview the course they want to use, and it is A LOT. Maybe this is a model DEI course? I wouldn’t know, since this is not my field! On top of some pretty hard-hitting, in-your-face material, participants are asked to share personal experiences, which feels like a weird ask at work. Adding another layer of discomfort, during the course preview, people were drawing parallels between past practices referenced in the course and current events. The company has a staff of around 1,500 employees; surely it’s reasonable to expect that they vote all across the political spectrum. My colleague and I agree we that we do NOT have the skills and experience to present the material and facilitate the discussion this course is asking for, even if participants avoid politics.
Our supervisor agrees with us that this training should be conducted by a DEI expert, and he has recommended to his leadership that the company should hire a consultant. The decision makers are not listening to him and are doubling down on “anyone with training experience can lead this course.” My colleague and I are preparing to push back as a team. We agree that DEI is an important topic, especially now, and therefore it’s worth doing well. Even if the course material was less dramatic, I still believe we are unqualified to present it. I can’t tell if somebody up in the C-suite just wants to check off that DEI training is being done, or do they truly not understand that assigning this to amateurs does not bode well for a good outcome. Regardless, are we overreacting? Are there other factors we should be taking into consideration?
You are not overreacting; this is a looming disaster. These trainings are sensitive and challenging under the best of circumstances; having trainers without expertise risks it being a catastrophe. Is flatly refusing an option?
For what it’s worth: I’m not sure how committed to DEI your company really is, if they’re not willing to take the training seriously enough to hire trainers with actual expertise in the material. This reads like box-checking from people who aren’t convinced it’s really important.
2. My coworkers keep taking calls on speakerphone
Since returning to the office after the pandemic, I’ve noticed some people using speakerphone for calls in our open office plan. It’s bad enough that you have to hear one side of everyone’s meetings now, but hearing both sides is unbearable! We have phone rooms available that they could be using if they don’t want to use headphones.
Is there a polite and effective way to ask someone to use headphones? For context, my floor is full of “miscellaneous” employees who are all part of different teams and do not work directly together. I have no way of knowing who the person is or what team or manager they report to without asking. There is not a floor manager or other authority who is physically in the space. One person is particularly egregious about this and I have sat on the other side of the floor from her, but others will do it from time to time as well.
Ugh. If it’s pretty widespread, ideally your office would issue some guidance on it as a whole; any chance you could suggest it to someone with some authority to address that? They don’t need to be physically in the space to issue guidelines if you tell them there’s a problem.
But otherwise, it’s reasonable to say to any individual offender, “I’m sorry to ask, but I’m having trouble focusing when your calls are on speakerphone. Would you mind using headphones or just not using the speaker?”
3. What happened with this meeting invitation?
Part of my job is speaking to clients about how they want us to custom-design their products, whether it’s getting preliminary information or gathering actionable feedback to refine the product before shipment. I’ve got a good handle on how these conversations usually go, and it’s a point of pride that I’ve never once missed a meeting (thank you to two planners, several phone alarms and bundles of anxiety!).
After I recently provided a client with my availability to discuss their specs, we settled on a time that worked for all parties. I had about a 20-minute window between their call and a previously scheduled one, which is plenty of time even for my anxiety-fueled soul.
The first call did run a little long, but I still had a solid buffer of time to prepare for the next meeting. So imagine my horror when I got an email from that second client suggesting I no-showed, and that they cancelled our meeting 15 minutes before our mutually confirmed time! Sure enough, the meeting invite they sent was half an hour earlier than the time we agreed on: I had accepted it without even thinking to visually confirm the meeting time, and I’ll take the lumps for my failure to fact-check an invite’s details.
But I’ve also never had a client change meeting times on me without confirming it was okay first. After I apologized and provided a new window of availability, I tore through the digital paper trail between this client and me. They had said nothing about scheduling our conversation for a different time than the one we agreed upon.
Was it an error? Was it a bait and switch? Did I unknowingly agree to an end time for the conversation and not an actual call time? I don’t know, because they didn’t acknowledge their part in creating this confusion when we rescheduled the meeting, which I will admit that I’m kind of salty about.
Is this wholly my error since I should have been more diligent instead of blindly accepting their invite? Am I being unreasonable by expecting someone to signal a change in previously confirmed plans? Are there chaos gremlins out there who hear “Let’s schedule a call at 3:30” and interpret that as when the meeting should be ending?
You’re reading too much into it! This is probably just a mistake on their end. You agreed on 3:30 and somehow they wrote down 3:00. It happens.
It’s not a bait and switch, and it’s not an indication that people have started using ending times as start times. It’s just a mistake.
Should you need to double-check that the time on invitations matches the time you agreed to earlier? You shouldn’t need to, but it’s a good idea to do it, especially when you’re dealing with clients. Is it a disaster that you didn’t? No. But it’s a good thing to check for in the future (especially when you’re dealing with this client, since now you know it’s a risk with them.)
4. Can my performance evaluation mention my maternity leave?
My work will be doing annual performance evaluation shortly. My supervisor and I have already had conversation about it, and there aren’t any surprises ahead. They have asked me to draft some bullet points for their supervisor narrative and I was wondering if it’s appropriate to mention my maternity leave from the past year to provide context within the narrative. Simply, I accomplished a lot for a normal year, much less one where I was gone four months. For example, if my 150-person department normally makes 200 self-sealing stem bolts individually and collaboratively in a year, this year I made five all by myself.
I ask because I would normally consider it not something that goes in that narrative and introduces possibility for bias, but on the other hand, it shows how well I manage my time!
Yes, you can absolutely mention that to put your accomplishments in better context.
Your evaluation shouldn’t mention your maternity leave as something that gets held against you (like “Jane missed a crucial busy season”) but it can mention it to point out strengths (“despite working a compressed year because of medical leave, Jane was still able to have a record year”).
5. What is the purpose of this workplace stress check?
Every year, I get an email from the company that provides my employer’s EAP asking me to take the annual stress check-up. It’s an online test and, according to the email, it’s “a tool for measuring your stress levels.” I’ve worked at this employer for years and never taken it — I’ve never prioritized it before the deadline, those online tests kind of stress me out, and I wasn’t sure of the purpose.
But am I missing out on a workplace benefit? What kind of information can a stress check give you? Also, is my employer getting aggregate data they can use to improve working conditions, or does nothing go to the employer at all? The email says, “You may rest assured that your check results will never be disclosed to your company without your consent,” but I’m not sure if that includes anonymized data as well.
Most likely it’s used to provide you with personalized info on managing stress, as part of the EAP’s offerings. “Personalized” could mean anything from automated results assessing your stress level and recommendations for improving them to marketing emails throughout the year targeted to areas you identified as stressors. It’s unlikely to be more involved than that, although if you’re lucky I suppose it could be one step above the “meditate and have good sleep hygiene” pablum that a lot of workplace wellness programs provide.
It’s possible that your employer also receives aggregated data, but I wouldn’t assume they do — and if they do, it’s unlikely that it gets used in any real way to improve working conditions, although there may be rare exceptions to that.
If you want to know more about how your workplace’s program works specifically, you could also ask HR or whoever administers your EAP. But it’s almost certainly less involved than you’re envisioning.
The post I’m being asked to lead a training with no expertise, coworkers keep taking calls on speakerphone, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
https://www.askamanager.org/2025/11/im-being-asked-to-lead-a-training-with-no-expertise-coworkers-keep-taking-calls-on-speakerphone-and-more.html
https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34401
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