Early on in my career I was confronted with a dilemma within a training session with volunteer sports coaches. At the session, I asked the group: “What is the difference between bullying and banter?”
The room went quiet until a very confident hand popped up at a table at the back of the room: “The difference is if I call you a bad name when I don’t know you, that’s bullying. But if I call my mate here (a sheepish looking man sat next to him started looking nervous) a fat *****, then that’s banter because he’s my mate.”
The room went silent and with it being one of the first training sessions I’d delivered, I had a choice. Do I challenge what he said and potentially make the embarrassment for his friend last even longer? Or, do I skip over it and pretend it didn’t happen? I’m ashamed to say, being relatively inexperienced, I skipped over it. But it stuck with me and I’ve replayed repeatedly what I should have said since.
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