# Tip 1: Rethink your inclusion training

- **Episode:** [199](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/199.md) (2025-05-22)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** inclusion-training, transgender, education, tips
- **Time:** 28:47–30:10 (start 1727s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/199?t=1727](https://truthliesandwork.com/199?t=1727)

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[28:47] Sophie Wood: Lots of kind of traditional trans education is like, this is trans person, this is non-binary, this definition of this, that, and the other. And you just want to poke your eyes out after about half an hour because it's boring. Okay. And I'm saying that I've sat through those sessions as a trans person, both post and pre-transition, thinking, kill me now. This is— how's this actually helping anybody? And so if you think about trying to achieve inclusion for people in your workplace, including trans and non-binary identities, then you need to find a way of educating people which is inclusive and brings everybody on that journey so that levels of understanding and empathy rise at the same time as each other. So the last thing you should do in terms of your learning development team or anything else is create an education session where the trans person is other. You've gotta learn, you've gotta attend a separate session about this person because they're so different. Because that just promulgates that sense of otherness about that person, you know? So, think about ways how you can actually get somebody's understanding of their experience into the conversation within a team, which brings everybody on the journey together
[30:01] Leanne Elliott: Sophie's second tip is simple, practical, and powerful. If you want to build empathy in your team, create a space for people to talk about where they're coming from