Confessions of an EDI Trainer — Episode 1: The Time I Was Mistaken for a Monk

I was delivering training in a Christian place of worship in St Albans, many years ago.

I turned up wearing a black thobe with a hood (that's not me in the picture by the way) which I often wore when delivering training around Islam. It felt right for the context. It kind of sets the scence for what I'm delivering....maybe makes it a bit more real.

When it came time for my afternoon prayer, I went to reception and asked: "Is there somewhere I can go to pray?"

The receptionist looked at me, a little puzzled, but replied kindly: "Yes...of course...the chapel is that way."

I smiled and said: "I'm Muslim. I can't pray in your chapel."

She looked even more confused, blushed slightly, and handed me the key to an empty training room. Off I went to pray.

After praying, I went to the canteen for lunch. And that's when I realised.

There was a conference taking place. A religious conference. Of 100 monks. All dressed in black robes. All with hoods.

They all looked at me. I nodded politely. Grabbed a few sandwiches. And smiled to myself because I just realised exactly why the receptionist had looked so confused. She must have assumed I was one of them.

What this moment taught me

In thirty years of delivering EDI training, I have been misread more times than I can count. By delegates, by receptionists, by fellow conference attendees who have never met a Muslim trainer in a thobe before.

And every single time, it is a reminder of why this work matters.

We make assumptions about people in fractions of a second based on what they're wearing, how they look, where they're standing. We cannot help it. It is how our brains are wired. But we can learn to catch ourselves doing it. We can learn to pause before the assumption becomes a decision.

The receptionist was not unkind. She made a reasonable guess based on the information available to her. The monks were not unwelcoming. They just looked at me the way any of us looks at someone who doesn't quite fit the picture we were expecting.

That's unconscious bias in its most human form. Not malicious or deliberate. Just automatic.

And it is exactly what I spend my working life helping people to understand.

This is Confessions of an EDI Trainer. Thirty years of stories from the training room — real, unfiltered, and always with something to reflect on. Episode 2 is next.