Companies and organisations at large are facing a real diversity issue. In consulting, we face this challenge as well. The challenges are often not unique, but at the same time, we cannot blame anyone but ourselves either.
At IIAB, we aspire to be trusted conversation partners to our clients and colleagues. They come to us with their complex challenges. They come to us for new perspectives. The quality of the work we do depends on our ability to provide relevant perspectives to our clients.
To be able to authentically fulfil this role, we need a team that can mirror the diverse world we aim to help our clients navigate. I strongly believe that we as humans can shift perspective and build empathy for people in different circumstances than our own. But it requires our ability to acknowledge that we are all positioned in the world with limited views and inherent biases.
The topic of DEI easily becomes a political battlefield. A conversation that polarises perspectives instead of embracing them and learning together. In the coming weeks, I want to unfold how I imagine we can shift the conversation from one of politics to one of self-reflection. I want to delve into three blind spots: peers, privilege, and pace. I invite all of us to keep these in mind in our daily conversations and as we strive to make a meaningful impact in the world.
Looking for alike
"A good cultural fit." I have heard myself say this sentence during the recruitment of a new colleague. "A plug-and-play."
In our busy work lives, we easily - consciously or unconsciously - surround ourselves with people who seem similar to us. We decode people around us based on familiar traits: how they look, how they talk, and even how they laugh.
When we surround ourselves with people similar to us, I believe it happens with good intentions, at least partially. We want to perform our tasks well, efficiently, and predictably.
In the immediate assessment of the moment, it seems that having a body double is the best way to increase the impact of our work to double our good efforts. Additionally, what might apply to our line of work in particular is the idea that "no rules rule," meaning that relationships rule. Therefore, relatability and likability are key currencies.
Embracing, let alone engaging with people who are obviously different from us, can seem challenging, inefficient, and difficult. It can appear to be a risky business, literally. It forces us to spend mental capacity navigating interactions, decoding what makes them tick, how they talk, and what makes them laugh - navigating what can be awkward and uncomfortable.
The Dual Mindset
If we want to succeed in embracing diverse perspectives as a company, it is not enough to simply invite different people into a room and expect the benefits of diverse perspectives to flourish. Embracing diverse perspectives requires each of us to think about how we engage with people holding perspectives different from our own - how we listen and how we include these perspectives.
To succeed in embracing diverse perspectives, we can benefit from applying the dual mindset of an anthropologist, zooming in and out between perspectives outside ourselves and recalibrating how we see the world when including them.
On one side, we explore the perspectives of others by listening, questioning, and observing what is around us. The other aspect of this dual mode is how we then operate with the multiple perspectives we are informed by: integrating perspectives on a matter, adapting to new knowledge as we build it, and continuously clarifying the overall vision and purpose of what we are doing.
A Shift in Perspectives
As humans, we tend to gravitate towards a world-view and relationships that place the world we can see, that we have experienced and that we feel safe in, in the middle of the universe. We tend to strive for assimilation rather than enjoying diversity. Therefore, we continuously need to remind ourselves that the world does not revolve around us. This applies to us as individuals, as well as to us as teams, companies, and organisational units.
Let me give you a challenge: The next time you engage with a person who is different from you, and this person might annoy you because of the immediate difference, allow yourself to be curious about the difference rather than dismiss it. Do you see something familiar from the opposite perspective? Try to empathise with the things that are strange or annoying. What can you learn from the other perspective, and what does it teach you about yourself?
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