Are you (really) able to identify your ‘Opposite’? Here’s why you need to act now and find them at work.
Hands up if you’ve felt so moved by the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests across the world that you wrote a social media post, re-shared others’, had conversations with family and friends, and maybe even joined a march?
Hands up if you plan on converting that emotion and energy and support into meaningful and tangible action?
Hands up if you already have?
If you haven’t taken that first step, then you’re not alone. But you do have to do it, and the sooner you do the better. Because while sharing posts, getting involved in discussions and educating yourself are hugely important and necessary, for too many people it will stop there. Many people — and many organisations — will feel they have done their bit by showing their support and declaring their anti-racism, or will have (honest) intentions to take that first step into action but never get round to it.
You need to act, and you need to act now.
But to truly make a change, you have to take that first step, however small. Because then the next step becomes easier to take. And then the next. And then the next. Because action leads to changes in attitude and changes in behaviour. Not the other way round.
Someone much wiser than me said:
“Don’t tell me today what you’re going to do. Tell me tomorrow what you’ve done.”
So, at the start of 2020, I tried something a little different with some colleagues. Probably the best way to describe it is a physical manifestation of LinkedIn with diversity and inclusion hardwired in. And I call it ‘Equals’.
I brought together a group of colleagues who are all different from each other on some level (race, gender, religion, socio-economic background etc) and started to curate a series of shared experiences. Shared experiences which involve a bit of fun, a bit of intensity and a bit of vulnerability. My hope is that through these shared experiences we start to see past our differences and our job titles and forge authentic relationships with each other.
The concept of ‘Opposites’.
In the Equals programme, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of ‘Opposites’.
When we formed the pilot group, each of us spent time reflecting on our own identities and privileges. We used a series of questions which focussed on our external and our internal characteristics (for example: race, gender, socio-economic background, personality type, family status, lived experiences etc). These questions helped each of us to articulate all aspects of our identity, and place those aspects in a hierarchy of importance to us.
The feedback was that this was a really interesting process. That we — especially those of us who belong to racially- and culturally-dominant groups — rarely stop to think about who we really are and that when we do, we really notice all aspects of ourselves, not just those that are visible to others.
But we didn’t leave it there.
We then used our lists to imagine and describe in rich detail a person who had all the exact opposite characteristics to us.
What we noticed here was that this was a new way of exploring our identities. Our paper ‘Opposites’ were not always the person we expected them to be. Only when we articulated all aspects of ourselves did we develop a richer, more nuanced, multi-dimensional image of our ‘Opposite’. The process really brought our ‘Opposite’ to life, rather than being theoretical or focussing on one dominant characteristic. But it did more than that. The process forced us to paint a more honest picture of ourselves, to challenge the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and to confront how we situate ourselves in society (especially in comparison to our ‘Opposite’).
But we didn’t leave it there.
Using our paper ‘Opposite’, we then thought about who at work might fulfil this description the most. And we then explained to them what we were doing and invited them to join our Equals cohort.
And amazingly, they all said “yes”.
The Equals programme is based on an idea I’ve been developing over the past year, of doing different things with different people from different backgrounds. I want to subvert the power and privilege dynamics baked into our (work) world and networking, because they perpetuate power and privilege and exclude people who don’t already have them. I want to create strong networks of people who share knowledge, support, influence and opportunities with people different from themselves, now, and as their careers progress within and beyond our organisation. I want to lay the foundations for new, cohesive and diverse networks.
The Strength of Weak Ties and ‘Quasi-strong’ ties.
So what we have built is a cohort of colleagues, deliberately selected to have different characteristics from each other and who were open to truly get to know each other, to get to that point where we see past our differences and our job titles, to build a truly long-lasting cohesive and diverse network between us.
And we are doing this because we recognise that our individual differences are our collective strength.
This isn’t just some fatuous Insta-ready quote. Nor is it something that we just instinctively feel and know (although for many of us, it is). It’s based on two key insights.
First, as demonstrated in Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter’s groundbreaking 1973 study, that it is actually our ‘weak ties’ (and not our ‘strong ties’ as originally and universally believed), who are the most important in terms of innovation, networking and opportunities because they move in different professional and social circles to you and so have access to different ideas, different information and different worlds.
And second, Reid Hoffman’s observation that ‘quasi-strong’ ties — people who are both different from us yet close enough so as to make introductions — are even more valuable to us than our weak ties because they uniquely expand the total breadth of our (professional and personal) networks by additionally giving us authentic access to those different worlds.
Because it’s beyond question now that diversity of thought and diversity of experience makes for better decisions, better organisations and a better society.
And now it’s your turn.
I’ll be honest with you: I don’t know how this Equals programme is going to work, and nor can I be sure whether it will work. But we are testing and iterating this programme to make it the best it can be, to lay the foundations for new, cohesive and diverse networks and to make a reality those ‘quasi-strong’ ties.
Do you want to join me and take this first, small step?
If you would like to build better, more diverse and more inclusive networks both inside and outside your organisation in order to embed radical and long-lasting change, then get in touch or find out more here. I’d love to share in more detail what we’ve been doing, and to see how we can make Equals work for you.
