Diversity
How to Become a Catalyst of Change at Any Age
It’s time to quit your old subconscious, outdated behaviours
If you’ve grown up in a major metropolitan centre, then a diverse population is given. However, there’s also a wide swath of people who haven’t, people like me that grew up in very white, very small communities and with no interactions with people of color.
Regardless of where you’ve come from, there’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to how we interact and include people who don’t look like us.
How much of your everyday life, or even a part of it, is spent with people who don’t think, act, or look like you? Does it matter? It does if you’re looking for new opportunities to grow your business, learn about the world, and ultimately, about yourself.
If you’re Caucasian, you may not have considered what it is to be a POC (person of color) within the prevalent business frameworks.
For instance, networking events.
What is your strategy for meeting new people? How do you decide who you’ll strike up a conversation with? Do you look for people you know already or who look like you?
Pre-pandemic, when there were still in-person networking and business events, two things became clear to me.
- Regardless of the events, most Caucasian people gravitated to other Caucasians and then secondarily to those of the same gender.
- There were far more Caucasians present than POC.
Change starts with observation and empathy
Imagine for a moment how isolating it would be if you’re a part of the population underrepresented. The impetus then becomes yours to break the ice and attempt to meet people. How exhausting.
Becoming more observant, aware, and empathetic means that instead of placing the burden of connection on others, you take the initiative. How?
The first and easiest is to become an observer. Do you see people sitting or standing alone? Or do you see a group in which someone isn’t engaged, or perhaps looking around for another person or group to converse with? Or maybe you see a group having a great conversation and by joining you’d find an opportunity to discover their take on a topic and become a learner.
The second thing you can do is take action.
Finding the empty seat
Two years ago, while attending a Canadian Association of Speakers conference, the opportunity to sit with two Indigenous attendees arose. Looking around, I saw two people sitting alone, so over I went, asking to join them.
They were younger, which set me apart from them in a way other than our skin color. Then, using my introvert superpowers, I drew them into conversations about themselves, their experiences, and their speaking topics.
There were similarities, such as growing up on the prairies and some significant differences, because, as Indigenous people, they face an incredible amount of racism within Canada. They were generous in speaking with me about some of their adversity in their early years. The adversity that requires developing and using resilience. That knowledge is now a part of their individual speeches. My speech also includes the topic or resilience, so professionally and personally, it gave us some common ground.
Their experiences of developing and using resilience were obviously quite different from mine, yet we shared a common understanding of why we’d use our stories to help others. Their stories about their work, what brought them into speaking, and what they’re working towards accomplishing were interesting and inspiring.
There’s nothing like meeting and conversing with people whose lived experience differs from yours. That’s how you foster understanding, innovation, and how new opportunities arise.
If you stay in the box of known, you’ll do not know the bigger world beyond.
A wider perspective is next to impossible without actual interactions with people who don’t look, act, or think like you. It’s why continuing to foster professional and personal interactions and friendships with those of all backgrounds and ages is important. What you don’t know will forever outweigh what you know.
The world is changing, keep up or get left behind.
Service clubs, the ones I’ve seen of late, are struggling. Having spoken at some of these clubs, their lack of progress in keeping up with the times is glaringly clear. When addressing them, I saw a sea of mostly men, all Caucasian and many, many grey-haired people.
On the one hand, they’re aware of the need to bolster their membership, but woefully unaware of how much needs to change so that they can once again become vibrant and relevant groups.
From outdated membership rules, to how they recruit, many are experiencing the pinch of dwindling memberships. Why? In part, because they believe that their long history (relatively speaking) is good enough for community members to be aware of their clubs and decide they want to join. Immigrants or POC may not understand about the club, its mandate, or how it would be of benefit to them.
If you don’t know anyone in a service group or are not a part of the community projects that they lead, then you’re not likely to join. This is especially true if you look around and no one looks like you. There’s a special brave to walk into a room and be “one of a kind.”
As for the clubs, if there’s no plan on their part to ensure their membership outreach efforts include community organizations where people of color volunteer or work, then they may slowly fade into obscurity. Which seems a shame when there’s so many opportunities to serve a larger community with more inclusivity.
These days, there’s no good reason not to have more diversity in your personal and professional life.
Where to start
Step one means you’ll have to cross the room, start a conversation, or reach out to your professional network and make a dedicated effort.
Step two is to look at your workplace and your community groups and decide how you can do better. How can you personally begin to invite and create more diversity? How will you become a catalyst of change so that the institutions at the community, business, and government levels represent the real world and not one from 50 years ago?
And finally, step three. It hinges on creating a culture of belonging.
In any community, including our global one, it’s belonging that helps to crumble walls that divide us and contribute to isolation. By actively choosing to expand your circle and inviting others in for the post-work get-togethers, the mentorship, and the informal networking, there’s a chance to get to know each other. That’s when genuine change happens.
Change is upon us, POC are no longer willing to be sidelined by outdated ways of doing things. Aren’t you ready to be a catalyst of change? To help bring the world up to speed and speed up the potential for all of us? I am. Only you can answer if the effort is worth it, but I know my understanding of the world is more expansive and my life is richer because of the people in it.
