What About Diversity of Thought and Experience?

The practice of diversity shouldn’t just be a workplace thing.

Photo by JD Mason

I met my friend’s girlfriend for the first time. We’re sitting in her two-story condo streaming the NBA All-Star game, drinking gin and tequila and eating bits of seasoned octopus. The conversation steers towards Gucci and she talks about how happy she is they’ve created all these positions to better understand culture, inclusion, and diversity.

I tell her I understand where she’s coming from, but for me, the most important aspect of diversity is diversity of experience and diversity of thought.

Here’s how I see it: The true goal of diversity should be empathy. Once you’re able to empathize with a certain group, you’re much better able to serve them. The very best way to empathize with anyone or anything is to have real experiences with that group. It changes the way you think, the way you behave, and the way you create.

If employers focused on finding individuals with unique experiences, then it naturally leads to an inclusive environment. There shouldn’t be a need to create all these new “roles” with these euphemistic titles to make sure diversity is understood. Diversity is something that should be infused into the lifeblood of an organization, not some top-down, structured approach paired with employee training programs. I don’t see how that makes any sense.

Diversity Shouldn’t Just be a Workplace Thing

More specifically, diversity of thought and experience shouldn’t just be a workplace thing. It’s something we should practice in our everyday lives. It’s so easy today to get stuck in the same thought process. Social media does a good job of reaffirming our beliefs and making us feel like our opinion is the only right opinion. That’s dangerous.

Your goal is not to agree, it’s to empathize.

It’s important we use this powerful tool to broaden our perspectives. Search for opinions that differ from yours and try to understand why people who hold those opinions feel the way they do. Get rid of any judgement or biases. Enter those spaces and discussions with an open mind and truly listen to the reasoning. Your goal is not to agree, it’s to empathize.

Do the same in real life. Speak to people who don’t look like you. Expose yourself to people you know don’t share your opinion. You can’t possibly understand something if you’re only looking at it from one direction. And if you’re only looking at things from a singular perspective, then you can’t go screaming about lack of inclusivity because you’re just as much a part of the problem. You don’t need to be leading a fortune 500 company to practice diversity of thought.

We need to make ourselves better people

We need to make ourselves better people. That’s how things change. We need to care about the people we disagree with. We need to respect people who don’t share our beliefs and be comfortable with the fact you may not agree. Who we are will be reflected in the platforms we create. Better people means better platforms, better platforms means better communities. All of this starts with diversifying our thoughts and experiences.

C.R.Y

What About Diversity of Thought and Experience? was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.