How to Work With and Lead People Not Like You. McDonald Kelly
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an adventure!
To my inner circle, my true family: Cliff Bohaker, Lynne Swihart, Robert Swafford, Todd Young, Ronny Steelman, Carson Garza, Adam Bowden, Andrea Cleverley Howard, Randy McCauley, Gregorio Kishketon, Dennis and Nikki DuPont – thank you for your support and enthusiasm every time I do this. And for the fun and friendship all these years. I cannot believe we have not landed in jail. Yet.
To Kiki, for the hundreds of hours of pet therapy. And to Danit Talmi, for sharing her with me.
To all those who contributed and helped, whether it was with specific insights and anecdotes, pep talks, chapter reading, connections to others who helped or simply being wonderful in my world: Z, Amber, Jessica Hogan, Ben Hogan, Todd Dunham, Mary, Jamie, Tamara, Sara, Mollie, Sylvia, and Katie.
To my clients, who become my friends. You have cheered me on, encouraged me and you're the reason I do what I do. Special shout outs to Ron Arrigo, Bill Rutherford, Terry Young, Joe Jasmon, Kristin Dupont, Jeff Hurt, and Sarah Michel.
And to every reader of this book, thank you for being the kind of person who strives to build bridges and teams. I may never know you, but I know your heart. Thank you.
PART I
Working with People Not Like You: How to Build Relationships and Foster Connections across Different Cultures and Values
CHAPTER 1
“I Used to Just Be Able to Do My Job – Now I Have to Be Politically Correct”
You've probably heard the line that goes something like, “Work is hard – if it were easy, it wouldn't be called “work!” How true. I don't know anyone who doesn't work hard, who doesn't feel pressure at work, who feels 100 percent secure in their job at all times. Work can be a stressful place these days. Between layoffs, downsizing, “right‐sizing,” corporate acquisitions and consolidations, wage or salary restrictions, budget tightening and trying to achieve company goals, everyone is doing their best just to get through each week. As an employee or leader, you work hard, do your job and you learn to adapt to change.
But these days, it's not just management or policy or budget changes you have to adapt to. You look around your workplace and your coworkers look increasingly different. Different from you. More diverse. You're expected to work with people who aren't like you. Or you're expected to lead people who are not like you. (If you're responsible for leading a diverse group of people at work, this book will help you with concrete, tested steps and solutions that will provide direction for effectively building trust, resolving conflict and creating a productive team. Part II of this book is specifically for people like you and you can skip straight to Part II to learn how to lead diverse teams.)
Maybe your coworkers are of a different race or ethnicity. Perhaps they hold different religious views. Maybe they're from a generation you don't relate to. They may not speak English well. Perhaps they're from another country or culture that is unfamiliar to you. Or they're the opposite gender and you've never understood the way they think.
Yet you're expected to be a team player. In fact, you're expected to embrace this diverse team. You're told that your company is progressive and that diversity is good. And, heaven forbid, if you express anything other than sheer joy at the prospect of working with diverse groups of people, then you're out of line. Something must be wrong with you: you're racist. Or sexist. Or homophobic. Or intolerant. Or inflexible. Or “behind the times.” Or you just “don't get it.”
At work, it's not okay or politically correct to say, “I'm uncomfortable with this person.” In fact, if you do say something along those lines, your job may be at risk. Your company may terminate you for not being on the “diversity bandwagon.” So you keep quiet and you keep your thoughts to yourself. But deep down, you are uncomfortable.
If you feel like this, it doesn't mean you're racist or sexist or ageist or homophobic or any other negative label. It means you're struggling.
You're struggling to understand people or cultures or values that are unfamiliar to you. You're struggling to do your job with teammates and coworkers who may have very different viewpoints or a different approach to work than you have. You're struggling to overcome differences and pull together with different people to achieve high performance at work. You're also likely suffering from what I call “diversity fatigue.”
I do a lot of professional speaking on this topic and I have learned to avoid the word “diversity” because of people's reaction to it. I used to do keynotes on a topic called “Diversity in America” and slowly, over a few years, I saw interest in the topic decline pretty substantially. I suspected the reason, but talking with a client one day confirmed it. She said, “It's a great topic, Kelly, and an important one. But I fear our conference attendees won't come to the session if they see that as the title. People are burned out on diversity. They think it's going to be some HR lecture and they've heard it all before. Can you call it something different?”
I changed the title to “The New Demographics” and BAM! I started getting booked for that topic like crazy. It was the exact same content, but with the word “diversity” in the title, it just wasn't generating much interest. My client was right: people who work have been coached and conditioned to accept and embrace diversity on the outside, but inside, they're over it. They've heard the lectures; they've been through the training; and they're simply tired of the subject, even though it's an important one. They have “diversity fatigue.” Because they've heard so much about diversity for so long, they tune out. They're either bored with the topic, or they think it doesn't apply to them. They've been hammered at work (and in society) that we are all one big, happy world and that people are all the same. But we're not.
Today's workforce is made up of people who come from different backgrounds, different places, different skills, are of different generations, have different religions, values, and cultural norms – even our approach to work can be different from one another. All of this can seem foreign to you because it is foreign to you. The only lens you have to view the world through is your lens. You only have your frame of reference – you have no idea what it's like to be somebody else or think like someone else. So when you're confronted with someone whose actions, culture, style of dress, approach, nationality, language, religion, sexual or gender identity, color of skin, gender, or age is “foreign” to you, it's no surprise that you may feel uncomfortable.
Yet, if you express that, especially at work, people think there's something wrong with you – the “Diversity Police” make it seem like you're the one with a problem. You must be “old school” or racist or sexist or “something‐ist” if you express any kind of discomfort or lack of understanding when faced with coworkers who are different from you. You may even get in trouble and be reprimanded, disciplined or put on probation if you speak up about any discomfort you feel. So you keep quiet. But the discomfort doesn't go away.
Even those who aren't the least bit uncomfortable with people from different walks of life have diversity fatigue. One of my dearest friends, Robert Swafford, is incredibly outspoken about everything and he never minces words. He embraces all kinds of people, has a wide group of diverse friends, is inclusive and progressive and everything you'd hope a great employee in today's workforce would be. But he exclaimed to me one day as we were discussing this topic, “For crying out loud, can we please stop talking about diversity? Let's just go to work, respect each other, and figure it out as we go along! We get it!”
Even if you're one of the ones who “gets it,” the word “diversity” still carries a lot of baggage. It's not that people don't respect different cultures, races, ethnicities, and norms, it's just that there has been so much focus on diversity that people are simply tired of the subject, even though it's an important one.
That's one of two reasons I don't like the word “diversity.” The second reason is because, in my experience, people tend to think too narrowly about the word. They default to thinking about diversity in terms of racial and ethnic differences.
My definition of diversity is “any way