Coloring Outside the Lines

When you draw a house with a tree in the yard and start coloring it, do you automatically make it look a certain way??I do. It has a door, four windows on the front, a tree with some apples, a path to the door, and I color it traditionally. My mind has a vision of what a house looks like, and I'm limited in my drawing expertise. My house drawing looks nothing like most houses I see these days, but it's still what comes to mind when someone says to draw a house.

Why Does this Matter in the World of Work?

Similar to a drawing and coloring exercise, we get set on what things should look like – a family, a career, a business relationship, or an organization. Then we have a difficult time considering alternative options. We are stuck coloring within the lines of traditional expectations.

It’s time to recognize that those traditional expectations we may have are not aligned with everyone else's expectations. We come from different countries, cultures, and experiences. We cannot expect everyone to think and operate in the same way as we do.

Recently I was reminded about a great exercise I learned in my coaching program, “yes, and…” This exercise gets us to open our minds broader than we normally might by needing to build on the stated idea. Often, we rush to the easy "we’ve always done it this way" because we know it works, and we’re often crunched for time. We don’t pause to consider if that approach is still the best way, if the key inputs have changed, or if the desired outcome has shifted. We do it the way that’s ingrained because it’s become our norm. Going outside the norm takes time, effort, and consideration.

The pandemic, the global economy, the war in Ukraine, and the social issues that continue to challenge our world require us to retire our old playbooks. We must stop using coloring books with fixed lines because the world doesn't work that way anymore. We need to use a blank sheet of paper to redefine what we want to be true - in our teams, our organizations, and our communities.

The Mandate

If we are committed to creating work environments that foster equity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging, we need to be comfortable coloring outside the lines of what we’ve always done before. We need to be open to using all the colors in the crayon box, not just the one or two we are drawn to or those expected to show up in the pictures we draw.

Employees want to feel valued and that they belong and to experience equity in their opportunities and pay. When they don't find a culture that supports this, they will leave. We have seen it occur over and over during the past year.

What are you holding on to from the past that no longer serves you or your organization? What fixed mindset is limiting you from optimizing impact?

It’s past the time to investigate our tendencies about how we think things need to happen or what they should look like. It’s time to get curious and say “yes, and…” to allow thinking differently.?We cannot bring a sense of belonging to life without tapping into opportunities that using the whole box of crayons will provide.

Yes, and...

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