Invite Somebody Different

How many times have you looked around a meeting and thought same old faces, same old viewpoints? Now, I confess to being a proud #rebel and I like to bring different viewpoints into meetings. Adopting this approach can have two distinct advantages. It brings new, fresh thinking into a situation, but it has the additional benefit of allowing somebody to see a meeting they may not have otherwise seen. So why do we not challenge the very construct of our meetings more often? A lot of it is likely to be #habit, but some of it is also #safety . As humans we fear the unknown, so we avoid it and bringing in a fresh set of eyes, ears, thoughts and voices sometimes scares us.

I am a huge believer in different perspectives, different viewpoints. I love being challenged and questioned. Now I accept that not everybody thinks the same way but having some #rebel rules for meetings can really help. For example, I prefer to have a left hander in any meeting if I can. Left handers do think differently and it’s a simple ask. If I can achieve neuro diversity, then I will. That is more challenging because it’s not so easy to ask outright. I can sit in a meeting and openly ask how many left handers we have but I can’t directly ask neuro diversity questions.

What I can do, though, is create a sense of #trust and then I find people will approach me. I think most people who know me are not surprised when I turn up to meetings or workshops with different faces. I find clients are really positive when I introduce different faces and they will often go out of their way to be #inclusive

Let’s be honest, this all sounds a bit like me making a noise about something I do which seemingly benefits other people but let’s be really clear here. I am the greatest beneficiary of this process. Already this year I have had several instances where I have come away from a meeting where there was ‘somebody different’ in the room having seen something I would never have seen otherwise. I have learned because my horizon has been changed. Another, different perspective will do that, and I don’t think we do it often enough. We play the safe game, bring in the same people and, if we are honest, end up with the same ideas and approaches.

It is not just for meetings. It also works other ways. Those of you who follow me will know me as a licensed rugby coach and know how much I take from my coaching into the workplace. Recently I was invited to spend time with a football team. There was a perceived discipline issue and the team’s manager wondered whether some ‘rugby centric discipline’ might work. We introduced the five #rugby values to the footballers and built them into their training and their philosophy. It worked. It didn’t work because the values are magic, it worked because they were injected by somebody who has lived and breathed them for many years. Somebody different brought a different philosophy and used a different language.

Language is absolutely key in creating change. The same old group will eventually adopt the same language. This is where a lot of ‘business speak’ comes from but if we are lazy in our language we will also be lazy in our thinking. I recently delivered a webinar with a colleague where we used Greek and Latin to illustrate how modern presentations have become flat and predictable. It was amazingly well received but the key is that it would never have occurred to me to take the approach we did. My colleague doesn’t use business speak. She is a linguist and so she has a wholly different perspective. That’s what happens when you bring somebody different to a meeting. You see sparks of #genius you would never otherwise get.

We often talk about changing #culture in our organisations but we cannot change if we don’t first change the voices. We need new voices in our meetings, we need fresh perspectives, and we need some proper #rebel thinking. Try it today. Insist on a left hander in every meeting and bring somebody different who would never be on the normal invite list.