Value difference. And get on with making a difference.
One of the things I have noticed in the media coverage around Brexit is a lot of ‘typing’ and labelling. The essential assumption is that we can categorise other people. And that this is a useful thing to do.
‘Typing’ people, or putting them into categories, has a long history. Phrenology – the 19th century science of assessing someone’s character based on the shape of their head – is but one example. Typing people psychologically continues until the present day: consider the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory – MBTI.
Labelling, for me, means something similar: how we type people in our speech, or in our thoughts. For example, I might see someone expressing anger, and then say (to myself) so-and-so is an angry person. I might see someone make a mistake, then decide they are a fool.
Typing and labelling are one way we make sense of the world, and, I suspect, from my own experience, are also a way of reducing anxiety. It helps me to put people into ‘boxes’. When something initially inexplicable happens, I feel calmer if I can explain it by saying so-and-so is such-and-such a type of person.
It is also perfectly understandable in the media. When there is a small space to fill, it is difficult to communicate complexity. And it is understandable in a world where our dominant paradigm is one of trying to understand the world by reducing it to its component parts.
But there are problems with labelling and typing.
We may accidentally be reinforcing the very behaviours we are seeing, and say we don’t like. If I believe you are a childish person, I may attribute your behaviours, whatever they may be, to the ‘fact’ you are childish.
And, in the light of my disdain, or paternalism, or whatever response I have to immaturity, you may actually start to behave childishly. Reinforcing my beliefs – together we enter a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I may also be inadvertently ‘locking’ us into this kind of pattern. I see what I want to see, hear what I want to hear, and therefore do not spend any time trying to find out what you actually think, or feel.
I stop exploring and enquiring, and instead rely on my existing assumptions.
If, like me, you recognise this habit, you might find it useful to try this simple experiment.
Ask yourself if you sometimes get angry. Or if you are angry all the time?
Ask yourself if you sometimes make mistakes? Or are you a fool all the time?
When I do that experiment, I discover that my feelings come and go, and so do my appraisals of myself. I am not a single type: open or closed. Sometimes I am open, sometimes I am closed.
So, if that is how I am, maybe other people are the same? Maybe typing and labelling simply get in the way of me seeing what is really happening? In the way of checking with another person what is really going on for them, right now.
A great friend of mine says “Value difference. And get on with making a difference”. This is a great strategy for a business. Diversity leads to resilience, through creativity. But to use it, it is vital to see the reality of the other people in front of us, and typing and labelling can get in the way.