As we move through our lives, second to minute to hour of every day – we choose.  Choice is something we practice every day, like breathing. There are varying degrees of what we are choosing, when and how, but we are choosing.  We choose to get out of bed at some point, we choose a destination, we choose to say hello and we choose to say goodbye.  Every time a part of our bodies moves, we have made a choice.

We don’t think about those choices every day. They are automatic.  For all of us, however, there are bigger choices that we need to make.  These choices are not always easy. They aren’t the fun decisions we get to make – these are the choices that shape who we are at our core as well as how we appear outwardly to the world.  There are consequences to these decisions, and therefore they require energy, thought, and time – all the things in short supply for all of us.

Because of our limited resources, some of those choices start to get packed away in the closets of our day. And just like everything else in our closets – well, my closet at least – we forget that those choices are there, that they are ours and they belong only to us. We pile feelings about and around those choices like the winter coats we put away for the summer.  The weight of all the other stuff we pack in there makes it hard to see the choices that are now all the way in the back, and they seem to have disappeared.  We close the closet door and go on with our day.

Days turn into weeks, even years, and at some point you will be revisited by the circumstances that first brought you to the choice you did NOT make – the one you put away, covered up, and closed the door on.  The one that is now heavy with old feelings, which now feels as though it doesn’t exist.  It is easy (well, much easier) to say, “I did not or do not have that choice; that choice is not mine.” It is harder to put your hand on the doorknob of that closed door,  to unearth what you have buried, to look at all the stuff that you loaded on top of it, and to see that your choice was – as it always was – there all the time.

What choices are you choosing not to make? What handles are waiting to be turned to open doors that have been closed?  We have an opportunity every day to choose. No matter what the choice is, we have it.   There is truly only one person who can get in your way – and it is you.  Big choices are hard and making them can be very difficult.  But if you don’t make them – if you don’t take that opportunity to choose – it does not mean that the choice was not available. It means that you chose not to take it.

That’s when I discovered the glass wall.

T-groups are famous for the feedback they provide to people. In fact they’re all about feedback: with no set agenda or purpose, participants spend several days giving one another candid input about the effectiveness—or ineffectiveness—of their behaviors.

While this kind of feedback is invaluable, it can also be difficult, even painful, to receive. It leaves us in a vulnerable position. And when it comes fast and furious, from every person in the room—as it came at me during the T-group—it can overwhelm and wound rather than help.

What I needed, as my retreat into the corner symbolized, was a safe space.

I visualized this safe space as a metaphorical glass wall between me and those who were giving the feedback. The point was not to shut them out completely—a brick wall would work for that—but rather to deflect the intensity of their input so I could look at it clearly. Behind the glass wall, I felt safe enough to consider the wisdom of their input, filter the helpful from the unhelpful, and explore how I might best apply it to create positive change in myself.

This is why, in our 12 Inclusive Behaviors, we emphasize the need to create a sense of safety for yourself and your team members. Becoming an Inclusion as the HOW® organization, like taking part in a T-group, is all about creating change—sometimes massive change—and change leaves people feeling vulnerable. In creating a sense of safety for myself via this glass wall, I was enabling myself ultimately to be more open to the change. I could actively absorb the input and improve in this important area of my life.

Any change effort demands that we be honest with ourselves. But we can only be honest with ourselves when we feel safe.  How do you gain the sense of safety you need?

No one seems to know what to call the times in which we are living. Many people use Information Age, but that seems outdated. True, dealing with information is still a large part of the virtual world—searching for it, filtering it, selecting the useful bits, and making sense of it are essential functions for living and working. But what we do after that is the key to survival and success for individuals and organizations in the coming years.

What we do after that is connect. Increasingly, in an age of information overload, it takes collections of individuals with differing areas of expertise working together to figure out how their disparate bits of information can fit together to advance the work and mission of the organization. Fortunately, the same technology that gave us instant access to information has also given us access to one another.

Almost without realizing it, we have been undergoing a Connection Revolution. We are living in the Connection Age.

Identifying the nature of this new age is important because a new age requires new mindsets as a matter of survival. They enable us to adapt and live effectively. When people stay with the mindsets of the previous age—or, worse, insist on applying them to the reality of the new age—decline inevitably sets in. Societies that did not shift their thinking from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age were left behind, irrelevant to the advance of the human race. The same happened with those who clung to the Agricultural Age and did not adapt to the Industrial Age.

Are We There Yet?

The evidence for this new Connection Age is unmistakable. Facebook now gets more daily page views than Google. Mobile technology keeps us in continual contact with one another. Virtually everyone between the ages of 16 and 25—in the United States and many other countries—sends text messages and has a Facebook account.

Connection has permeated every aspect of our culture, online and offline. The most effective way to succeed in business—to get a job, recruit clients, or find partners—is through networking, whether via LinkedIn or face to face at a Chamber of Commerce dinner. Forty years ago, children were ordered to “do their own work” in school; now they are encouraged to get help from any source that can help them, including classmates and Wikipedia. Engineers work continually in teams throughout the product development cycle. In short, people are expanding their knowledge and opportunities by establishing and expanding connections.

We are also expanding our social networks. Through the Internet and social media, each of us is in touch with more people than any human being in previous generations ever was. And we know more about the private lives of politicians, celebrities, and those experiencing 15 minutes (now often 15 seconds!) of fame through YouTube, blogs, and TV.

But How Well Do We   Actually Connect?

Ironically, the connectedness of the Connection Age has also spawned its opposite: in an always-on world, many people are feeling more isolated than ever. When we can connect via email and Facebook and Skype, we generally will connect in those ways, often at the expense of the “human touch” that comes from voice-to-voice or face-to-face engagement.

The connections we make are not always ideal. Emails and social media messages can easily be misinterpreted because they do not convey the nonverbal cues—the facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language—that help us determine what others are trying to communicate. In many cases the misinterpretation can make people feel small or excluded, which isolates them further.

Today’s organizations are steeped in these realities. Advances in technology enable teams to co-create with their counterparts around the globe. At the same time, an overreliance on email and online workspaces has led to many people’s spending entire days in front of their screens, sending texts, IMs, and emails to someone two desks away.  This isolation can breed mistrust, and mistrust prevents individuals and teams from doing their best work together.  Misinterpreted messages only exacerbate the effect.

Like every other period of history, the Connection Age has its benefits and drawbacks, its opportunities and threats.  The time to embrace new, Connection Age mindsets, in all their human and technological facets, has come. The challenge is how long it will take for the new mindsets to take hold—and we learn to gain all the advantages of this new Connection Age.

Inclusion is certainly not an event. Visualize a manager at the workplace making an announcement: “February is the inclusion month for this year. In February we will ensure everyone feels acknowledged and included for what they have done.” This turns inclusion into a “program of the month.” When the next customer order or project milestone comes up, “programs of the month” get put aside.  Event-based approaches are clearly ill suited for creating inclusion.

So is inclusion a process, or the outcome of a process? If we were to ensure the 12 Inclusive Behaviors were exhibited at the workplace in a certain order/algorithm/manner, would we have an inclusive workplace? Can you think of a successful cultural change initiative which happened only because a certain process was followed repeatedly? I can’t think of any!

A few days ago, while reflecting through my notes from the Be BIG workshop, I came across this statement: “Inclusion is a Mindset”!

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online defines mindset as “a mental attitude or inclination; a fixed state of mind.” A “mental attitude or inclination” influences/determines behavior. Hence changing the “mental attitudes or inclinations” makes it easier to change behaviors; then we practice the new behaviors until they permeate our way of living. At that point, we live them out involuntarily.

The idea of “process” evokes images of conscious attempt. A team can start practicing Inclusive Behaviors through a conscious process.  But the challenge lies in making inclusion a mindset at the workplace. When this mindset takes hold, and the behaviors are practiced long enough, we exhibit them as involuntarily and naturally as walking when we want to move or breathing every minute of our lives. It is at that point that we have created an inclusive workplace!

-Sourav Banerjee

Mumbai, India

 I agree that it is a fairy tale. More than that, it is a harmful fairy tale.

As in many movies with historical settings, it is easy to be seduced into thinking that the plot at least echoes the actual history.  That is what makes The Help harmful. For African Americans living in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South during the early 1960s, “history as it actually happened” was an unending sequence of terror and violence. Perceived—let alone actual—offenses against white people most often had disastrous and life-ending consequences. (From 1882 through 1968, Mississippi experienced the most lynchings of any state in the Union.)

Consider one of the film’s most important scenes. When Minny, a domestic worker, served up a pie full of excrement to the most vicious of the white women, she lost her job. If she actually had served up such a pie during that time, there is a very high probability that  she would have lost her life, family members would have lost theirs, or—at a minimum—she would have been “taught a lesson” more severe than job displacement.

In an era that produced the brutal assassinations of Medgar Evers (a Civil Rights activist in Mississippi, who was killed in 1963) and many others, are we so naïve as to believe that losing one’s job would be the ultimate penalty for offending a white employer in such a manner?  And while Medgar Evers’ death was mentioned in the film, it seems strange that its impact on the African American characters was largely ignored. The true story, of course, would not make an award-winning Hollywood movie, but instead an R-rated film full of lynchings, constant fear, and brutal beatings. That would be shameful as opposed to celebratory, and shameful doesn’t sell in Hollywood!

Also missing from the movie version of The Help (it was addressed in the book) is the rape of African American women by the “master” of the house. Why was that left out? In the film, the worst indignity involves the unwillingness of some white women to give their African American domestic workers—who cleaned for them, cooked for them, and cared for their children—permission to use their toilets. This is indeed a fairy tale version of what life was really like for those women.

In this context—with its pervasive fear, the constant threat of brutality, and the justified resentment it engendered—it is nearly inconceivable that African American women who worked as domestic workers in the early sixties would “rise up” to tell their stories to a white writer, even if it was someone they knew. They would have been putting their lives and their families in harm’s way. True, many brave African Americans did put their lives and families on the line to gain their civil rights (with the support of some white allies), and The Help does give us snapshots of the women’s fear of talking about their experiences. Ultimately, though, that fear—like most of the realities of that time—is downplayed.

Why does this matter? Because this false rewrite of history provides a false sense of what happened in the United States. By making the U.S. and Mississippi look better than they were at the time, the film joins a movement that is already too much in abundance: glossing over or erasing the true description of the plight of people who have been oppressed by systems that are still impacting millions today.

The movie’s conclusion leaves viewers content with the sense that the system of white privilege has been breached: that “the help” are the victors. As such, it obscures two facts that are critical for us to understand if we are to appreciate and advance the cause of dialogue about race. First, the struggle for civil rights went on far longer (indeed, it still goes on) and was far more perilous than the early 1960s as portrayed in The Help. Second, what The Help tells us is that we still live in a society that wants to underplay the role and impact of racism. Clearly, we have a long way to go.

Soon Judith Katz and Fred Miller started the workshop.  It was the beginning of a two-day journey of learning, practicing, and experiencing Be BIG behaviours.

In this post I wish to relate some of the things Judith and Fred did at the start of the workshop—things which enabled inclusion for myself and others over the next two days. In the process I learnt what I could do differently at work.

Fred started the meeting with a Moment for Focus exercise. He wanted us to take a minute to think about why we were there in the workshop, what we would contribute, and what we hoped to take away.

The ring of a hand-operated bell signalled us to start. I closed my eyes. Initially the silence was discomforting. There were a myriad of thoughts on my mind. I was trying to think about the workshop but other thoughts were intruding in—thoughts around what I needed to do at work next week and some stuff at home I needed to complete over the weekend. I struggled my way through and finally did manage to come out with why I was there in the workshop.

I wanted to understand:

• What interactions make me BIG/small?
• What interactions make my colleagues BIG/small?
• What interactions make teams BIG/small? Why do
  some teams seem to be high-performing and integrated while others are not? What
  could we do as HR managers to create high-performing and integrated teams?

Fred rang the bell again after about a minute to bring our focus back to the group, and we shared our thoughts with others. As I heard others share their expectations and I shared my expectations, I became clearer about why I was there.

Next we did a Hello exercise. We went around the room, shook each other’s hands, and acknowledged each other’s presence.  By the end of all the Hellos I felt warm towards my co-participants—people who 10 minutes back were strangers to me. There was this sense of inter-connections among this diverse group of people (managers, entrepreneurs, social workers, etc.).

We didn’t stop at this. Fred next asked all of us to “check in.” We talked about how we were feeling as a human being today. I reflected on my state of mind for the day and shared my state with others. I heard about my co-participants’ states of mind and could consequently understand when and how much they wanted to participate.

Later some of us shared a few Safety Stories. These were narratives of safety procedures that appealed to us, often wrapped around a personal experience with the procedures. I realized that people have different level of needs for physical, emotional, and psychological safety. I also sensed that when people feel safe they bring their best to work.

So why do I mention the Moment for Focus, the Hello exercise, checking in, and Safety Stories? These helped me during the workshop and have left me with questions I hope to answer at work.

Knowing why I was in the workshop enabled me to actively listen, participate, and create action plans over the two days. I was no longer a passive recipient of information but actively fulfilling my input needs.  By the end of the two days I had concrete action plans in place—plans about what I wanted to do differently at work.

Knowing why others were there in the workshop enabled me to actively listen to their points of view and support them in meeting their goals.

Saying Hellos, checking in, and sharing Safety Stories ensured that I built connections with others in the room, became aware of our needs around safety, and understood where they (and I) were coming from each day.

At work we have multiple meetings in a day. We attend meetings we are invited to. We invite others for meetings and call in a wide range of stakeholders to ensure buy-in. We facilitate meetings. But when do we pause to reflect why we are there or why we are calling someone for a meeting? Even if we do expectation setting at the start of a meeting, do we create a space where people can focus their thoughts before they speak?

We need to start meetings with a Moment for Focus. Think of a team moving from a two-hour operational review meeting straight into a strategic planning meeting. We are asking them to undergo a significant shift in time application and thought process. Starting the strategic planning meeting with a Moment for Focus enables all the participants to see why they are there and how they would contribute.

I personally found the bell to be helpful. I associate the sound of the bell with temples: you ring the bell before you pray and you ring it again after you have finished praying. I associate praying with focusing my thoughts. Hence ringing the bell makes it so much easier for me to focus thoughts, irrespective of how hectic a day I am having.

Our need for these other practices is just as important. We often talk of teamwork: how a good team functions in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. How does that happen until and unless we feel connections amongst each other? These connections need to be built every time we meet. We might be working with each other, but do we know how even our best buddy at work is feeling today? Saying Hellos and checking in sets us up for practicing Inclusive Behaviours in our interactions. Feeling safe and making others feel safe ensures a level playing ground where everyone can come in and contribute.

I believe that these four activities—part of what Judith and Fred call the Inclusive Meeting Norms—can make a critical difference in the way we work together. That in turn can increase the performance of our team and even our whole organization. My goal now is to put these norms to work for us, and I hope this blog post will help you do the same.

- Sourav Banerjee

Mumbai, India

This came up for me at several events I attended recently. During the Women: Inspiration & Enterprise Symposium, many of the motivational speakers said roughly the same thing: know what you want, love what you do, stay in control of your vision, use fear as motivation, take care of yourself, trust your gut. This is great advice for emerging entrepreneurs who have never heard it before. But for everyone else, it was review—nothing particularly new or fresh or bold. A second event on entrepreneurship, held locally, felt the same way: it covered basic topics like how to start your own business and how to find capital.

These events happened right around the passing of Steve Jobs, and the timing had me reflecting about ideas new and old. I remember thinking: What now? Who’s going to step up with the next big idea? Is there enough visionary ability out there to produce something new?

I want to seek out the next big idea in my own work. Because everything in business moves so fast, it’s easy, as a graphic designer, to simply recycle old ideas and get them out the door. But how do I find that next big idea? What does it take to do outstanding work? The first step, for me at least, is to slow down—to relax, look at others’ new ideas, play with new ideas of my own. This is why I signed up for an art class: to get the time to recharge and renew my thinking. Otherwise everything becomes a blur.

In our ultra-fast world, are there enough people slowing down often enough to keep the flow of ideas moving? This is especially important for entrepreneurs, whose entire future depends on the “wow” level of their ideas.

Then there is the question of who should be involved. At KJCG, we constantly talk about the Four Corners Breakthrough: the idea of bringing together everyone connected with an issue—people of different roles, functions, levels, experiences, backgrounds, etc.—to get a 360-degree vision of the situation. That often results in better ideas and solutions. It may even be true, as Fred Miller wrote last year, that the larger the crowd, the greater the chance of its arriving at a breakthrough.

On the other hand, some of my best ideas come when I’m alone and have a minute to think for myself. Entrepreneurs often work alone as well, or maybe with a couple of partners. Maybe the bottom line here is to ask ourselves is how we arrive at the best thinking to accelerate our success.

Entrepreneurship is a good thing. But entrepreneurship needs great ideas. In fact, our world needs great ideas—a lot of them. If we slow down enough, and position ourselves (alone or with others) to do our best thinking, maybe we can generate the breakthroughs we need.

Yes, public attitudes are changing substantially to be more supportive of LGBT people. But in many parts of the United States, LGBT people have little or no protection under the law. Outright hatred still exists; so do violent hate crimes. Even in the absence of violence, many people who come out find themselves being “tolerated” (in the way that getting a tooth pulled is tolerated), as if that were acceptable. Because of all this, coming out—particularly for people who haven’t done it, or have come out to just one or two people—can be intimidating if not downright terrifying. It is hard not to feel vulnerable or exposed.

When someone comes out to you, then, it is essential to respond in a way that creates a sense of safety and makes everyone involved BIG. You can, for instance:

Take a breath…and pause. Make space for the news to settle in. After all, what you are hearing is important: it is about nothing less than the person’s identity.  No matter what your personal views are, the news will almost surely make an impact on you. A moment’s pause allows you to refocus and respond from your best self.

Acknowledge the courage—and the gift. This person chose you as someone important to come out to. The level of trust and intimacy expressed in this choice is a priceless gift. Speak your thanks for that gift and the courage it took to give it.

Listen deeply, speak thoughtfully. Let the individual tell her or his story in her or his way—or not tell it at all. The person may have wanted simply to tell you with no
drama, fanfare, or explanation. After all, how often do heterosexuals feel compelled to tell the stories of how they discovered and shared their heterosexuality? So express interest, ask if the person wants to share more, but tread lightly.

Ask where the person has come out. In the workplace? At home? In the community? Has this individual been out for a while, or is this new for her or him? Knowing more about the person’s coming-out process will inform your role in helping her or him stay safe. It also affects the next point:

Be clear on confidentiality. Is this a secret for your ears only? If not, with whom can you share the news? On such a sensitive topic, gaining clarity on the person’s needs for confidentiality is essential for her or his safety.

Express your commitment to the relationship. Many people who come out fear rejection above all else.  Make it clear that you care about the person, welcome her or his presence, and will continue the relationship no matter what. Then follow through on that promise. In fact, this may be a good time to provide even more support, as the person may have lost others in her or his support network who have not reacted well.

How you approach these steps and others, of course, depends on the individual who is coming out, the type of relationship you have, and other factors. Whatever the specifics, your acceptance, your support, and your acknowledgment of her or his courage can provide a sense of safety that many LGBT people need in the process of coming out.

I like social media. It’s valuable for entertainment purposes, staying in touch with far-flung friends and family, and improving certain elements of work. We can share daily details from our lives, swap funny stories, and make an observation or two.

But I think we’re getting carried away—by sharing way too much that is way too personal.  I have seen people announce the engagements of other people online. People fight and couples break up on Facebook. I have seen pregnant friends post sonograms of their fetus for the whole world to see.

You might not think that’s a particularly big deal. As I said, Facebook is valuable for sharing the details of our lives. But in sharing too much, I believe we’re losing something I call “the cherish factor”: the deep intimacy of sharing and cherishing the most important events in our lives with the most important people in our lives.

When my close friend recently got engaged, for instance, I wanted her to tell me privately. I wanted an intimate moment to celebrate together and cherish this wonderful news. Moments like this enrich our relationships and deepen our bonds. Because I read her news on Facebook, however, that moment of cherishing never had the chance to take place.

The cherish factor goes beyond big news as well. Imagine a night at home with your family: few experiences are more important to cherish and savor. Already, though, we have allowed technology to penetrate those sacred times. An intimate dinner or a walk in the woods with one’s children is so easily disrupted by the ring of a cell phone. Our iPhones chatter, our email distracts us, each of us watches her or his own TV. This will only become more of a challenge as advances in technology provide more ways to reach us.

It’s hard to set boundaries when the technology makes us so accessible, because people’s expectations change with technological advances. What if you don’t respond right away? Will people feel less valued because you’re not responding? Will they worry about your well-being?

There’s another issue here as well: I think we can talk about new technology in terms of addiction. The experience of the iPad and other gadgets is addictive in itself; so is the need we feel to be reachable at all times. We get sucked in before we know it.

Still, while setting boundaries is difficult, I think we have to do it. We need to respect the face-to-face, human interaction that allows us to cherish one another. We need a separation of technology and “real life.” Where we draw that line will depend on our individual circumstances, and that’s OK. But we must make a point of making the choice. Only then can we preserve and protect the cherishable parts of our lives—the parts that make us more deeply human.

Too often, however, we pay no attention to people around us. In the process, those opportunities are lost.

Have you ever walked past people with your head down, looking at your BlackBerry? Perhaps it was a particularly crazy day, with meeting booked on top of meeting, and you simply “didn’t have time to talk.” It happens to all of us. But what if the people you walked past are the exact people who, in collaborating with you, could co-create positive change in your workplace? What if they have a perspective that, when combined with yours, could lead to an entirely new level of performance? That collaboration could transform the course of your organization. The impact could be so great.

You are never going to know everything about the people who are in and around your life. On occasion, you literally can’t stop to talk at length. But if you take the minute to engage in a short conversation with them—even if it’s just hello—you open the door for a potential partnership. From there, the possibilities of what the two of you could do together are endless.

This isn’t just about the people you see every day, either. Keeping in touch with old friends, college professors, and peers, checking in with past colleagues and business partners…you never know where one of these encounters may lead.  So take a breath, look up, and connect. The world is small, and you may see—and need—those people again.

By Victoria Gammerman and Julie Bush