I am fearful of saying and doing the wrong thing
I want to share something personal.
Now, that might seem really surprising to you because what I do for a "job" (I'm using quotation marks because it isn't a job for me - more on that later) is that I'm a diversity and inclusion expert.
And what a lot of people don't realise is that I have the same fears as you, as everyone else.
It's a normal human response to the work. 💁
We've seen the rise of cancel culture, shame culture, call it what you want, but the reality is it's always been there. It's just been in other forms.
We know with a lot of European and Anglo Saxon cultures and other countries, people that were punished were shamed by being in stocks in the middle of a village square and would have tomatoes thrown at them.
Shame and cancel culture has been in operation... for a really long time.
However with the rise of social media 📱 and how easy and accessible it is to cancel/shame people now, it has made us a little bit more fearful than perhaps 100 years ago in terms of how our actions may bring upon public consequences (shame/punishment).
This fear that we have about doing or saying the wrong thing, how can we move on from it? How can we refocus and reframe that question and take fear off the table to move our people, team and business forward?
Because fundamentally, that is the first hurdle that we need to overcome when it comes to creating a culture of inclusion in the workplace 💼.
We need to (to the best of our ability) unstick our people and leaders from the fear of "doing/saying the wrong thing" and move them into action. 🧑🏿🤝👩🏾
For it is only through action and action only that true change and inclusion is achieved.
In case you missed it:
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