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? It has a door, 4 windows on the front, a tree with some apples, a path to the door and color it in a way that seems right? Clearly, I have something in my mind though that looks nothing like most houses I see these days. I know that many of us haven’t been drawing and coloring like this in a long-time unless we have young children at home so we may have to dig into our memories.
Similar to a drawing and coloring exercise, we get set on what things should look like – a family, a career, a business relationship, an organization – and then we often have a difficult time considering alternative options. We are stuck coloring within the lines of traditional expectations. I think it’s time for us to recognize that those traditional expectations are actually not the same for each of us as a result of the country or culture or demographic we grew up in, and, thus, we cannot expect everyone to operate in the same way.
Earlier this week, I was reminded about a great exercise I learned in my coaching program, “yes, and…,” that gets us to open our minds broader than we normally might. 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, 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 and effort and consideration.
If we are committed to creating work environments that foster equity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging, we need to start getting comfortable coloring outside out the lines of what we’ve always done before. We need to be open to using all of the colors in the crayon box, not just the one or two we are drawn to or those that are expected to show up on a tree or a house. When I think about this topic, I go back to a Harry Chapin song I first heard when I was in middle or high school. A key section of Roses are Red goes like this:
“And she said...
Flowers are red young man and
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen
But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in a flower and I see every one”
Is it time for all of us to become more like this little boy and less like this teacher?
I think it’s time for us to investigate our natural 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 give opportunity to think differently. We cannot bring a sense of belonging to life without tapping into opportunities that using the whole box of crayon will provide.
Yes, and...