Introduction
I bought David Brook’s How to Know a Person *many months ago. It had been sitting in my line up of audiobooks not so much neglected as passed over as books demanding my immediate attention were favoured.
The book turns out to be an extraordinarily powerful guide on how to be a more inclusive person. The trick is to pay attention to other people as they are, not how you think about them. There’s not a huge amount to say other than if you want to find ways to develop your capacity to be more inclusive, this book is an outstanding guide.
Below are a few quick reflections
The power of curiosity
What is that person really like? When a person is habituated to being subject to discrimination, they can express reserve and uncertainty. It is easy to appear to lack social confidence.
I need Canadian crutches to stay upright. During a break in a meeting of my department’s Disability Employee Network [DEN] when everyone else was standing around chatting, cuppa in one hand and biscuit in the other, I had to find a place to sit and ask somebody to get me a coffee and biscuit. I sat alone. I needed a chair and a table to put my cup on. There was nothing closer than 20 metres from the group. Then the Secretary of my department came over and introduced himself. He said he had noticed I was off by myself and wanted to know if I was okay. I was fine. I just couldn’t stand with the others. We chatted the rest of the break.
Later, when I became Chair of the DEN, I remembered that conversation. I felt comfortable reaching out to the Secretary and that led to a collaboration that was fundamental to the DEN’s subsequent success.
Wanting to know whether I was okay became the foundation of a partnership that benefitted many staff with disability. Had the Secretary not been open, curious and concerned I don’t know what might have happened later. I do know that that chat gave me the confidence to build a partnership that was instrumental in transforming how the DEN operated.
When we are uncertain
It is easy to be open with people for whom we have formed a liking and assume there will be reciprocation. But when we have no idea whether we will like them, or if we see something that hints that we may not like them, we can project our discomfort onto that person and anticipate coolness or rejection.
Brooks reminds us that we can be centred in our own goodwill, and we can make the interaction about the other person and not about our anticipation. And if we are met with coolness, our concern for the other person’s welfare can guide us to want to know more. Why have they acted coolly toward me? This is better than reacting, feeling offended – “I am a good person. I am hurt by that response.”
It’s not always about me.
We humans naturally make our way in the world about us with a certain ‘selfish’ perspective. Looking after our own needs and making sure we are okay is natural and normal. But so is looking after the welfare of other people in our community. We need that balance to build a healthy place to live and work.
In the complex, pluralistic and diverse community that we live in it would be utterly psychologically exhausting to process every interaction with other people consciously. Our biases, stereotypes and projections are our energy efficient ways of managing interactions. But they are not well attuned to the reality we live in now. We can learn when to be more open to those who are not like us so we can embrace the diversity around us with curiosity, empathy and confidence.
If you see yourself as a good person who is inclusive and not discriminatory – not unkind or unempathetic, you must be conscious of the difference between your reflexes and your ideals.
Living up to our ideals takes conscious effort to overcome reflexes which trigger anxiety and fear in the face of uncertainty. We can think ourselves open and inclusive but also avoid encountering people who are unfamiliar to us.
It seems that there is a common thing that was epitomized to me in a story of an American senior manager. He said he was supportive of Disability Inclusion, but he felt he couldn’t approach and talk to staff with disability for fear of giving offence. Maybe that was a climate of militant advocacy in his workplace? But probably not. It could have been he came across a passionate advocate whose message was interpreted as being reactive to inexpert efforts at expressing sympathy for the cause. It could have been that he knew so little about disability he saw people with disability as somehow inherently different.
Still, had he the skills David Brooks explores in his book maybe that uncertainty wouldn’t have been as daunting to overcome.
Being certain isn’t always the best approach though
A few years back I was visiting an office I used to work in for a meeting. I was waiting in reception to be invited into the secure area. Suddenly the fire alarm sounded. It was a drill. I was on the 5th floor, and I don’t do fire escape stairs because of my disability, so I sat patiently waiting for the drama to die down. I was sitting near the lifts, as I might be instructed in a real emergency.
A woman approached me and asked if she might find my carer for me. I very nicely let her know that I was a fellow employee, a Senior Project Officer, here for a meeting. She fled in embarrassment. I never saw her again. There was no way I was offended. It was hilarious.
She was so kind. She was concerned for my welfare, and I appreciated that. I still would like to know why she thought I looked like a person who had, or needed, a carer. I liked her confidence. Had she not assumed I was in need of care I am sure our interaction would have gone more smoothly. But then, I wouldn’t have such a good story to tell.
Conclusion
Being inclusive requires conscious intent. We cannot banish our reflexes, but we can modify them and refine them.
There’s a reason the Good Samaritan story is in the Bible. It isn’t so much a religious story as a psychological one about being a good neighbour by not reflexively responding to impulses to not see another person in need as somebody worthy of our care and empathy.
Hospitality to strangers is a common theme in many cultures around the world. In a few cultures reflexively killing strangers is also a thing. That’s unfortunate, but also true.
If you support the ideals of celebrating diversity and living inclusively you support the hospitality-to-strangers principle.
But in our densely populated world the stranger isn’t necessarily from a faraway land. They could be from next door, from the next desk, or the seat beside you on a train. They could be that person sitting alone when everyone else is standing together.
I don’t know how my time as DEN Chair might have gone in a parallel universe in which the Secretary assumed I was okay and wanted to be alone. I do know that how things did go was determined in a big way by an act of curiosity and empathy – by an act of inclusion. I am grateful for that. I think a lot of other folks should also be grateful, and will be, now I’ve told this story.
*I show links to Amazon because it is uniquely inclusive in providing information about ebooks and audiobooks which are more accessible to many. I encourage users of 3D books to buy from local independent bookstores.