#17 The Good, Bad & Ugly of Managing Differences at Work

THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU HEAR

• “Why can’t you just agree with me for once?”

• “We’ve managed to do this this way for so long and never had anyone complain. Why must you make such a fuss?”

• “Everybody doesn’t have an issue with this. It’ll be so much easier if you just went along with it.”

…you’re in the Good, Bad & Ugly of Managing Differences at work.

THINK // 3 insights from the field

😇 THE GOOD THING about managing differences is that it’s a normal part of the process of building healthier and happier relationships.

You can hear it from marriage therapist Terry Real’s perspective that a healthy relationship is:

Or you can take a look at this chart from organizational anthropologist Tim Clark’s work on Psychological Safety:

As the individuals on your teams feel more included and accepted (Inclusion Safety), they may feel more safe to express things that may sound like they are ‘being different’ or ‘being difficult’ but are actually a natural outcome of growing psychological safety with the group:

• ask questions and talk about mistakes (Learner Safety)

• contribute their unique ideas, even if raw (Contribution Safety)

• challenge the status quo to be better (Challenger Safety)

🤬 THE BAD THING about managing differences is that we are always going to be a work in progress and always going to be ‘bad’ at managing differences from time to time.

Managing differences is essentially about conflict management and conflict resolution.

Let’s bring back Thomas Kilmann’s conflict resolution model again to remind us of what are the two capacities we need to bring to the table to do that well:

1. our capacity for assertiveness: concern for our own agenda; able to stand alone and different when necessary

2. our capacity for cooperativeness: concern for others’ agenda; able to stand with those who are different when necessary

If we have not spent time expanding our range of approaches to managing conflict/differences, we are likely to lean more heavily on our habitual way of managing conflict/differences:

If we are habitually higher in assertiveness and lower in cooperativeness, we may have

• less issues with differentiating ourselves from the other (more willing and able to compete)

• but may have more issues with integrating back into a group after we express those differences (may struggle to compromise and work with other people’s differences)

• more issues with accepting and working with other people’s differences (less willing and able to collaborate, accomodate and avoid)

If we are habitually higher in cooperativeness and lower in assertiveness, we may have

• less issues with integrating ourselves with the other (more willing and able to accomodate)

• but may have more issues with advocating for our differences to them especially in a group (may avoid, over-compromise own interests or not be able to truly collaborate)

• more issues with being at ease with needing to stand alone and different from time to time (less willing and able to compete)

To manage differences well, we have to be willing and able to do all 4 conflict resolution styles well through discerning when we should dial up/down the assertiveness and when we should dial up/down the cooperativeness

Nobody is going to get this 100% right all the time. Managing differences is hard and humbling work.

But we can make it easier on each other if we could collectively agree to give each other a little bit of grace as we test, practice and support each other in maturing our capacity to assert ourselves and cooperate with others in the daily dojo of our workplaces.

😈 THE UGLY THING about managing differences is that it can open up a can of interpersonal worms that people may not be prepared to talk about - namely their less visible, prejudicial stories about the “wrong-ness” of our differences.

Diversity is a feature, not a bug, of this thing called humanity. Diversity simply means the presence of differences within a given setting.

In the workplace, our interactions may surface the reality of our differences in ethnicity, religious beliefs, political beliefs, age, socioeconomic class, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, physical ability, marital status, nationality etc.

For instance, a manager may be shocked that what they assumed to be a straightforward discussion on how to end the team’s Work-From-Home policy becomes a complex debate on how the company does not respect the situation faced by single parents or middle-aged caregivers. Or a female leader may be taken aback when peers are giving feedback that she’s “too diplomatic” and “not driven enough” for the role in a male-dominated sector.

Not everyone is going to be sufficiently skillful, experienced, willing or able - at the same time - to navigate conversations about our differences. So even with the best intentions and efforts, engaging with our differences is going to look or feel a little bit ‘ugly’ from time to time.

This can lead people to feel uncomfortable, unsupported, offended, frustrated with the need to surface differences in the work environment.

To bridge us through the difficult conversations about our differences, we need to learn how to do the work of Inclusion. There needs to be people in the room who are skilled, experienced, willing and able to look out for the excluded and support their process of bringing their authentic perspective to the table so we can all learn, contribute and challenge what’s not working in the status quo.

When we don’t learn to include different voices, it’s easy to assume everything is going well, more or less impartial and fair for every person

But if we want more Equity, then we have to be willing to go there to investigate a “missing conversation” that the excluded may want us to hear about how things may feel prejudicial, unfair or unequal for them.

That can be a hard and uncomfortable conversation but needed if we want a better grasp of the multiple (objective and subjective) realities we are actually working with versus the singular (objective and subjective) reality of our individual experience that we imagined was homogeneous for all.

Factually, we are never going to be totally the same and in one accord. So it’s healthy to learn how to relate empathetically, mindfully and respectfully with differences as simply part of the art of living. We would all live more wholesomely and happily if we were all given relational safety to differ from time to time and not be punished for it.

Allowing people some space to be occasionally disharmonious, working in the tension, respectfully but clearly expressing their differences or disagreements with each other is something we must normalise and learn to be OK with.

I don’t believe that a great team is one where everyone is perfectly similar and homogenous. Neither do I believe a great team is one where everyone is perfectly different and divinely inclusive.

I believe what makes a great team is commitment to “do the work”.

Specifically, I think a great team is a group of individuals who are as committed to do the work of:

• converging with each other: 
  around a common reality (facts), common relationship, common results

as they are to

• diverging from each other: 
  around differences and disagreements about those things.

If we want to have a truly harmonious team (that is not just pretending to be nice), we have to allow each other to be respectfully disharmonious from time to time.

If you want me to integrate, you gotta let me differentiate too.

FEEL // 2 links to help you feel less alone

WATCH  Executive coach Audrey S. Lee on the need for us to “Flex” our leadership styles to more effectively lead diverse teams.

READ McKinsey’s 2023 Report on what leaders can do to help Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives work better for their teams and organisations.

DO // 1 strategy to try this week

NOTICE the next time you are caught in a discomforting moment of noticing, thinking, feeling or wanting to do something different from the others:

PRACTICE
1. Self-Awareness: Clarify what’s different for you

• What is the different fact that I am noticing?

• What is the different thought that I am thinking?

• What is the different emotion that I am feeling?

• What is the different action that I am wanting to do?

• eg: “I notice I have not spoken up at all in this meeting. I think nobody has noticed my silence and seem to not need or care about my point of view. I feel ignored and upset. I am wanting to point this out but feeling unsure that will change anything.”

2. Self-Reflection: Consider whether it feels discomforting because it is rooted in a different experience or identity for you + Consider if it is helpful/unhelpful for you to voice out your difference to others

• Is my discomfort connected to a part of me/part of my identity / part of my lived experience that appears to be different from others in the room?

• Is this difference visible and understandable to others? Or is it possible it is invisible and not well-understood to them?

• In this moment, what is more/less helpful for me in this moment?

• What do I gain and lose if I voice out a part of my differences in this moment?

• eg: “I wonder if this is because I am the only single man on this team full of married people. I wonder if they can see that it sucks for them to assume just because I am single I don’t need to have worklife balance too. I wonder if they can see that I don’t get the privilege of saying I must pick up kids to leave office early.

• eg: “It may be more helpful for me to say something later to my manager and less helpful for me to just blast out at the team now when it’s not really their fault.”

• eg: “If I speak out some part of my differences now, I may gain more understanding from the team about why I get quiet when they make such comments. I may lose some respect from Cheng but I don’t care that much about what he thinks anyway.”

3. Self-Disclosure (Optional): You can choose to disclose your differences if you believe it is more helpful for you and you gain more than you lose to do so in the moment.

• Own your ‘out’, Claim your ‘in’: Identify for people the Out/less understood/different identity that informs where you are coming from and claim the In/more understood/similar identity that helps them to connect with what you are saying

• Share a part of your different experience that is helpful for your situation: choose a combination of the different fact you notice, thought you are thinking, emotion you are feeling and action you are wanting that can make things better for you

• eg: “I am the youngest here and I am the only one without kids. But I am also a member in this team.”

• eg: “I notice whenever we talk about who can do the shift 6pm onwards, the team jokes that it’s definitely going to be “the kid without kids”. I think it’s not a fair assumption. I feel irritated that my need to take off to do my own stuff is just as valid. I want to just feel more understood that just because I am a guy and I don’t have kids does not mean that I don’t have personal errands and family and friends to take care of as well.”

How do I get better at faciliating conversations that set clearer boundaries that work better for us?

If you want to learn more about how to facilitate conversations so that things can change for you and your organisation, sign yourself and your teams up here: