Of course, we all carry our prejudices and stereotypical views around with us. Some of these are from “expert” sources.
A few years ago, a notable German airline gave a booklet on local customs to its passengers to the UK. It was amusing to read that we English, eat Fish & Chips from newspaper followed by tea and cake around 4pm. Everyone knows Health & Safety have banned newspaper food wrappers! No doubt the English have their own, equally weird stereotypes.
Some time ago I went to a famously foul-mouthed comic’s show and joined in the laughter at the stereotypical French jokes. These same jokes would have drawn the same audience response three hundred years ago!
Perhaps it is lazy and comforting to have knee-jerk stereotypical responses. It helps to bond us together as a team, as a group, as an organisation, or nation. To make an inclusive group you must exclude others.
Very often, our prejudices are hidden in our stereotypes. This is a block to creativity and blunts progress.
It is always good to hear something that exposes these prejudices to full view. This is often the source of humour itself.
We are indebted to Brian Bolt of the St. Nicholas Hospice for his contribution to ripping aside the blinkers of prejudice. During a Senior Team Development session, he proposed that everyone should be eligible for the Paralympics. My prejudice was to think of the Paralympics as something different and inferior to the Olympics. A visually impaired runner could never be as fast as a full sighted person. But what a liberating idea!
How many Olympian athletes would rank highly if they ran blindfolded or played Rugby in a wheelchair? For me, the liberating idea was that the Paralympics’ sports are not inferior but different. My prejudice was exposed and destroyed.
We all have our expectations of how the people who work for us will behave. Those expectations flavour our behaviour and, therefore, our communication.
There is nothing easier than living down to someone’s expectation of you. The manager is proven right to be sceptical and therefore very wise.
What expectations do you have of your people and how do you communicate them?