TWO

Seeing the Differences between Us

We often meet someone and think they are “different” but people are not inherently different: our differences lie between us, not within us. We believe that leaning forward into the differences between people, learning from those differences, and leveraging them creates stronger relationships. It is in this space that the magic of mentoring happens.

What Do Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Competency Really Mean?

We often hear the words “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “cultural competency,” but people may understand them differently. Before we go deeper, let’s agree on some definitions.

Diversity

Diversity means difference. Even if everyone in your organization presents in a similar way on the surface—race, gender, ethnicity, age—diversity is a reality. It is vital to keep in mind that the many people we meet every day, even if they look like us, bring their own unique perspectives and backgrounds that may be far different from what we assume.

Though many organizations rightly focus on visible differences (gender, age, race, ethnicity, differing abilities, for example), diversity also includes nonvisible differences in identity (such as sexual orientation, religion, gender identity). But there are myriad other differences as well: in experience (family status, life experiences, social class, education), beliefs (such as political beliefs), in skill and knowledge (in hard skills and so-called soft-skills, like emotional intelligence), and personality elements (such as introversion or extroversion, and communication style). In mentoring, diversity answers the question “Who is in your mentoring relationship?” The who includes the unique mix of human differences—ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical abilities/attributes, religion, national origin, political beliefs, race, life experiences—that make up each individual.

Inclusion

Inclusion is how you respond to diversity in the workplace to make it meaningful. Simply hiring a diverse mix of employees is meaningless unless each person is actively included as a respected and contributing member of the team. Studies have shown that teams that are diverse but not inclusive will underperform compared with monocultural teams, while teams that are both diverse and inclusive will outperform monocultural teams.⁸ Andrés Tapia, a leading global thinker in diversity and inclusion, perhaps said it best: “Diversity is the mix and inclusion is making the mix work.”⁹

In mentoring, “inclusion” means ensuring that both mentor and mentee feel valued, heard, and respected in the relationship. We effect inclusion through the skill of cultural competency.

Cultural Competency

Cultural competency is the skill we use to effectively understand and communicate across differences. Cultural competency is the how: the path to achieving inclusion and the path to leveraging diversity, to making inclusion come to life. Without cultural competency, mentoring partners miss out on what could become a much more powerful and dynamic mentoring relationship. Mentoring that bridges differences promotes inclusion; it enables mentoring partners to feel comfortable being themselves and authentically expressing their thoughts and experiences. Like any skill, cultural competency requires practice to get better.

Cultural competency involves

» Recognizing that cultural differences are a fact of life.

» Seeing the world and the people you meet as different from yourself in ways you may not have considered.

» Seeing how your own culture, invisible to yourself, has had a profound impact on how you look at things. Cultural competency is not about abandoning your own cultural identity.

» Recognizing that cultural differences do make a difference in how we show up: how we greet one another, view authority, get motivated, and understand the world can vary greatly. Note, however, that cultural competency is not about doing endless research to understand specific customs of each culture in order to lessen your likelihood of inadvertently insulting or disrespecting your partner.

» Learning how to notice differences without judgment, and using that information to learn, adjust your approach if necessary, and achieve better outcomes and more meaningful relationships as a result.

» Getting curious enough about your own cultural identity to be able to notice differences and understand yourself in a way that helps you relate better across difference.

Bridging Differences 1-2-3

Sociologist Milton Bennett, the creator of the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, says that bridging difference is about adaptation, not assimilation. “It is additive, not substitutive.”¹⁰ That is, cultural competency allows us to shift and expand our perspective, not to limit it, change it, or turn it into something else. Creating meaningful mentoring relationships means taking the time and making the space to become aware of difference, to understand that difference, and to invite it into the relationship. To successfully bridge differences requires moving through three steps: taking ownership, creating awareness, and shifting perspective.

Step 1. Take Ownership

Taking ownership of your own responsibility to bridge differences—regardless of what your mentoring partner is doing—is where mentoring begins. This means recognizing that it is up to you to work on your own ability to communicate across difference. It also means recognizing that you might benefit from a broader perspective by acknowledging when differences appear and taking steps to invite those differences in so that they can improve your relationships and outcomes.

Taking ownership has two essential elements: (1) getting curious and (2) adopting a growth mindset. The authors of the Harvard Business Review article “From Curious to Competent” define curiosity as “a penchant for seeking new experiences, knowledge, and feedback and an openness to change.”¹¹ In the context of mentoring, curiosity means being willing to gain knowledge and awareness of both your own identity, thoughts, and motivations and those of your mentoring partner. Curiosity is about constantly asking open questions that invite discussion and feedback, such as “How might you see this differently than I do?” and “What am I missing?”

In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, researcher Carol Dweck explains that we can have either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset when it comes to certain skills or behaviors we wish to develop. A fixed mindset is one in which people believe that their basic qualities (such as their intelligence, talent, and knowledge) are fixed traits. In mentoring, a fixed mindset would show up as “My mentoring partner and I are so different. I just don’t understand where he is coming from.” In contrast, a growth mindset is one in which people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication, hard work, and learning. In the context of mentoring, a growth mindset would show up as “I can tell that my mentoring partner sees things differently. I don’t understand it, but I want to learn more about it.”

A growth mindset allows mentors and mentees to learn more about how difference shows up, to create understanding and an appreciation of differing viewpoints. Developing a growth mindset is not a diversion from the learning. Rather, it is an essential step to deepen and accelerate the learning.

Step 2. Create Awareness

Once we’ve taken ownership, we can begin to cultivate first self-awareness and then awareness of others. The latter (awareness of others) cannot exist without the former (awareness of self). Industrial designer Charles Eames wrote: “The details are not the details, they make the design.” So often, particularly in the work context, we are tempted to skip over the details—the “getting to know you” part of the relationship—and “just get to the work.” In mentoring, the getting to know you part is the first step of the work. And it starts with understanding your own cultural lens.

Early in coauthor Lisa’s career, as she was balancing a long workweek and two very young children, a male coworker said to her, “I don’t see you as a working mother.” Though the comment was meant by the coworker to convey that he saw Lisa as an equal member of the team, to Lisa, for whom so much of her identity was centered on balancing work and motherhood, it felt that she wasn’t being seen. If we don’t see the details—that is, the elements of one another’s identities that shape our worldviews—we are likely to miss opportunities to relate authentically with one another.

Awareness must begin with understanding yourself. Many prospective and current mentors and mentees skip over this step, assuming that, as functioning adults, they know themselves well. Yet, even though understanding oneself is the threshold step to creating meaningful personal and work relationships, few adults seem to have taken the time to think about what their own motivators and assumptions are, and how their identity and experiences have shaped how they show up and interact with others. (Later in this book we provide some tools and tips for you to create a greater sense of self-awareness. The exercise at the end of this chapter will get you started.)

Once you have created greater self-awareness, you can become more aware of your mentoring partner and start to get curious about ways your perspectives, motivations, or assumptions may be similar or different. This helps both of you communicate better, create more durable goals, and set a foundation for the relationship that will spur deeper learning and more measurable results. Focusing on self-awareness helps us become aware of our biases and surface our unconscious biases. Unconscious bias is influenced by our deeply held beliefs, past experiences, and cultural conditioning, and always affects our thinking and decisions. Unconscious bias gets triggered when our brain makes quick judgments and assessments about people and situations.

Taking ownership requires accepting that we have biases, acknowledging those biases, and then learning how to mitigate them. Our biases are related to many things. They include more obvious elements of identity like race and gender, and less obvious things like political orientation, speech patterns, geography, and socioeconomic status. Let’s see how acknowledging bias plays out in Christopher and Mia’s initial meetings.

Early on, Christopher realized that he had an innate bias against Mia’s rapid-fire way of talking. He had been brought up in a household where people expressed themselves more slowly and thoughtfully, and he experienced her as intrusive, careless, and perhaps disrespectful. Christopher thought this aspect of Mia’s presentation might alienate others beside himself, but he did not want to insult her by mentioning it head on. Instead, he asked her to observe how people experienced her. After a few weeks of getting to know Mia, Christopher realized that his initial knee-jerk bias against how she spoke had actually prevented him from listening to what she was saying.

Acknowledging a bias is not an admission that you are a bad person. It is, however, a necessary factor in creating awareness and overcoming the biases so that you can build bridges in your mentoring and other relationships. Bringing the unconscious to consciousness depends on a real commitment to self-awareness and an ongoing openness to noticing our behaviors and assumptions. Once that happens, you can move on to the third essential step, perspective shifting. This is not easy, but it is essential.

Step 3. Shift Your Perspective

According to author Dr. Wayne Dyer, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”¹² While cultural competency requires the willingness to see things differently, it does not mean compromising your authenticity or adopting alternative viewpoints. Rather, it means noticing and being curious about other perspectives, and being willing to consider and reconsider your own assumptions when you learn new information about yourself or others. Cultural competency bridges differences by expanding your knowledge and perspective.

Cultural competency is particularly important in mentoring relationships because learning and growth are at the heart of the relationship for both the mentee and the mentor. The way we learn, motivate others to learn, and show up to learn is dependent on our identities, which are influenced by our own backgrounds, preferences, and experiences. In a mentoring relationship, there are at least two distinct perspectives: that of the mentee and that of the mentor. If we do not notice, get curious, and seek to understand these distinctions, we risk missing valuable insight and squander the opportunity to create meaningful goals that motivate, inspire, and sustain a healthy and vibrant mentoring relationship.

Why We Need Cultural Competency

As research shows, we instinctively tend to seek out people who look like us.¹³ Sameness can be a shortcut for comfort and creates a sense of ease, but it sometimes encourages us to avoid the hard work of understanding difference. When we surround ourselves in sameness, we miss out on a tremendous opportunity to learn, and we prevent ourselves from expanding our perspectives. When most of our interactions are with people whom we believe are like us, we tend to assume everyone is like us, which precludes us from practicing the curiosity and awareness essential to creating meaningful relationships with those who are in fact different from us. In her autobiography Becoming, former US first lady Michelle Obama reminds us that “sameness breeds more sameness until you make a thoughtful effort to counteract it.”¹⁴

Mastering the skill of cultural competency is essential to better mentoring and deeper learning. When mentoring partners bridge their differences, they build inclusion and understanding. When they exercise their skills of cultural competency, they encourage authenticity and sharing, and are better able to craft learning solutions and witness the exponential growth that effective mentoring can create. Better mentoring can be a catalyst to creating more inclusive workplaces. Inclusive policies, systemic programming, and leadership buy-in are certainly important to creating change. But there is no substitute to creating meaningful workplace relationships across differences, and they have at least two major benefits: they enable both people in a relationship to feel seen, heard, and valued for who they are, and they increase the learning and perspective of both people in the relationship. One-to-one relationships require approaching difference with the development and demonstration of curiosity, awareness, and willingness to learn.

Effective mentoring encourages people to show up authentically. Significantly, learning how to bridge differences in mentoring translates into more competent leaders who invite difference into the workplace. This raises the level of engagement and performance in the teams and departments they lead. The level of interaction that mentoring demands, paired with the vulnerability and inquisitiveness that culturally competent individuals demand, is a powerful combination that leverages the benefits of mentoring, inclusion, and strong leadership.

As you take time to become more self-aware, you’ll begin to notice less obvious differences between yourself and others. For mentors, this understanding helps you recognize when and how you can motivate and encourage your mentee. For mentees, this understanding fosters recognition of how to best communicate with your mentor. Consider Mia’s journey toward creating more self-awareness.

When Mia first began exploring her goal of looking at how others saw her, she actually started paying more attention to how others presented themselves. She noticed that Christopher generally paused a moment before replying to her questions or comments. Initially, it drove her crazy—she wanted to make the most of their time together and his pause made her impatient. But then she realized that this pause also gave her the impression that he was thinking about what she said. Mia started to wonder if her habit of speaking quickly was coming off as not paying attention. She began to adjust the speed of her speech in their mentoring meetings and noticed that Christopher seemed to be unconsciously speeding up a bit in his responses. She concluded that somehow they were beginning to understand each other a little better.

Creating self-awareness coincides with the preparation phase of mentoring, preparing you to increase both your cultural competency and your effectiveness as a mentoring partner. Whether you are a mentor or a mentee, preparing yourself for mentoring is going to be key to your success. It requires self-awareness, a growth mindset, and a readiness to learn.

Start with Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is fundamental to the success of both mentors and mentees, and reflection kick-starts the process. Reflecting means letting go of preconceptions and trusting yourself enough to intentionally, honestly, and openly explore your motivation for engaging in mentoring. This will not be time wasted.

Coauthor Lois has written that reflection—”the ability to critically examine your current or past practices, behaviors, actions and thoughts in order to more consciously and purposefully develop yourself personally and professionally”—is an instrumental part of mentoring.¹⁵ You will find, as many mentors and mentees do, that time spent on self-awareness will enrich more than just your mentoring; it will help you gain perspective and access tools to enhance your work and personal relationships as well. Through reflection, Mia gleaned several key insights.

Mia had always considered herself pretty self-aware, but she found herself unable to answer some of Christopher’s questions about what motivated her. And although she knew she wanted to become partner, she couldn’t really explain why, or what kind of leader she wanted to become. She realized that she wasn’t nearly as self-aware as she had thought, and she would need to think more about her motivation so that she and Christopher could move forward.

It is hard to overstate the potential transformative power of self-reflection. Yet when we suggest to new mentors or mentees that they take time for self-awareness, we tend to hear one or both of these objections: “I already know myself pretty well” or “In the name of efficiency, let’s just dive in and we’ll get to know each other along the way.” Reflection may not seem very important, but it is critical for success and can be powerful. It allows you to combine hindsight, insight, and foresight in a way that catapults you forward into action.¹⁶

“I Already Know Myself Pretty Well”

Understanding yourself generally and understanding yourself in the context of difference are not the same thing. In our experience we find that even the most senior leaders—in fact, especially the most senior leaders—know what works for them in their environment; but they don’t always understand how that might be different for others, or how their own identity shapes their comfort in their current environment.

This is particularly true for individuals who are in the majority culture in which they work. It is sometimes said that a fish in water doesn’t know it is wet. If we happen to be in a majority culture, it can be difficult to realize the limits of our perspective that are easily seen and felt by others not in our group. If we operate in an environment of familiarity, we rarely take the time to think about what makes us comfortable in that environment, or how it might be different for others. The Greek philosopher Epictetus said that it is impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. The key to becoming self-aware is to realize that there is a lot that we don’t yet know about ourselves, and to consciously set an intention to learn more. Taking ownership of the responsibility to learn about difference requires a growth mindset: realizing that we all have an ability to learn, grow, and see things from a different perspective.

Individuals engaged in successful mentoring relationships commit to learning from each other. They are intensely curious. They constantly ask questions. They continually reflect on their experiences, both positive and negative. A growth mindset means that you believe in yourself and own the power of your own possibilities, and it also means that you also possess faith in the power of possibility that learning through difference presents. It can feel inefficient to take the time for self-reflection before beginning a mentoring relationship. And yet, without this investment in time, when mentees or mentors encounter significant differences between themselves and their mentoring partners, they tend either to miss or gloss over those differences altogether. Worse, you might find yourself feeling stuck when confronted with these differences because you don’t know how to bridge them.

Taking the time for self-awareness helps in creating awareness of your mentoring partner and allows you both to create a deeper more authentic mentoring relationship. Investing the time upfront helps you go farther and faster when you meet these differences in any context. In the increasingly diverse workforce, you will inevitably encounter differences in your working relationships, if not in your mentoring relationship.

» YOUR TURN «

1. When it comes to bridging differences, what are your strengths?

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2. In thinking about the characteristics of a growth mindset, where are your opportunities for development?

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Leaning forward into differences means accepting that you might not yet completely understand how and why differences matter, that you can indeed learn about differences, that you can understand your own identity and biases (and perhaps privilege), and that there is value in doing so. In short, it requires ownership and self-awareness. It requires that you identify aspects of your mindset so that you see how your mindset may be inhibiting you from creating meaningful connections across difference.

With awareness, you can begin to replace your limiting beliefs with those that will enable you to increase your cultural competency. In the context of difference, self-awareness is about exploring our culture, identity, biases, and privilege—a process we begin in the next chapter.

Chapter Recap

1. It is essential to get comfortable with reflecting (on your own attitudes and the world around you) if you are going to be an authentic mentoring partner. You need to know yourself in order to truly begin to know someone else.

2. Approaching differences with curiosity instead of judgment requires a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset will help you make the most of mentoring, keeping you open to the possibility that you can learn more about differences without compromising your sense of self.

3. Awareness of differences is the key to bridging differences, and the first step in this process is self-awareness. Even if you think you already know yourself well, it is helpful to reflect on your own identity and culture so that you can be more aware of and understanding about the differences between you and your mentoring partner.