Beyond the Shell: Understanding Difference

If the flowers of a garden were all of one color, the effect would be monotonous to the eye; but if the colors are variegated, it is most pleasing and wonderful. The difference in adornment of color and capacity of reflection among the flowers gives the garden its beauty and charm.

—‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Organizations striving to win the future need a solid understanding of the social context that surrounds them. To cross the constructive relationships threshold they must faithfully engage with problematic social realities, despite the fact that solving the problems are beyond their immediate control. Regardless of what’s going on outside, leaders have the charge to keep their teams united and moving in the same direction within the walls of the organization.

The social legacy that we’ve inherited is one where organic human differences have been maligned as inferior deviations from a particular standard of gender and skin color. This standard is so deeply embedded into our collective psyche that I need not name it. This normative standard is a sociohistorical reality that is rooted in a social formation process where ideologies0 combine with social practices and where social practices produce structures of social relationships. When we step outside of social formation processes and view them abstractly, we can ask a question like, “What is the fairest way to treat organic human differences in our society?” And when we step back into the social formation process in which we are embedded, we can see how human differences are treated in our context.

In the US American context, difference has been regarded as ‘dirty.’ This purposeful designation provided colonial regimes with the moral autonomy to trample on the God-borne dignity of their fellow human beings. Due to the lack of social and moral repair for this dehumanizing injury, we live with this legacy. However, organizations are uniquely positioned to not only confront this legacy, but to secure benefits from successful confrontations. By seeing organic human differences as beautiful expressions of human nature and sources of strength, organizations can galvanize their stakeholders and do their part in moving society forward.

Organizations tend to fall into three general categories with respect to how they treat difference. Most provincially, organizations take a copy-and-paste approach to difference, where they simply replicate the social divisions of the society and embed them within their organization. The in-the-middle approach is to take the colorblind approach of ignoring difference and enforcing standards that amount to penalizing both acts of hostility and appeals to advance beyond colorblindness. The most progressive approach is treating human differences as something to be valued and as points of knowledge and experience that yield assets when cultivated with care and curiosity. This approach provides the best environment for constructive relationships to thrive, and this is the standard for which we measure when we collaborate with organizations aiming to strengthen their stakeholder relationships.

We recognize that difference can be a superpower for organizations when they commit to the triangular reality of realizing what is most relationally constructive, what will promote the most productivity, and what is most ennobling for the human being. Which relational milestone is ahead for your organization on this journey of realizing greater growth, increased effectiveness, and stronger impact?