I saw a photo on LinkedIn recently that really annoyed me.
It was a group of white Anglo women, all around a similar age, dressed similarly, working in the same profession and smiling together for the camera. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a group of women getting together and enjoying each other’s company. That part made me happy.
What bothered me was the thought that if the photo had been a group of white Anglo men, all around the same age, dressed similarly and from the same profession, I suspect the comments might have looked quite different. Someone would have absolutely pointed out the lack of diversity. There may have been an eye rolling emoji or two and certainly some scathing comments.
It made me think about a term I heard recently: “people like us.”
People like us are comfortable. We know some of the same people, move in similar circles, understand the same cultural references and probably have a fair bit in common. Our children might go to similar schools. We may have had similar upbringings, career experiences and opportunities. Conversation comes easily because there is already a level of familiarity.
Of course we gravitate towards people with whom we have an affinity. The problem comes when we don’t realise how much of our professional and social world is made up of them.
“People like us” shapes more than who we have coffee with.
It shapes who gets invited into the room, who we recommend for an opportunity, whose opinion we seek, who we introduce to someone in our network, who we mentor, who we promote and who we instinctively trust. Over time, our reference point can become much smaller than we realise.
This matters enormously when we talk about diversity, because representation is only one part of the conversation. Cognitive diversity comes from being exposed to people whose experiences, thinking, assumptions and perspectives are different from our own. We need people around us who challenge our reference points and introduce us to ways of seeing something that would never have occurred to us.
That was what bothered me about the photograph. The profession represented in it talks extensively about diversity, inclusion and the importance of different perspectives. If we are going to lead those conversations with our own teams, we also need to look at the circles we create around ourselves.
Who is in our networks? Who gets invited? Who do we learn from? Who are we missing because we keep returning to people who feel familiar?
This isn’t about engineering a diverse photograph for LinkedIn. In fact, that completely misses the point. It is about building professional lives, networks and communities where difference is genuinely present, valued and part of how we operate.
I want to see more groups where different cultures, generations, backgrounds, experiences and ways of thinking are naturally represented because that is genuinely who is in the room.
We all need people with whom we feel comfortable and connected. We also need people who stretch our thinking, challenge our assumptions and expand our understanding of the world.
Is it worth looking around your own team and the people you turn to day to day, and asking a simple question?
How many of the people around me are people like me?
Let’s expand our reference points. Let’s become more deliberate about who we learn from, work with, advocate for and invite into the room.
If we keep looking for people like us, we shouldn’t be surprised when everyone around us starts to look, sound and think the same.
