We’ve been talking a lot about empathy as it relates to helping each other through Covid-19. Today, I wanted to talk about Diversity and how it can impact your team.
The Grumpy Lemon team is a unique team that I am working with because many of us not only are from different backgrounds, we are from different countries. Henry and Christian are from Germany, and Karl has lived there too. Henry still lives in Germany. Cintia is from Brazil. Saudia is American, and I am Italian, living in Italy. Some days our staff meeting is like a United Nations conference!
What we love about this, and what also makes our work a little more complicated is this diversity of thought. It’s based on the places we have already lived, and where we live today. It’s based on the experiences we have had in our work lives, and in our homes. Our schooling, our loves and breakups, and our children. Studies have shown that in workplaces with greater diversity, where employees feel respected for what they are, they create more pleasant work environments, with greater productivity.
All of these things come together to bring a wide variety of experiences and thinking and viewpoints that make our work at Grumpy Lemon a rich cup of coffee. This also means we spend a lot of time explaining ourselves, and our thinking, to each other. We approach each other with a big open mind to hear not only what we are saying, but capture the background from which it comes. This is not always easy, and we get frustrated. But we open and close with love, and with empathy together.
As you put together your team, I hope you will consider bringing people from different backgrounds and ways of thinking. This will not only increase your company’s intellectual capital, it will make your team both more rich, and perhaps a little more challenging.
#Diversity #Empathy #DifferentIsGood #GrumpyLemon
