One of the most important attributes of a successful leader is the ability to understand a wide variety of often competing and incompatible ideas…and people…and incorporate this knowledge into decisions. Even more difficult is actually managing to gather a wide variety of ideas and meet a wide variety of people in the first place. Managers often fool themselves into thinking they have done this while actually keeping the blinders on.
I notice this while wandering around The Wharton School talking to MBA students and faculty. While there is a huge diversity of students and faculty from different countries, cultures, ethnicities, and religions, everyone speaks English.
I use English as a shorthand for the fact that the commonalities far overwhelm the differences. While Wharton prides itself on its diversity, it tends to be diversity of country and not diversity of worldview.
Wharton is not alone in this. Most of us spend almost all of our time with people who share a similar worldview to ours. Executives are no different. There is a certain cosmopolitan worldview that well educated, well off people share wherever they come from…and they tend to think this is the norm.
But it is not. The vast majority of people are not well educated and well off. Most executives can’t even imagine what their lives are like, and rarely if ever have any interaction with them other than when they open the door at a fancy hotel or drive them from airport to office.
Break out of this box. Truly expand your horizons. Seek out and actually listen to people from all walks of life. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover that as your world view really does expand, your ideas and opportunities will expand with it.
