People Power: Increasing your ‘people power’ with people who seem weird to you – April 2024

By Sam Allman

You are probably infected with the “disease” of homophily. Thankfully, it is not fatal, but it can be detrimental to your wellbeing-it can hold you back from reaching your full potential. If you haven’t heard of homophily, it is sort of a bird affliction that is also found in humans. The main symptoms are an aversion to weirdness, differentness, unusualness and peculiarity. Other symptoms could include cluelessness, limited cognition, conflict, fear or anxiety. Homophily, which translates to “love of sameness,” means individuals are attracted to those like themselves and tend to act like those they see as similar to themselves.

TODAY’S EPIDEMIC OF HOMOPHILY
Homophily has caused wars, conflict and death since the beginning of time, but I believe there is currently an epidemic of homophily in America, exacerbated by social media. Humans became infected with homophily when we were hunters and gatherers living in small groups and tribes, though technically it did not become a disease until the world became smaller by the increasing ease and speed of transportation and communication.

The disease of homophily is the tendency to form strong social connections with people who share one’s defining characteristics, such as age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, personal beliefs, values and culture. It causes us to affiliate, connect and congregate with people who are like us. That is why it’s like an avian malady: “Birds of a feather flock together.” And the more or longer we “flock together” in such a manner, the more alike we become.

Ironically, there are some benefits to this ailment. As we connect with those who share common characteristics, we form groups of mutual support. That fulfills our basic needs of belonging and security. Our success, happiness and longevity in this life are dependent on the relationships we have with others. We need a team of people who participate with us in our success and happiness, be they family, co-workers, friends or acquaintances. Our strong ties feel comfortable, safe and familiar. But that’s also why homophily can be a malady. The paradox is, we also need challenges, risk and the unknown.

Challenges make us uncomfortable, risk makes us vulnerable but the unknown breeds adventure. Without those, we won’t flourish, nor are we likely to become all we can be. Strong relationships, like friends and family, can hold us back in this regard. They know us too well; other than support, they may have little to offer to help us grow. They are often too similar-even too similarly stuck-to provide more than sympathy.

We affiliate and congregate best with those who are most like us, who like us, who think like us and whom we perceive as thinking like us. All that “liking” satisfies one of our most important needs: to be understood. That’s why empathy is the number one characteristic of peak-performing salespeople and very effective leaders. When you understand the needs of your customer or your constituent, you can identify actions and strategies that will best suit them and therefore produce optimal results. It’s the primary skill of those using “people power” to generate results through others.

Homophily becomes a malady when we affiliate only with people who act, think and believe like we do, because it isolates us and insulates us from expanded learning and thinking. From the beginning, we have been taught to be wary of people who were not part of our group or tribe, because we could never be sure of a stranger’s motives. Fear and anxiety usually followed an encounter with “strangeness,” so we would be slow to make meaningful connections. At a distance, we would judge them, and, with minimal understanding, we would form biases about them, either consciously or unconsciously.

Since the beginning of time, people who are different, in one way or another, have been abused, discriminated against, even murdered. You would think in our enlightened society that things would change. But research on hidden bias shows that, regardless of the best intentions, most people hold deep-seated resistance to the “difference” of others, whether that difference is defined by evident factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, age or physical characteristics or more subtle ones such as background, personality type, experience or sexual orientation. Different groups are more polarized against each other than ever. Instead of collaborating and celebrating what we have in common, we are hardly talking.

THE BENEFITS OF DIVERSITY
Diversity abounds even within every category in our country, including culture, gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, age cohort and political party. Diversity is a strength. It is a driver of creativity. Why are we not tapping into its power? Thinking differently or outside the groups with which we belong enhances problem solving, creativity, cognition and, most of all, people power.

I learned early in my career that surrounding myself with people like me limited my success and sometimes actually set me up for failure. People with different perspectives offer additional choices, maybe better choices or even the “right” choices. Seeing a problem from multiple perspectives opens the mind to create and problem-solve; otherwise, we see our situation through only one perspective: ours and our cohorts’, who are thinking the same. When you walk in the shoes of others, see the world from their point of view and understand their motivations and what they value, your mind opens, providing you with more ways to perceive what you think is reality. Remember, there is no reality, only perceived reality.

This competence is effective not only in dealing with those of diverse cultures, but all the differentness in people we encounter. Learning and mastering this kind of competence requires self-assessment and reflection: consciousness of self, of others and context. It requires thinking that goes beyond individual experiences, worldview and values, and it includes a communication style that is dynamic, engaged and contextually specific.

THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF PEOPLE POWER
This competence has four dimensions: attitudes, knowledge, skill and self-awareness. The first three promote enhanced awareness, and enhanced awareness fosters development of the first three dimensions.

ATTITUDES: We send subtle messages with our attitudes. Communicating and connecting with anyone, especially people who are different, requires us to choose attitudes that are welcoming, warm and friendly. It starts with respect. That means seeking out others’ attributes without prejudice about differences. We must give them due regard for their feelings, wishes, rights or traditions, even if we disagree with them.

The attitude of openness allows us to suspend criticism, invest in learning about the differences and, sometimes, be proven wrong. It’s amazing the number of times in my life when I have opened my mind to listen and learn about others only to be proven wrong with past assumptions and judgements. How about you? Once you really got to know someone, were any of your initial impressions faulty?

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it becomes a powerful attitude when viewing differences as a learning opportunity and becoming aware of one’s own ignorance. Curiosity sends a message that you are interested, that you value what is being said, increasing the potential rapport that is developed. Choosing the attitude of discovery facilitates us in tolerating ambiguity and viewing an encounter as a positive experience. It demonstrates our willingness to move beyond our comfort zones.

KNOWLEDGE: Aristotle said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Our ability to articulate how our culture or the groups to which we belong have shaped our identity and worldview is the foundation of the knowledge required to be effective with the diversity in others. When you become more aware of your own identity through contact with people who are different from you, you see yourself in contrast.

In addition, you must have specific knowledge about the culture of these other groups so you are able to analyze and explain the basic philosophies that drive them. Have you noticed in the past, when you learned more about a person or group, how your thinking about them changed?

Finally, you need to have a grasp of the current global and local issues and trends. Traveling the world assaulted the single perception on which my mind was operating, and I guarantee it will assault yours as well.

SKILLS: The premier skill in dealing with the diversity of others is empathy. It’s that capacity to take the perspective of another, to shift frames of reference and to act in the context of the other’s perspective. The skills of listening, observing, evaluating and using patience and perseverance to identify and minimize personal biases and seek out diverse clues and meaning are critical to increasing our understanding of others. As we learn, we can analyze and interpret, which allows us to begin relating and seeking out connections with those from whom we are learning and interacting.

Finally, critical thinking skills allow us to view and interpret the world from others’ points of view, while identifying our own. Critical thinking helps distinguish between fact and opinion; engages our minds in inquiry; opens our minds to make detailed observations; helps you uncover assumptions and define their terms; and make assertions on sound logic and solid evidence.

AWARENESS: When you come to understand yourself, you’ll find that you will gain more conscious control of your behavior and are able to be more situationally and contextually effective. As you do that, you will realize that optimizing your attitudes, increasing your knowledge of others and honing your communication and thinking skills to maximize your interaction with those who are different will increase your people power exponentially.

Empathy increases your understanding of others; self-awareness increases your understanding of yourself. They combine to become the foundation of people power: situational and contextual awareness. You will be able to recognize communication styles. You will be sensitive to nonverbal cues. You will notice cultural and linguistic differences. Your interest in culture and differences will be made more acute. You will become more sensitive to the myths and the stereotypes of different groups and cultures. You will acquire more accurate criteria for judging good and bad.

As you invest in this process, you will naturally cultivate a concern for the welfare of those with whom you interact. That awareness will also make you able recognize when and where boundaries should be placed in those connections.

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