When I was in college, I joined my school’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter. I felt comfortable in our chapter’s meetings, probably because they were reflective of our small, liberal campus. But multi-campus InterVarsity events were different. I’d grown up in the Episcopal church and was unfamiliar with the evangelical subculture. What I encountered was very different from my experience. Worship consisted of praise songs led by a rock band. There were no hymnals; instead, lyrics were projected onto a screen, and you learned the tune from the band. A promotional video for a week-long summer session was filled with shots of people parasailing and water skiing and singing praise songs in a large group. Based on my initial encounters with evangelical subculture, I would describe it as loud, extroverted, and active. My opinion hasn’t changed.
It’s not that I didn’t like rock music or that Episcopalians don’t water ski. But as an introvert who loved hymns and had absolutely no interest in parasailing, I felt out of place.
While they rarely intend it, many organizations have a dominant culture. A workplace may encourage bonding or reward hard work with tickets to sporting events. This is great for sports lovers, but not so fun for people who couldn’t care less about sports. A church women’s group might include a knitting circle, while men might be encouraged to meet for a game of basketball. A church youth group might start each meeting with an ice-breaker guaranteed to inspire shy people to pray. “Please, Lord, don’t let anyone pick me!”
When an organization allows a dominant culture to form, people who don’t fit into that culture feel like they don’t belong. When my daughter was growing up, our church’s youth group schedule didn’t work well for us, but I was still disappointed she expressed no interest in youth group. Then I started to volunteer with the youth, and I understood. She wouldn’t have fit in. My own teenaged self wouldn’t have fit in. Although regular meetings did include time for small group discussions, their composition shifted from meeting to meeting. This meant that the shy kids never got a chance to warm up to their group over time. And most of the scheduled “extra” events had that “loud, extroverted, and active” flavor I associate with evangelicals: snow tubing, bowling and arcade games, a visit to a trampoline park. How could a quiet, nerdy kid ever hope to fit in?
The solution to the problem is simple: organizations need to listen and respond to all members, not just those who fit the dominant culture. And this listening needs to be ongoing. What worked 10 years ago may leave some people feeling alienated now.
Because people who don’t fit into the dominate group may be shy about sharing their preferences, leaders may want to distribute surveys to everyone in their organization. As you learn what people want, your goal is not to replace one dominate culture with another one. Instead, you should work to include people who have previously been left out. If you lead a workplace that encourages bonding by distributing sporting event tickets to employees and their guests, you don’t need to stop doing that. But if you find that some of your employees are more interested in the arts than sports, you might want to throw in some concert tickets once a year or host a social event at a small gallery in place of one of the sporting events you usually attend.
There will always be special interest groups that cater to certain individuals. There’s no need for a poker group to sometimes make knitting a part of their meetings; a Spanish conversation group doesn’t need to hold some of its meetings in French. But if you want your organization to be welcoming, it’s time to stop assuming that everyone fits in a certain mold. Listen — especially to the quiet folks, the ones who seem unengaged — and find ways to include them. Your group will be stronger for it.