Pride Month - Celebrating Individuality
This month, we celebrate pride. We celebrate individuality. Because it’s been shown that when people are able to own their own experience, it positively impacts their mental resilience, ability to change, and overall sense of well-being. In teams, it positively impacts creativity, innovation, and inclusion.
In this blog, we’ll share a few ways to validate, encourage, and celebrate uniqueness with the people in our team.
If you are looking for more information on supporting employees in the workplace, check out our post titled Juneteenth: A Guide to Allyship at Work
What is Individuality, and Why Does It Matter?
What makes you who you are? Simply put, individuality consists of our unique blend of experiences, perspectives, cultures, and identities. They can be chosen experiences, like hobbies, interests, friends, talents, as well as cultural identities, like race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and others.
This unique combination of everything we are/do what makes us an individual – there’s truly only one of you! Leaning into this aspect of our lives has the potential to unlock unique perspectives, talents, and skills that we apply to our relationships, our hobbies, and our work!
When we create workplace cultures where individuality is celebrated, the people in our teams feel more engaged and encouraged to share their strengths. So, here are three ways that we can validate, encourage, and celebrate the uniqueness of our teams.
Sometimes Individuality Can Make Us Feel Divided...
But We Have More In Common Than We Realize
Check out our Team Connection workshops like Same Difference for ways to bring your team together around shared experiences.
Lead with Honesty
Let’s acknowledge that celebrating uniqueness may not feel safe or natural for everyone in the workplace. That’s why creating a genuinely safe space for everyone in your organization should be the first step. Alongside a commitment to uphold a safe space, it’s important to keep a dialogue with your people. Understanding their perspectives from a place of empathy is key to celebrating individuality.
As a leader, you may feel like you have to keep your challenges, hard days, and moments of humanity from your team, but being honest and open about your own moments of struggle can build a sense of connection with those you work with. Cultivate connection through sharing openly when things are difficult or don’t go as planned. This can go a long way towards building trust within your team, and you may even receive some helpful support.
Focus on Strengths
It’s no secret that employees are most empowered when able to play from their strengths. Celebrating individuality opens the opportunity to uncover new strengths, discover differences in working styles, and bring us together through shared experiences. Create spaces for team members to share openly with one other and keep finding new ways to work together.
Make It a Practice
By including small ways to celebrate individuality into your daily schedule, you’ll have successfully opened up regular opportunities for growth and connection. For example, you may intentionally begin each meeting with a check-in question like “What’s one thing you’ve done at work over the past month that you’re proud of?” You may create a Slack channel dedicated to gratitude or memes. These small moments may be used to shatter circular thinking, break the ice, and highlight the humanity in our workplaces.
Conclusion
We are all complex individuals with our own likes, dislikes, and life experiences – This perspective allows us to approach our work and relationships with curiosity, open doors to new conversations, and encourage others to bring more of their full selves to work. This month and beyond, find ways to encourage uniqueness and come together around what makes us different.
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