Suits and sandwiches

I actually wrote this one way back before lockdown and before I’d even started a blog, but I think it’s probably even more relevant now than it was then in a way.

I recently attended a course in Manchester. It was awesome I got the train into the city, I used the tram, I saw every kind of food place, vegetable and such a diverse array of people – it reminded me so much of why I love city living and how much I had missed it. I arrived at my conference to a room full of men in suits, and to a buffet lunch of sandwich triangles and my heart sunk. I’m not sure why I found it somehow more depressing to see this in Manchester but it just struck me: how can we ever expect inclusion and diversity to exist everywhere we go if we don’t use every decision we make a positive move toward that goal.

When I get dressed in the morning, I think 1 thing – in what clothes will I be most comfortable and therefore best able to achieve my role today. Sometimes that may be a smart outfit, sometimes its my pyjamas, and sometimes its jeans or a vintage dress. None of these choices affect my performance or my capability. I have countless friends and loved ones who have carefully carved out their own career paths in part because that’s who they are but in part because the world would not accept them with bright hair, piercings or tattoos and I’m sick of it frankly.

One of the joys of lockdown has been seeing people dress in the way they choose too and the impact that has had on dialogue. I have seen people be bolder, more confident and committed and part of this is the removal of face to face and part of it is allowing people to be more themselves at work. I don’t know how to measure it but what I notice is some of the ceremony and “tradition” has gone and I LOVE IT. I’ve seen junior colleagues challenging senior ones, I’ve seen leadership in hoodies talking about family and results and I’ve seen people be more themselves then in 2 decades of working and I have to believe that this has both been better for organisations but that we can use this to promote diversity across the board. We are beginning to see ourselves and individuals as humans with stories and lives and the values of those, it’s brilliant.

We took our car for a service, it was 27 degrees and the car salesman was wearing a suit and tie; when I queried this he said ‘it’s the corporate image’. Well I say not anymore. I don’t want to support organisations that expect their staff to be uncomfortable or hemmed in – unless there are genuine safety reasons why they have to be so. If you like wearing a suit great, if it gives you comfort or a boost in the same way a pencil skirt does for me some days then crack on but we have to move away from the world where we are all carbon copies of each other with no distinguishing features. The things that make us different are truly the things that make us beautiful to each other and often it’s those things that make us more valuable to the organisations and people we serve.

We have choices – if you are booking a buffet, I mean those are things of the past now I know, but if you are think about the food choice – do you want to offer a local start up selling Caribbean food a chance? Do you want to actively tell people to dress down – and not business casual, (two of my most loathed words!) actual dress down and see what happens at your conferences, workshops and roundtables. I attended a conference in Wigan years ago and the approach was so refreshing; live music and poetry and interesting and beautifully presented food and the buzz across the room was palpable – for a local authority conference!

It’s become more clear to me now that when I think I cannot do much to help promote diversity in fact I can, I can use every decision I make every day to show I am still an individual capable of making individual choices which can show the world there is more to it than a slightly stale cheese sandwich and a man sadly sweating away in a suit at a desk somewhere.

P.S. I actually love sandwiches, literally one of my most favourite foods on the planet, but there is a time and a place and my point is that we have choices and those choices can either create a more diverse, exciting and inclusive world or they can continue the same old one we have lived in for years. If we want different outcomes ……….you know the rest!