The key to a thriving corporate culture is a team dedicated to understanding and uplifting diverse perspectives. From junior level to senior leadership, we all have a part to play in making the workplace welcoming and supportive. Leading with empathy, asking questions, and addressing your own internal biases are always an excellent start, but what’s the next step? Fostering a daily routine with a variety of voices and cultures will help you better understand your peers, your team, and connections across the world — and you can do it from your computer. Here are three tips for curating a diverse timeline.
Start Close and Relevant
Your team and greater organization are the ideal places to look first when searching for new people and accounts to follow. Get to know your colleagues and their view of the world by following them on LinkedIn or an internal networking site. If your team is small or already very familiar, you can look at your organization as a whole. Who are the members and leaders of employee resource groups (ERGs) at your company? These are the folks already doing their best to share diverse perspectives and education with others. Have they written any blogs or thought leadership for your organization? Can you follow and support the ERG as an ally? Stick to professional outlets for team and organization members, but there will be many options at your disposal.
Who to Follow from PEAK6:
- Jenny Just: our co-founder, a self-made billionaire with a fintech and entrepreneurship background, and a passionate women’s equality advocate.
- Erin Lydon: president of Poker Power, offering advice to professional women across the world.
- Yuying Chen-Wynn: our head of AI, sharing insights and tips on using generative AI in the workplace along with a newsletter.
Understand What You Don’t Know
Everyone has gaps in their knowledge, and we all see the world differently. This is your time to examine not just your skillset and knowledge, but your demographics. Understand where you have expertise and insights, and where you may have blind spots. Look for people you admire and influencers in your field or industry that fill those gaps. Follow those of a different gender, age, race, culture, country, or language. Seek out people of different seniority levels. Research to find your organization’s partners, suppliers, and competitors to follow their leadership.
LinkedIn and X (Twitter) are excellent places to start when looking to expand your social influences, especially for learning more about your professional world, but start to look for longer and other forms of content to stay involved. Newsletters, editorials and articles, and video essays are all helpful in understanding personal perspectives from people not in your everyday life. You will likely learn certain keywords and hashtags to follow as well, offering a steady stream of fresh content from individuals and organizations you didn’t originally have on your radar.
Continue Your Efforts Outside of Work
Now that you’ve got a healthy habit of finding new and different people to follow and learn from for your professional life, expand this effort into your personal life. Fostering a supportive culture and community is a mindset to take with you wherever you go. Look for creators related to your hobbies that have a background different from yours. Seek out movies, podcasts, books, and other media created by people who don’t look like, sound like, or act like you do. Sample new foods and visit restaurants featuring cuisine you’re unfamiliar with. The possibilities are endless.
The more you expand your horizons, the more you will learn — not just about your work and passions from different viewpoints, but how others think and how to support them. Promoting diversity is work that is often overlooked because it can appear to be effortless, but it takes research and pushing yourself to see the world from someone else’s shoes. And, you may find, once you start the work to bring more diversity and perspectives into your daily routine, it gets easier to maintain as you continue. Keep up the good work!
At PEAK6, we know that a thriving company comes from a foundation of empathy and diversity across all teams. We’re always looking for those with unique perspectives and a passion for making positive changes to join our team. Check out our open positions and internship opportunities to see if there is a place for you within our portfolio of companies. We look forward to seeing what the future brings!