NOT a Framework 5 post: Minorities

Currently undertaking a course on inclusivity at work, I have found myself thinking a lot about the topic of minorities and I reckoned that as I was using my blog for Framework 5 reflections, that I would do the same for this course. So here are some thoughts about day 2 of my course.

During day 2 we found ourselves in a section called ‘supporting performance’; as part of this we discussed minorities under the overall heading of ‘how being in a minority can affect our performance’. The little exercise that accompanied this section was very thought provoking and challenged me.

We were asked in the workshop to discuss with our neighbour about a time when we felt we were in a minority and how that made us feel. I was intrigued at the stories I instinctively chose to talk about. Really small scale examples were shared for the most part, and the activity was very reactive (we had no prep time for this). So nothing hugely life changing - although I have wondered since. The benefit of doing this was it made me think that I CAN relate to some of the experiences of being in a minority, although in many ways this also can only be a brief insight. Some of the examples of being in a minority that I used on the day/or I might have used:

• Being one of just a few ‘British kids’ in an all American School
• Living in a country where white British was a minority group, and caught in the middle of a civil war
• One of 30 women students in a student population of 400 in the first year of women at a previously all male Cambridge College
• Being a Christian in the UK today

Each of the above has had/has an impact, not perhaps the impact that ethnic or sexuality minorities might face, and not dismissing any of the experiences that other minorities experience in any way, but still important to acknowledge. They have produced reactions in me which have changed me in some small scale or larger scale way, and in some instances can occasionally become tiring to keep in balance and to maintain a positive view about so that they do not impact the workplace.

It has been said (on the internet) that the word minority is a group of people that differ in some way from the majority of the population. The really interesting part of the workshop discussion on minorities for me however, was about how a whole range of behaviours are experienced and displayed, and just how many of them might be due to a person experiencing being in a minority - and not just the more obvious minorities. I imagine that perhaps in a similar way something about how I behave is related to being part of minorities through my life – as in the examples above. There are both negative and positive behaviours that I think I see in myself that I might attribute to those minority experiences. A key difference being that at least two of my examples were ‘short-lived’, and so different, even if they still had some kind of impact.

I hope that I am more mindful of how being in a minority, any minority, can have an impact on how people react, how they behave in a meeting, how they respond to others. I’m aware too of how my own minority experiences can impact my behaviour and how to respect myself as well as others.  I’m also aware far more than before that there are a multitude of behaviours resulting from being in a minority. 

But to finish my rambling thoughts on this - sometimes the experiences of being in a minority can obviously be problematic, but sometimes they can be brilliantly positive, it doesn’t always have to be challenging and draining, but can also be uplifting and special - and just keeping your eyes on the positive can have a huge benefit.