How Building Authentic Relationships Across Differences Makes you A better Leader (Part 3)

William Hazlitt once said, “Prejudice is the child of ignorance.” As inclusive leaders, we have the power to combat that ignorance by deliberately building relationships with people who are different from us. But this isn’t just about being nice or politically correct – it’s about fundamentally rewiring our brains to become more effective, empathetic leaders.

Verna Myers captures this beautifully in her TEDx Talk: “Biases are the stories we make up about people before we know who they are.” The question we must ask ourselves is: what stories are we telling, and how can we rewrite them more accurately?

The Gravity Pull of Affinity Bias

Let’s start with an honest self-assessment. Pause for a moment and reflect: who are the colleagues and peers we hang out with? How similar are they to us? If we’re being truthful, most of us will discover that our professional social circles look remarkably like ourselves – similar backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and often demographics.

This isn’t accidental. Affinity bias acts like gravity, pulling us toward people who share our characteristics, experiences, and worldviews. The verb “gravitate” is particularly fitting here. Just as gravity pulls us down, affinity bias pulls us toward those like us. Breaking free from that pull is possible, but it requires intentionality and effort.

We’ve all experienced the comfort of being around people who “get us” – who share our references, understand our humor, and don’t require us to explain our background or perspective. It’s easier, more relaxing, and often more energizing. But as inclusive leaders, we must recognize that staying in this comfort zone limits our effectiveness and perpetuates the very barriers we’re trying to break down.

The Science of Connection: Manually Reprogramming Our Brains

The contact hypothesis theory provides a compelling framework for understanding how meaningful interactions between members of different social groups can reduce stereotypes and lead to mutual understanding. When we engage with people different from us – particularly under conditions of equal status and common goals – something remarkable happens in our brains.

We begin to manually reprogram our mental models. People who were once “other” become part of our ingroups. We realize that stereotypes are indeed illusions. Bias cannot survive in the light of genuine human connection – it flees like vampires from daylight.

Tara Jaye Frank puts this beautifully: “It’s hard to generalize an entire group of people when your firsthand experience tells you the truth, which is that every group – no matter the attributes by which you define the group – encompasses both good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly.”

This transformation doesn’t happen accidentally. It requires us to move beyond surface-level interactions and build genuine connections that allow us to see the full humanity in others.

The Right Reasons Matter: Avoiding Tokenism

However, workplace strategist Mita Mallick warns us about a critical pitfall: approaching people in a tokenistic way. We must examine our motivations honestly. Are we building relationships just to convince ourselves that we’ve made an effort, or are we genuinely seeking to broaden our social circles and gain insight into experiences different from our own?

The difference between authentic relationship-building and tokenism is profound. Tokenistic efforts feel transactional and superficial. They often make the other person feel used or objectified. Authentic relationship-building, on the other hand, comes from genuine curiosity and respect for the other person’s humanity.

We need to ask ourselves: Why do we want to build new cultural relationships?

Connection as an Inclusion Superpower

At work, we often have opportunities to interact and collaborate with people who are different from us. Most of us figure out how to peacefully coexist. But how often do we try to build true relationships? I’m not talking about becoming best friends with everyone – that’s neither realistic nor necessary. Instead, we need to establish connections that go beyond the surface, connections from human to human that focus on what we have in common while learning from our differences.

Connection is the building block of inclusion. It breaks down stereotypes, expands our perspective, and fosters respect, ultimately enriching our lives. After all, we’re social creatures at heart.

Real-World Application: The Mystery Coffee Initiative

In one of my client companies in the pharmaceutical industry, we launched an initiative called “Mystery Coffee” to make it easier for people to connect with others within the organization. Voluntary participants were matched blindly with colleagues just to socialize. Because people couldn’t choose who to connect with, affinity bias couldn’t play a role, and they got a chance to chat with people they’d never interact with otherwise – across different genders, ethnicities, ages, functions, countries, and hierarchical levels.

The initiative became incredibly popular, but we had to do significant convincing internally to get people’s buy-in. Even leaders of Employee Resource Groups initially didn’t understand the connection between this initiative and inclusion. This resistance highlighted how we often compartmentalize inclusion efforts rather than seeing relationship-building as fundamental to creating inclusive cultures.

The Digital Challenge: Auditing Our Social Networks

Our interactions increasingly happen online, where it’s easy to enter bubbles where we’re exposed only to people like us. Julie Kratz suggests we audit our social networks and ask ourselves: “Whose perspectives don’t we have in our lives?”

This digital audit is crucial for inclusive leaders. Our LinkedIn connections, social media follows, and online communities often mirror our offline networks – filled with people who share our backgrounds and perspectives. Diversifying our digital relationships is just as important as diversifying our in-person connections.

Creative Strategies for Expanding Professional Social Circles

I’ve audited companies where the biggest challenge to inclusion was found in how people interacted with each other socially. It’s critical to ensure that work-related social events are inclusive. In a Canadian investment institution, female leaders told me how they felt excluded socially. The moment work finished, they weren’t invited for drinks or to golf courses. They weren’t developing the close relationships that would allow them to grow their careers, and they were missing critical business information.

Meanwhile, their male colleagues were missing opportunities to know their female colleagues better and shatter stereotypes about their true needs. Everyone loses when we allow social exclusion to persist.

On a positive note, I’ve met leaders who found creative ways to expand their social circles:

A leader in the hospitality industry who, during in-person meetings, always chose to sit next to people he didn’t know or knew the least. A senior leader in a European biotech company who organized breakfast meetings that anyone in the organization could join. A leader in the beverages industry who never hung out with immediate team members during conferences, choosing instead to meet new people.

These leaders understood that expanding their networks wasn’t just about being inclusive – it was about gathering diverse perspectives that would make them better leaders and decision-makers.

The Energy Balance: Bonding Versus Bridging

This might sound daunting, especially for those of us who are shy or introverted. How much socializing we can manage depends on our personality types and is influenced by cultural norms. It’s certainly more demanding to interact with people we don’t know or with whom we share fewer social identities.

Political scientist Robert Putnam identified two main ways we engage with each other: bonding (interacting with people similar to us) and bridging (interacting with people dissimilar to us). We all need bonding – it’s more relaxing and energizing. However, as inclusive leaders, we need to balance our need for bonding with the need to bridge if we want to promote an inclusive culture.

The key is finding the right balance for our personality and energy levels while still pushing ourselves to bridge more than feels natural. The good news is that the more we bridge, the easier it becomes.

The Time Investment: Sharing Our Most Precious Commodity

We also need to be aware of how much time we spend with different individuals. Our time is our most precious commodity, and it’s important to share it fairly. When we consistently spend our discretionary time with people who look and think like us, we’re making a statement about who we value and whose perspectives we consider important.

This doesn’t mean we need to schedule every interaction or mechanically distribute our time. But it does mean being intentional about ensuring we’re not inadvertently excluding certain groups from our informal networks and relationship-building efforts.

The Transformation Within

When we commit to building authentic relationships across differences, we don’t just change our organizations – we change ourselves. We become more empathetic, more creative, and more effective leaders. We develop a richer understanding of the world and the people in it. We break down the barriers that limit our potential and the potential of those around us.

This work isn’t always easy, but it’s always worthwhile. Every relationship we build across difference is a step toward a more inclusive world. Every stereotype we shatter makes us better leaders. Every connection we forge strengthens the fabric of our organizations and communities.

As inclusive leaders, we have the power to rewrite the stories we tell about people before we know who they are. We can choose to walk boldly toward our biases, building bridges instead of walls. The question isn’t whether we should do this work – it’s whether we have the courage to begin.

Thanks for reading – Let’s keep shining the inclusion light together! ✨

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The last article of a three-part series on how to mitigate bias. Adapted from my upcoming book Practising Inclusive Leadership.

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