This year marks the 404th year of the Mayflower Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth. Contrary to what you learned in school, not all the travelers were religious pilgrims seeking freedom from an oppressive king imposing his religion on them. Only 50 of 102 passengers were fleeing religious persecution. The majority were crew members, servants, farmers, and apprentices. While these adventurers first feared the natives, they soon became friends, maintaining peace with the locals for decades. 

Despite the fact that not everyone in that small group thought a like, they struggled and toiled together. In that first winter, they still lost half of the company. This even smaller band now had to lean on each other even more. They had to be open to interacting and developing positive relationships with the people on the land before them. The likelihood of failure increase if people did not pull together regardless of their political, religious, or social philosophy and outlook.

Success required the leaders to listen to all the ideas. The people had to be willing to share their points of view and experiences so the group could make good decisions. Like Soldiers in a foxhole, they did not have to like each other, but their lives depended on those to their left and right.

If you are a leader, do you surround yourself with others who think only like you do? How do you interject ‘red-team’ ideas to prevent group think? What people in your organization come from different backgrounds but are marginalized and rarely asked for input?

Questioning and standing against the status quo requires a person to speak from a place of confidence. Think about things you have done to create a culture of psychological safety for those who follow you. This is hard work. Even after years of building accepting cultures, I still hear comments from others they did not speak up sooner because they felt they would not be heard, their ideas had little merit, or what they had to say would not be perceived as valuable.

Having a diverse group of people in your life helps make you a well-rounded person. When you only hand out with others who think, talk, and act like you do, you shut out the rest of the world. Yes, it is important to have positive people in your circle because when one of them says, “Hold on, let’s look at that again.”, you need to stop and look at what they see as a problem. There is much more to diversity than skin color or national origin. When you associate with people for different economic backgrounds, who have unique talents, from other part of the world, who possess different points of view, you are better able to understand and influence a wider variety of people. Your circle of influence grows, and with greater influence, more people will trust and follow you.

References

Covey, S. (1990). The 7 habits of highly effective people. Fireside. New York, NY

Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New York Times Magazine. Feb 25, 2016 ed. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html on 4/11/2022

 Who Was On the Mayflower? — Mayflower Passenger List, Manifest, and Crew (N.D.). American History Central.  Retrieved from https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/who-was-on-the-mayflower-known-passengers-crew/ on 11/26/24

(c) Christopher St. Cyr 2024. Permission to use material from this post is granted under the Creative Commons Attribution License.