One Meeting Minute Thought for Your Week
Do you support diversity, equity, and inclusion and want to make your meetings more inclusive?
If you do, try these 3 simple tips.
1. Make your data visualizations meaningful for those who are color blind.
Your meeting presentations are an easy place to start because not everyone sees color like you do.
Think about this as you’re building your charts and graphs:
Color blindness affects approximately every 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women (0.5%) according to color-blindness.com.
So, what seems visually obvious to you may not be so obvious to someone else in your meeting.
You can make your meetings more inclusive just by labeling the colors on your charts and graphs.
Go one step further and use dashed or dotted lines instead of making every line the default solid option.
Then add “R”, “Y”, and “G” if you’re using stoplight indicators.
These are simple and easy to implement and will make a big impact on those with color blindness.
2. Consider those who don’t speak the same native language as the majority of participants.
Most of your business meetings are probably conducted in English.
But just because English is used widely throughout the world, it’s not everyone’s native language.
To make your meetings more inclusive, keep this in mind.
You probably have someone in your meeting who speaks English as their second (or third or fourth!) language.
Or you may be in a meeting where a different language is used but it’s not everyone’s first language.
So, slow down when you’re speaking.
And avoid using sayings or figures of speech that might be confusing.
You may have grown up hearing a long list of idioms and still use them today. But, they probably sound like complete nonsense to someone from another country.
They’ll be lost in your meetings and you don’t want that.
3. Review your participant list looking for diversity gaps.
As you’re preparing and considering who to invite, think about how to make your meetings more inclusive.
Think beyond the standard definitions of diversity and expand your mindset.
Consider how you might be missing important points of view.
If you see a lack of diversity (in any form) on your participant list, invite someone new to attend.
Ask them to provide input from their unique perspective and help you identify blind spots.
More Resources to Help You Build Your Career and Your Business
To learn more about color blindness and check your data visualizations for color blindness accessibility use color-blindness.com (click here).
Ann K. Emery, an internationally-acclaimed expert on data visualization, introduced me to this site during our conversation on my Connect Mobilize Deliver podcast.
✅ Click here to listen to “5 Ways To Be Kind With Data Visualization – Ann K. Emery.”
You can build your data visualization skills using the many resources Ann offers on her website, depictdatastudio.com (click here).
I’m continually learning how to make my meetings more inclusive for those who speak English as a second language. And, much of my learning comes from Hannah Yurk on LinkedIn.
Hannah is an English Communication Specialist for Human Resources and shares her expertise for free with insightful posts each day.
✅ Check out Hannah Yurk’s valuable content on LinkedIn (click here).
And, you don’t have to be in HR to benefit from what Hannah shares!
And Now a Word from Our Sponsors
Check out the Connect Mobilize Deliver podcast (click here) where you’ll hear from leadership experts in a variety of industries.
You can also find it by simply searching for “Connect Mobilize Deliver” on your favorite podcast listening app.
That’s All for this Issue
Meetings are an excellent opportunity to make improvements in your workplace culture.
Start with these 3 simple tips to make your meetings more inclusive.
You’ll find they’ll be more productive and effective too.
Let’s lead with kindness and confidence!
Greg
Here are 3 ways I can help you when you’re ready:
- Get more free resources you can use today (Click here to Start)
- Improve on your own with digital courses (Click here to Improve)
- Accelerate your progress with coaching (Click here to Accelerate)
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