Good morning from a rainy and cold Vancouver. As my friend and colleague Peter Elliott would say, “ahh, but it’s a dry rain!” I realize that only the Canadians reading this will be laughing,  but that very fact leads me to an interesting observation for us as leaders in this time; working with so many generations, cultures and traditions in the workplace requires that we be very careful about language and references. And yes, I do mean avoiding sexist and racist language, and I’m also broadening the point here. In the same way that some 30% of you reading this will likely not get the joke about a dry rain simply because you don’t live in Canada, for those of us in our early 50’s  it serves to remember that the people born the year John Lennon was assassinated are turning 33 this year.  For some further references check out the list compiled by Beloit College; http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2013/)

The people with whom we work are diverse, they are unique, they are amazing individuals with minds capable of the most incredible imagination and possibilities. And many of them come from cultures and environments that are not the same as yours. And your kids are included in this; they are growing up in a world that has changed in some deep and profound ways. A teacher of a teacher of mine, Marshall McLughan coined the phrase “the global village” in the early 1960’s. He argued that the electronic interdependence he saw on his horizon would replace the individually focused print media, and that a new world would emerge, that was a global village. He appears to have been correct; as I have just finished a Skype meeting with a colleague in Jo’Burg South Africa, to talk about a potential project.

So, as leaders, from whatever demographic we might have come, we have a responsibility to be clearer, to dig deeper, to find out what’s really going on, and to be as clear as we can with each and every one of the people on our teams. Ask yourself, do my metaphors and stories make sense to other people? How can I make this clearer to people of a different generation, a different culture? Ask yourself, do they get the ‘joke’?

So some simple suggestions for broadening your scope, that I’ve found useful include:

1. Make friends with people who are younger, or from a different culture than yours. I for one am enjoying the texting jokes about Boomers like TN2WMP = “trying not to wet my pants”!
2. Instead of watching TV, one night a week, surf YouTube. Seriously, there’s some very funny stuff out there, substantially funnier than most things on TV
3. A second night a week, watch TED, you’ll learn more in a 20 minute TED talk than in most newspapers in a week!
4. Download the Al Jazeera app to your iPad. There’s 2 of them, one in a magazine, more print format and the other a live stream of what’s going on live. Watching Al Jazeera will certainly give you a different perspective on some global issues, but perhaps more importantly, you’ll see and hear from people reporting from different parts of the globe than Ottawa, Washington and London. It is really fascinating.
5. Take a “working vacation” to somewhere very different, and do some work there. For those of you in the co-operative sector, check out the Canadian Co-operative Association volunteer opportunities at www.coopscanada.coop, or if you’re from another sector, Habitat for Humanity is one of a number of organizations that offer opportunities to go to a different part of the world and do some good. www.habitatglobalvillage.ca

May this week be a week of broadening our scopes for all of us.