How to Prevent Exclusion

Right now, we are going to, um, unpack  and experiment. this idea of how do you prevent exclusion? There's a lot of  dialogue in our culture right now about how to promote inclusion and connection to  belonging, which is great, interesting.

I'm also interested in the flip side of that,  as how do you prevent exclusion from people? And so to do that, we are going to actively exclude people from your table  in a minute. Ooh.

All right. So here's what's going to happen. First of  all, you, your goal is to have the biggest table.

You want the most people at your  table. All right. I learned this exercise 12 years ago and it was taught to me as Sia  over here.

So in a minute, I'm going to give you a prompt. That's going to ask for,  ask you to ship somebody out of your group. You're going to say see ya to somebody in  your group.

Now here's the deal. When you say see ya to somebody else in your group, they get  to go shopping. They get to look around and see what table they want to join.

They cannot rejoin  the same table. They're shopping, and your job, those of you who are still at the table, is to  recruit as many people to your table as possible. Alright?

So please, if you would, exclude and  say see ya to the person with the most pockets at your table. Person with the most pockets. Count  them up and say see ya, and then start recruiting.

Alright. Is everybody Ha ha ha ha ha ha  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Alright.

Second round. We're gonna just do three rounds  of this. Second round, same idea, now you kind of warmed up to the idea.

Remember,  only one person from your ta oh. Only one person from your table is getting excluded,  right? So you can only send one person.

The whole table can't migrate. Nice try. Whole  table can't migrate.

Only excluding one person. This time, would you please say, see ya,  and then also we're the recruiting over here, right? So say see ya to the person with the  longest pinky.

Person with the longest pinky. This just need to be pulled out. It's good.

I was  actually sliding it over. Oh, that sounds safe. All right.

So, we have a lot of pockets and pinkies  happening right now. All right. Well, last round, last round is slight tweak.

Remember  introduced just adding a rule, adding a little tweak changes the dynamic of the same  exercise over and over, right? This time, same rules apply, except, you cannot use your larynx,  you cannot use your voice box to recruit people. You cannot use your, ah, ha, ha, ha,  ha, ha.

You cannot use your voice to recruit people. This time, in  honor of bald people in the world, send the person with the shortest hair. Send  the person with the shortest hair, say, see ya.

And pause [laughing]. I mean,  I think we know who won, right? It's like, the next video or segment is going to  be about competition versus connection, maybe.

OK. Very beautiful. Congratulate  the winners in the group, not anybody else.

Congratulate the winners in your group, and then  go ahead and migrate back to your original table. Cool. All right.

So here's my question to you, right?  Good experiential learning is like, we just had an experience, and in  and of itself, there is some value, because, actually I should share this now. So, before I showed up here, two weeks ago I was back in Dallas, I live in Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania.

Two weeks ago I was in Dallas to work with a group I will keep anonymous,  but it was a bunch of high level folks. But it was probably the most burnt out, overworked  group that I have ever actually encountered. And I was kicking off and kind of emceeing  throughout this three day summit and group dynamics was hired on day two to come in and  facilitate all this stuff.

And I'm not going to lie when a bunch of blue shirts showed up to  this group, I was like, how is this going to go? And it was the coolest thing to watch all of these  people who worked for a governmental agency who shall remain nameless, who were way burnt out,  way tapped out, not a lot of smiling going on. They had a blast.

They laughed for two hours  straight. They had so much fun. And I said afterward, Kendall was one of the lead.

Kendall  Kendall was one of the lead facilitators and I said to her after I reflected to  the group, I love what I just saw because a mentor of mine used to say that  laughter is nervousness leaving the body. I love that concept. And so, and going back, John  Dewey, one of the founders of experiential ed.

To be playful and serious at the same time  defines the ideal mental condition. And so, uh, we're just playful. See ya over here.

Taps,  claps, smiles, recruiting. And now I want to take it down to serious of like, okay. In real  life, what is the equivalent of saying, see ya?

When you say see ya to somebody  and you exclude somebody else, what does that actually look like on the ground?  And then the converse, what does this look like? What does having a culture of over here. 

actually look like? Because you're probably not going to be every time somebody walks into  an office or a school building or whatever else, you're probably not going to be saying  over here, over here, over here, over here. It's a little overwhelming.

So what does it  look like in practice? So let me give you, the excuse let me give you just a  couple ideas to ponder and then I'll let you unpack and debrief at your tables  a little bit. So one is if I pick up this throwable microphone and I say this is really  expensive or I say, this is really cheap.

This is really affordable. I would argue in that sentence, I am  very subtly excluding some people. This microphone costs $600.

So if I say this  is cheap, some people are like, well, $600? I'm not buying a stupid thing for $600.  $600?

And so in just every statement we say we're talking about our norms and ways of being.  And so one way to be mindful about not excluding people and to include people is to either  mentally or out loud add the phrase Ffor me to the end of that sentence. This is really  expensive for me.

This is really cheap. For me. Right?

This whole day is really fun and  enjoyable for me. And so it's the mentality of actually remembering that our experience is  not everybody else's experience experience. And so especially as you're facilitating, being  mindful of that language.

You know, for me, the first time I did this exercise, like I  really freaked out and didn't want to do it. It was kind of looking for the exit. And  for somebody else, they were like, Oh, I can't wait.

Right? And everybody's got a  whole bunch of four me's happening at the same time. The problem is that you don't  know people's four me's.

You don't know what people's preferences and what they got  going on is in their past life experience. And so my invite to prevent exclusion is  to shift from a mindset of knowing to a mindset of learning. And the easiest way  I know to actually trick your brain or a group's brain into a mindset of learning  as opposed to knowing is to invite them to come up with.

and tap into their  natural curiosity and ask questions. It actually, you cannot be in a mindset of  knowing if you're also curious. They like, it's really hard to co exist.

So you're  either learning and being curious or you're standing in this place of I know.  And I would argue that when you only walk through the world with I know, it increases  the chances that you exclude some folks. Maybe.

I don't know. You see, I get a little bit intense sometimes. So,  if you would to lighten that intensity, with just two other people at your table,  not the whole table with just two other people at your table in your own context.

Can you  share how see ya and over here looks like in your own context? So if you just think about like  little subtle ways, what does see yah look like? And what is over here look like in your  own context?

Just two other people at your table. Have a quick little chat  about that, and then we'll switch gears.