The Trouble With “They'd Fit Right In”

I like people who laugh at my jokes. Obviously. I also have excellent taste in people who agree with me. 🤣

And I suspect I'm not alone.

There is something lovely about meeting somebody and discovering that you have things in common. You grew up in the same place. You support the same football team. You both think meetings that could have been emails are a personal attack.

Before long, you feel as though you've known them for years.

Nothing wrong with that. Connection matters.

But I've been wondering what happens when that feeling follows us into decisions about who gets hired, promoted, listened to or trusted.

Because liking someone is not the same as knowing what they're capable of.

There's a name for one part of this: affinity bias. It's our tendency to favour people who remind us of ourselves. Not necessarily because we're trying to exclude anybody, but because familiar people feel easier to understand.

And we are very good at dressing that feeling up in respectable workplace language.

She'd fit right in.

He's one of us.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I just clicked with her.

All perfectly innocent things to say. Until they become the reason one person gets an opportunity and another doesn't.

Imagine two people being considered for a role. Both can do the job. One went to the same university as the interviewer, enjoys the same hobbies and has exactly the sort of humour that makes the conversation fly. The other is thoughtful, capable, perhaps a little quieter, and doesn't offer that immediate sense of familiarity.

Who do you think the interviewer is more likely to remember fondly?

Now ask a more uncomfortable question. Which one has actually demonstrated they can do the job?

Sometimes the answer will be the same person. Sometimes it won't.

And that's why this matters.

We talk a lot about diversity in organisations. We count who is in the room. We write statements about belonging. We put rather lovely photographs on our websites.

But who gets invited into the conversations that matter? Whose mistakes are treated as a learning opportunity, and whose are taken as confirmation of a doubt? Who gets described as “leadership material” before they've had much chance to lead?

Those decisions aren't always made in formal meetings. Some are made over coffee, through shared jokes, or because somebody reminds a senior person of themselves at that age.

The problem is that not everybody has an equal chance of being familiar.

If the people making decisions have similar backgrounds, the people who naturally feel comfortable to them may also look, sound and think rather alike. The pattern can continue without anyone ever announcing that difference is unwelcome.

I don't think the answer is to stop liking people. That would be a rather miserable workplace, and I'd be terrible at it anyway.

Nor do I think every team needs people who disagree about absolutely everything. Shared values matter. Trust matters. The ability to work well together matters.

But “works well with us” should mean someone can contribute to what we're trying to achieve. It shouldn't mean they know the same people, tell the same jokes or make us feel comfortably unchallenged.

Perhaps we need to become a little more suspicious of our own certainty.

When we find ourselves saying someone has “potential”, what have we actually seen? When somebody feels like an awkward fit, is it their behaviour that's the problem, or simply their difference?

And when a person doesn't remind us of anyone we know, might that be a reason to get curious rather than cautious?

I'd like us to build workplaces where people aren't required to become familiar before they're considered valuable.

After all, if everybody in the room thinks exactly like me, who is going to tell me when I'm talking nonsense?

And believe me, somebody needs to. 🤣