Yesterday I met up in person outside (do you know the location?) for a random coffee with the founder and leader of the We are Liminal community, Roland Harwood.
We talked about Liminality, with a focus on Net-Zero and supporting organisations through change in what is a very liminal transitional space for every corporation. For example, I’m old enough to remember when corporate leaders really paid very little attention to the environment, it simply wasn’t on the radar. Now, of course, it is very high on the list for every corporation, which, when we are honest about it, presents many challenges around innovation, focus, and particularly behaviour.
Beyond that conversation, Roland asked me if I enjoyed being an outsider?
Initially, I thought he meant my professional role as a Sounding Board to leaders, where I am an outsider, someone who is unattached and has no agenda other than to support my clients. However, what Roland really meant was something we have in common. You see, if you look at us and listen to us speak, you would identify us as, well, a pretty typical archetype of white, middle-aged, English and even refine that down to Londoner (as we both speak with generic accents from this city).
However, Roland’s background involved formative years growing up in Germany as well as influences from America, plus of course university in my home town of Edinburgh. He has also worked (and continues to do so) all over the world. He is, then, in some ways, someone who feels like an outsider.
He and I have a commonality in this. I am a dual national, both Scottish and Caymanian, and have lived the great majority of my adult life in Cayman and focussed on the Americas. I’ve only lived in London for a little under four years now.
We are both, then outsiders, though clearly with pretty much every privilege that society affords us as tall, english-speaking, white males.
Do I like being an outsider, then? Given the “privilege cushioning” of my particular outsider status, I do.
I like the fact that I have very different life experiences than people making broad-brush assumptions may consider, that I can bring true diversity of thought and experience to most situations (and always strive to learn more and more from new and different people).
All that said, a tiny thing is that I do tire of being “multi-lingual in English”, of constantly translating language and cultural nuances even while still speaking in English. I love to go home to either Cayman or Scotland, to don the comfortable “skin” of being around “home” cultures. Oh, and Caribbean food, I miss Caribbean food. Extremely grateful as I am for the truly world-class way Cayman responded to the pandemic, I wait (and wait) for the time when I can once again visit my island home.