In today’s world, it’s easy to feel like our immediate circles of people and places are all that exist. From our workplaces to our suburbs or towns, hobbies, friendship groups and even our social media feeds – we typically stick to what we know.
But that’s not how the world operates. And with such a diverse client base, at Keep Left we’ve tried really hard to step outside our bubble and see briefs (and life) through a more open lens. How?
At the beginning of 2022, taking inspiration from the agency’s ‘embrace unlikeminded’ value, CEO Caroline Catterall and GM of People and Culture Verity Lowe developed the idea of an office debate-style conversation series to get ‘Lefties’ thinking about different perspectives.
Aptly named Good Chats, the initiative has done just that with topics from influencers to gambling, Nick Kyrios and rebranding Christmas discussed passionately from many angles.
“It isn’t about a winning and losing team it’s about having good conversations that go deep and force you to find a point of view outside your own,” Verity says.
“The form enables us to do what we do for our clients – think about the different perspectives we can look at a topic from and consider how to execute an argument that we may not actually agree with.”
The aim is to not only get employees thinking about a topic, but to encourage them to consider alternative perspectives in their work.
“It’s about making sure we don’t just have our values written down, we’re actually living and breathing them every day,” Verity says.
“But also, it’s a skill that helps us in leadership, in talking with our colleagues and to our clients as people. It’s teaching us to understand new topics, to have empathy and to look at things in different ways.”
To other agencies or businesses looking to expand their horizons, Verity says Good Chats is an engaging and friendly way to explore different viewpoints, while promoting an inclusive company culture.
“If there are any similar agencies out there or orgs who feel like their employees need to embrace un-likeminded, then this is a really good and fun way to put it to the test,” she says.
See how we put our thinking into practise here.
