Connecting across Differences
At Booth, Cole loves that students, professors, and faculty embrace differences and honor dissenting views.
“This goes back to the idea of being enriched and strengthened by being curious about a different perspective,” Cole says. “We don’t have to be threatened by it.”
Cole wants to drive this point home more deeply in Interpersonal Dynamics, where he teaches students frameworks to foster understanding and connection. Full-Time MBA student Neha Saxena says that now, whenever her relationships get hard, she can draw on those lessons.
“The key lesson I learned is that assuming things about others creates distance between us,” Saxena says. “People’s outward behavior is influenced by their complex past experiences, which we often don’t fully grasp. To foster true connection and belonging, we should understand each other’s intentions, check our assumptions, and engage in open communication.”
Cole believes these lessons translate perfectly to business leadership. If leaders can allow for differences and make their experience more speakable with other people, they can more deeply understand themselves and the world. They can accept others as they are and foster a culture of belonging in their organization that creates a brave space for risks and innovation.
“It’s a rich win–win opportunity all the way around,” Cole says. “But it also calls us to look at the biases that we hold and ask, ‘How are my choices working for me in my leadership? In my organization?’ It calls us to have the humility to invite dissenting opinions and be challenged by them, so you can think in an expansive way.”
Cole hopes that these ideas and his class can be brought to as many people as possible. In a world that often feels divided, he believes that embracing difference is what the world needs.
“For our students at Booth, it’s such a brave thing to think about the biases they hold and how they can reach past them,” Cole says. “Some of the students that I’ve worked with have been transformed in their thinking and feeling, and that will continue after Booth. It’s my wish that we can all connect through our differences with interest, curiosity, and acceptance.”