Celebrating Diversity

Having experienced Italian football with Torino, I learnt to appreciate diverse cultures and different game approaches, whether tactical, physical or mental. I had the Aussie, English, and now Italian angles.

Each different viewpoint brought another perspective that added to your knowledge and understanding. Some of these viewpoints could be very different, not always embraced, but valuable, nonetheless.

I’ve often not understood enough, but I have learned that you can never have too much knowledge!

Warming up for a Torino training session, we’d get in two lines and jog around the pitch. The coach would shout out numbers that corresponded to an exercise. We then let a player shout out the numbers, the twist being that they delivered the number counting in their own language, and we all then repeated it.

We had 20+ Italian players, a Hungarian and an English/Aussie, so I thought this wouldn’t last long. Until I realised that even among the Italian players, their local dialects were utterly different and incomprehensible to other Italians!!

I could then count to 10 in the Sardinian dialect, amongst others… useless but valuable at the same time. As a team, we celebrated and enjoyed the diversity of our language. By embracing diversity, everyone was being heard, which embraced an inclusive environment. It was a great icebreaker, a fun warm-up, and another moment where the bond with colleagues became stronger.

How has your team’s diversity inspired creativity and innovation in your projects? Have you an exercise that celebrates diversity? Share your experiences in the comments below! 👇

#Diversity #TeamBuilding