The DEIB of C (and Why O for Opinions Is Where Things Get Really Tested)

Shehzaad Shams
Feb 2
5 min read

Let’s take a break from leadership for a moment.

No frameworks. No pyramids. No “top five leadership traits you must master before lunch.”

Today, let’s talk about something much simpler.

Let's swap leadership today with lettership. Yes lettership.

Here’s a question for you.

Did you know that a single letter in English can appear three times in the same phrase, sound completely different each time, and still be absolutely correct?

Take the letter C.

In the phrase Pacific Ocean, C shows up three times:

once as /s/
once as /k/
once as /ʃ/

Same letter. Three roles. No confusion. No contradiction. No apology tour.

English doesn’t try to fix this. It doesn’t accuse the letter of being inconsistent. It doesn’t ask C to “be more authentic” or “pick a preferred pronunciation”.

It just accepts a very basic truth:

Context decides expression.

And that’s where this stops being about language and starts being about people.

The DEIB of C

If you look closely, the letter C is quietly doing a better job at DEIB than many organisations that invest heavily in it.

Think about it.

Diversity: one letter, multiple valid sounds
Equity: each sound appears because the context allows it
Inclusion: no pronunciation is treated as inferior
Belonging: every role is recognised as legitimate, not merely tolerated

Nobody says:

“We like your /k/, but your /ʃ/ makes us uncomfortable.”

Nobody asks C to leave part of itself outside the sentence.

And yet, this is exactly what happens to people — every day — in teams, institutions, and societies.

Roles & Layers: what language understands instinctively

With letters, what we see is straightforward.

The written C looks the same every time.

But what we hear depends on layers we don’t see:

surrounding letters
phonetic rules
linguistic history
listener interpretation

We don’t argue with this. We accept it instinctively.

Now translate that to humans.

People also show up with layers.

The visible layers

skin colour
accent
age
gender expression

The invisible layers

how someone thinks
how they process stress
mental health
sexuality
belief systems
neurodiversity
lived experience

Most diversity conversations focus almost entirely on the visible layer — the letter.

Eclectic Leadership doesn’t.

It listens for the sound.

And it goes one step further.

Eclectic Leadership is diverse by definition, by default, and by design

This part needs to be said clearly.

Eclectic Leadership cannot exist without diversity.

Not as a policy. Not as a slogan. Not as a DEIB paragraph hidden at the bottom of a website.

As a structural truth.

Eclectic Leadership deliberately draws from:

Eastern and Western traditions
institutional, indigenous, and lived wisdom
linguistics, psychology, political science, and leadership practice

The moment you insist on one “correct” way to think, speak, behave, or lead, eclecticism collapses.

You’re back to a single-lane model pretending to be universal.

This is why Eclectic Leadership doesn’t add diversity.

It starts there.

Why this isn’t just philosophy

Before anyone says, “This sounds nice, but does it actually work?” — let’s ground this.

Long-term research shows organisations with higher ethnic diversity are significantly more likely to outperform financially.
Teams with strong cognitive diversity solve complex problems faster and more effectively than uniform ones.
Psychological safety — the ability to speak without fear — is consistently the strongest predictor of team performance.

So yes, diversity works.

But here’s the uncomfortable part.

Across global workplace studies:

more than 60% of people say they regularly self-censor at work
almost half avoid sharing dissenting views to protect their reputation or career

So we celebrate diversity.

As long as it doesn’t disagree with us.

Which brings us to another letter.

The O we struggle with most

From a linguistic point of view, the most flexible letter in English isn’t a consonant.

It’s the vowel O.

And this isn’t poetic exaggeration.

Depending on context, O comfortably carries around 9 to 11 distinct sounds in everyday English.

Here’s a plain-English breakdown:

/ɒ/ → lot, not, off
/ɑː/ → father, calm
/oʊ/ → go, home, open
/ɔː/ → more, order, thought
/ʌ/ → love, son, done
/ʊ/ → wolf, woman
/uː/ → do, move, who
/ɜː/ → word, work, world
/ə/ (the schwa) → memory, purpose, harmony

And if you’re being generous:

sometimes it almost disappears (women),
sometimes it’s effectively silent (people, colonel).

So yes — one letter handles up to eleven roles without the language falling apart.

No emergency committee. No pronunciation police. No culture workshop.

English just… copes.

Now here’s the twist.

O is for Opinions (and intellectual diversity)

In leadership, teams, society, and politics, O also stands for Opinions.

And this is where diversity stops being comfortable.

If we genuinely accept diversity:

in how people look,
in who they are internally,

then we must also accept diversity in how people think.

That means:

different opinions
conflicting views
uncomfortable interpretations of the same reality

Not as a failure of unity — but as the starting premise.

Plural societies assume disagreement. Healthy teams expect it.

Yet many organisations still behave as if:

disagreement is disloyal
challenge is negativity
conflict is something to be avoided

So what do we get?

Meetings where everyone nods. Slack channels full of emojis. And real disagreement happening somewhere else.

Harmony on the surface. Tension underneath.

Conflict isn’t the enemy — incapacity is

Let’s be honest.

Diversity doesn’t break teams.

Inability to handle contradiction does.

The issue isn’t that people disagree. The issue is that we haven’t learned how to disagree well.

That means:

challenging ideas without attacking identity
holding opposing views without dehumanising
staying in the conversation when it gets uncomfortable

Political science has shown this repeatedly: societies don’t fracture because of difference — they fracture when institutions can’t process disagreement constructively.

The same applies to organisations.

Language already understands this.

Multiple pronunciations coexist because the system can hold them.

Leadership is still catching up.

Legacy leadership vs eclectic leadership (in plain English)

Older leadership models were built for:

efficiency
predictability
sameness

They worked — in smaller, more homogenous worlds.

This world isn’t that.

Eclectic Leadership exists because today’s reality is:

multilingual
multicultural
cognitively diverse
politically complex
constantly negotiating difference

Trying to lead this world with one “acceptable” way of thinking or speaking is like insisting C must always sound like /k*.*

The language wouldn’t survive.

Neither will organisations.

Belonging isn’t cosmetic — it’s contextual

Belonging isn’t about:

changing the letter
repainting the font
or asking people to mute parts of themselves

It’s about recognising that:

multiple roles can coexist
multiple layers operate at once
multiple opinions can exist without collapse

People, like letters, aren’t inconsistent.

They’re contextual.

The quiet lesson hiding in plain sight

Language figured this out centuries ago.

Letters were allowed to:

play multiple roles
change with context
coexist without apology

Leadership is still learning.

Eclectic Leadership doesn’t ask people to sound the same.

It asks us to listen better.

Across roles. Across layers. Across opinions.

Because diversity isn’t just something we see.

It’s something we hear. Something we think. And something we must learn to hold — calmly, maturely, and together.

Sometimes the clearest leadership lessons don’t come from boardrooms or frameworks.

Sometimes, they’re hiding in plain sight.

Right there.

In a single letter. The DEIB of C.

Shehzaad Shams

Start here to know more about Eclectic Leadership.