How a Kuwaiti Tradition Can Level Up Your Leadership
If you’re ever lucky enough to visit Kuwait and make friends with some of the local people, one of the first words you’ll hear is dewaniya. It refers to a uniquely Kuwaiti institution: both a physical space within our homes and the meetings or gatherings that take place there.
The word itself derives from ancient Persian and Sumerian words, meaning a council of state or the meetings in which an ancient ruler would hold court and hear from his people. (The English word “divan” comes from the same roots and refers to the long couches or cushioned areas where people would sit during these meetings!)
In Kuwait, the dewaniya has evolved into a gathering of people—traditionally men, though increasingly women too—who get together to drink tea, share their thoughts and insights, and discuss the pressing issues of the day. It’s a social get-together, a hang-out, and a deliberate attempt to discuss big issues and actively learn from one another.
Where’s Your Dewaniya?
Why am I telling you all this? Every successful business or team has to find ways to create a dewaniya of its own. You don’t necessarily need the cushions and carpets found in a traditional Kuwaiti gathering-space—but you do need places and times when people can get together and share their knowledge.
What makes the dewaniya so powerful is the way that it creates rituals and physical spaces to facilitate this kind of knowledge-sharing. That happens in workplaces, too: think about the way that people huddle around water coolers or head to a particular coffee shop for a mid-afternoon chat, for instance.
But the dewaniya works well because it makes that process mindful and deliberate. Instead of waiting for such opportunities to share and connect to emerge organically or accidentally, Kuwaitis actively create spaces in their homes and schedules for such interactions to occur.
Make Space to Connect
As leaders, we can do much the same and create opportunities for participation and collaboration across our organizations. Think about what that might look like for your team: perhaps it’s a scheduled event, like a town hall meeting or a regular after-work get-together at a local bar. Or perhaps it’s something less formal: a personal commitment that you’ll be in the cafeteria every morning to drink a coffee with anyone who stops by, for instance.
Either way, it’s important to give the people around you opportunities to share ideas, ask questions, and interact with the expectation of learning from one another. We all know how important it is to share our knowledge—but all too often, we expect that knowledge transfer to happen automatically. Of course, that doesn’t happen. We wind up stuck in silos or simply preoccupied with our own work and our own thought processes.
If we want knowledge exchanges to take place, we need to build systems and structures that encourage people to look up and interact with each other—even and especially when the people around us aren’t part of our immediate circle.
So, look at how your team currently operates—and see if there’s a way to build a dewaniya that will encourage and shape more fruitful interactions for everyone on your team.
