Usually when we think of tomatoes the colour red springs to mind – that wonderful colour that attracts attention.
 
Even a small red tomato is very visible and stands out. And yet, as one can see from the freshly picked collection in the picture, there are a wide variety of colours. Just visible is one that is almost lemon, ranging to golden, the dull ones with natures gentle brushstroke of green and red mixed, bright red, flowing through to deep purple and almost black. Who knew there were so many colours!
 
Yet I am sure when someone mentions the tomato fruit, red will be the colour that come to the fore.
 
After enjoying some of these tomatoes it got me thinking about our own wider worlds. How often do we have a fallback thought when something is mentioned? The London taxi, so often called a ‘black cab’ but many are not black as they come in a wide variety of colours, as I have shared in an article elsewhere. Leaf green, a colour frequently found on the palette of an artist, again the wide variety of greens means there is no one colour for a leaf and that is before the purple, bronze, yellow leaves are added into the rich foliage display.
 
An interesting thought to play around with perhaps?
 
If we now move that onto the area of people, areas of work and more we can easily see how the ‘stereotype’ can create bias. Even affect decision making.
 
If we go deeper and start to look at what we gain from Insights Discovery, with the seemingly simple palette of four main colours (which do extend in eight when one goes deeper). A simple comment - oh they are a red (sticking with tomatoes), or any other of the main four colour, so much can be lost. The initial words carrying the weight of possibly dismissing the person or lauding them. There is so much more but in our speedy world of distraction the time to value and savour is sometimes missed.
 
For certain I shared the tomatoes with others - their joyful colours meant they became more of a talking point and a time to savour the delicate nuisances of their flavours. Rather than merely scoffing them at speed.
 
Yet how often do we scoff other people because we have pigeonholed them, similarly to the red tomatoes?
 
Food for thought and some action…
 
My best wishes,
 
Peter