Writers know that a secret to characterization is juxtaposing two characters with very different qualities. While you’re inside an organization, it’s hard to see the interactions and icons that define your culture. Once you compare it to your image of another group, there are so many circles in your head, it’s like you’re playing a hidden object game.

What comparative imagery have you fallen for?What comparisons are being set so subtly for groups of people in your life? Have you seen people who look like you depicted in positions of control or as the bestower of education? Have you seen others in pictures of scarcity, passive throughout the brilliant and epic journey of their lives?

What relational images are reinforcing an injurious dynamic? What images can change it?

These images are created by status symbols, behaviors, attitudes, how people travel, what people wear, how they interact. It’s not only the pictures on the wall. In the next example, it is the walls themselves.

In one of my earliest jobs, staff were invited to design a new office building from the ground up. The walls in the new office building were unimpressive. The cubicles were stifling. But one choice was extraordinary: the regional director’s office was situated smack in the middle of the building. The director later admitted that they would have preferred to have a corner office with a view out of the sparkling 10-foot high windows, but they supported the intent. Staff were not trying to reduce affluence; they wanted to make a relational statement. The director’s new spot in the middle of the building sent a visual message that the director was in alliance and accessible; the director was in the fray and proximate to everyone.