April 2024
Dear friends,
Several years ago some colleagues asked if I would mentor and work with a Chinese scholar, Dr. Yu, who was visiting our university for about six months. I was happy to, and Dr. Yu and I set up regular meetings in my office to discuss his goals. He was eager to have me assist with a research analysis and write an academic paper together. We set up a work plan and worked over several months to successfully finish and submit the paper.
As his six-month visit to the U.S. was coming to an end, I invited Dr. Yu to my house for dinner to celebrate our time working together. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had not extended that hospitality earlier in Dr. Yu’s visit. He seemed busy with work and I was busy with my own work and family obligations, so we just stuck to our biweekly meetings. Although I would always start our work meetings with chit-chat and a check-in on how we were doing personally, he didn’t divulge much and we would move quickly into the more work-related topics.
Sharing one meal with Dr. Yu in my home built a completely different relationship than our 6 months of steady work together. Dr. Yu shared details about his family, he learned about mine, we chatted through cultural differences, and talked about how our childhoods led us to our careers. Through that one meal and conversation, we saw each other on a more human-to-human level than we ever had before. I learned from that experience that it is critical to set the right conditions and context to build relationships and trust with other people. My beige office in a large academic building at a research university was not exactly the environment that prompted people to open up and build relationships. In contrast, a home-cooked meal in my home—the messy place where our life happens—offered a rich, person-centered context that facilitated human-to-human connection.
This work of building deep relationships is vital to making a better world possible. When there is trust and a human-to-human connection, new possibilities emerge. Disagreement can evolve into a compromise. A roadblock can dissolve into a new pathway. Building these deep relationships—whether it is with our teammates or with a different group—does not automatically just happen from spending time together. Meetings or other formal environments can stifle this type of relationship-building unless there is a specific intention to create the context and setting for connection.
One recent project I was working on brought together staff from a government agency with people from historically marginalized communities. The group came together to strategize how to move the agency towards greater equity. Vital to this process was to build trust and connection between the two groups. The easiest option for the meeting location was a gray, nondescript conference room at the agency. It was free, easy to access for the agency employees, and offered free parking for community folks. But would that environment create the right context for trust building? Instead, we opted to pay for meeting space at a local community center that had visible signs of community youth group meetings and photos of community elders on the wall. We brought in food from a local restaurant. The resulting vibe was completely different than a conference room meeting. People were at ease and the conversation flowed. The important change work that followed the meal would not have been possible without that foundation of connection.
How can we take this idea into our own change work and create contexts for connection? And, don’t forget the best part, coming together to pick the delicious food you’ll share :)
Take care and create the context for connection,
Paul
Today’s Key Point:
Building trust and connection does not happen by accident, it requires us to be intentional about creating contexts and spaces where we can build human-to-human connections.
Today’s Reflection Questions:
Think about a time when you felt you really connected with someone. What was the context? Where were you? What were you doing? How did it look and feel?
Who is someone in your life you have been wanting to connect with more or learn more about? How could you take the next step to creating the context for connection?
How does your work or school environment foster (or stifle) connection?
Tool/resource for action:
Building trust is a huge part of change work, and it requires us to be trustworthy and deserve trust. The AAMC Center for Health Justice recently released a toolkit on 10 Principles of Trustworthiness for organizations. Here are some example principles you might dig into at your own organization:
#2: You are not the only expert.
#3: Without action, your statement is only performance
#5: It doesn’t start or end with a community advisory board
#9: Take your time and do it right
#10: The project may be over, but the work is not