This is my first question when I walk into a room or join a group. Yours too. Before I do or say anything, I’m wondering about THIS. Because the answer to THIS QUESTION determines everything about how I act and what I say.
When I’m in the role of meeting facilitator, my very first job is to help you answer YES as you walk in the room. Actually, ideally, I want you to answer yes in advance so you actually show up in the first place. I want you to feel welcome, seen, valued; not on defense, on guard, or worried in anyway about your very presence. If you don’t feel at ease you’re not likely to contribute. If you do contribute, it’s likely to be negative. It might make others feel negative. Attitude is contagious.
The single most effective thing I can do to help you feel like you belong is to treat you as an absolute equal, a comrade, a colleague. I want you to know that I do NOT look down on you in any way. I don’t already disagree with you, or discount you. I don’t have a prejudice against you. I seek not to take advantage in any way. I WANT you to be here and to be yourself, whoever that is.
Yet it’s not all on me. As a meeting facilitator I can’t guarantee “safety.” I don’t say things in advance of my meetings about providing “a safe place.” You feeling safe results from a multitude of factors, many of which I have no control over. The single most effective thing YOU can do to “be okay here” is to see the rest of us as absolute equals; not look down on us, yet not look up at us either. Stand tall and be yourself, a unique individual in a group of equals.
Yet in reality, as a participant, I don’t always feel okay to be here. I might be in a mandatory staff meeting with supervisors who discount me, or at a protest where adversaries hold signs against me. Here are three tricks.
First, I don’t have to change “those people.” I might wish they saw things differently, but if they don’t change their minds before my very eyes I’m not going to feel defeated. Who they are and what they believe is not my responsibility. Second, I detach my self-worth from their statements. I – me and only me – get to decide who I am regardless of what’s coming at me. Third, I can adopt a mindset of “curious observer.” I ponder from arms length: Why do these people believe what they believe? I might even ask questions. Every person has a good reason for what they believe; what are their reasons, I wonder. Rather than judge, I investigate. I can be curious about another’s values without changing my own. By switching my role to curious observer, I detach and immunize myself.
Whether you’re the meeting facilitator helping people feel okay to be here, or the participant trying to feel okay to be here, it requires work to not look down on others. And it requires work to not look up at others. Yet I believe that the magic ingredient for making good group decisions is absolute equality; each person looking across at the other. When we feel absolutely equal to our comrades, we feel it’s okay to be here. Not only that, it feels thrilling to be here.
