Welcoming. When we enter a setting that is important to us— a university, a recreational area, a diversity workshop, a workplace— a churn-causing question hangs in the air: How will my identity— who I am— affect my experience here? To build trust in diverse settings, it’s important to give people a welcoming experience that addresses that question.

It’s difficult to feel welcome if acceptance is seen as conditional on affiliating with values one is just becoming aware of.

Supporting. After welcoming comes support: giving people the know-how to manage the challenges and the opportunities inherent in a setting and, as much as possible, related challenges in their lives. This is important. It helps put to rest the nagging question that spurs churn, the question about whether your identity will disadvantage you. It doesn’t rule out the possibility. But it diminishes its likelihood. It changes the feel of even larger organizations. I point again to the examples of Georgia State and UC Berkley Chemistry.

For trust to build in a setting, it must be clear that the more powerfully situated are invested in it. It is they who will have the authority to make organizational room for a trust-building connection.

In seeing, each party must accept the importance of making a personal connection with the other— must understand, as Robert Moses did in Mississippi, that they should go talk to each other. They should get a sense of what the others are like; how they see their roles (as teacher or parents, for example); what their intentions, hopes, and concerns are; what conditions and circumstances they are contending with; what their needs are. This getting-to-know-you effort is worth a lot. It conveys respect. And it helps the parties understand each other’s needs— for example, in the parent-teacher conference itself, and in going forward as teacher and mentors. It tells each party what would be helpful to the others and it gives both parties some assurance that they are reasonably well understood.

Perhaps the best way to do this is to be curious. Welcoming is an invitation to hear, with interest, the other party’s experience and thinking.