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.

Yet shown in the Stephens research described in chapter 6, welcomes can go wrong: they can alienate people, even if inadvertently, as well as welcome them. Recall the finding: When a welcome letter ostensibly written by a college president emphasized independence, finding one’s own passion, and working independently, working-class students were affected enough that they performed worse than non-working-class students on a subsequent verbal reasoning test. And at orientation, when independence was emphasized but no mention was made of communication values, working-class students got lower grades than other students on a subsequent test. These were students whose admission credentials and high school grades were on par with those of everyone else participating in the experiment. There’s a lesson in these findings: When bringing a diversity of people into a setting, it’s especially important that welcoming be inclusive. When it’s not— again, even inadvertently so— it can have serious consequences.

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.

Welcoming, in the context of the parent-teacher conference, means welcoming the perspectives of the other party. The temptation, of course, is to view the conference as a chance to express one’s own views.