Learning builds trust

It is interesting to me how defensiveness functions in an environment where the goal is to shift towards equity and inclusion. Defensiveness is a natural and human reaction, but it often functions in the exact opposite way than we intend and would like.

Perhaps within a hierarchical environment, defensiveness helps us maintain power by shutting down feedback or criticism that feels like an attack. We maintain credibility and trust by being able to shoot down other perspectives, thus proving ourselves to be “right.” In academia, you are expected to literally defend your thesis. It’s a pretty standard format in debate, courts of law, art school critiques and… well, pretty much everything.

However, when we shut down feedback, especially from a position of power, we’re also shutting down inclusion.

Therefore, within the context of inclusion, defensiveness often causes a loss in credibility and trust, especially although not exclusively with those less proximate to power.

This is particularly damaging when you have been saying that you’re committed to inclusion - it’s a double whammy because now not only are you obstructing inclusion, but you’re also coming across as inauthentic at best, and a hypocrite at worst, however unintentional.

This can be really confusing and disorienting for leaders at every level. We talked last week about what it takes to be an equitable and inclusive leader - being able to mitigate our own defensive reactions is a big one. I can’t over-stress the importance of this.

I know it can be easy for us as DEI consultants to celebrate feedback when it isn’t about us - we try to acknowledge that. However, let me say that I too have had to really practice and learn how to receive feedback myself, how to not take it personally, and how to resource myself to receive so I am less likely to take it personally. Being able to receive feedback is a muscle we have to develop.

For example, we have feedback surveys after almost every workshop we facilitate, and I have learned to turn off the email notifications from those surveys so I don’t accidentally get caught by surprise with feedback when I’m in the middle of something else. Instead, we have the results piped into a spreadsheet that I look at intentionally when I have the time and bandwidth.

Reading the responses in a spreadsheet also gives me some critical distance - when I receive the results via email, it feels like the person is directly emailing me and so it feels a lot more personal, even when it isn’t.

Mitigating defensiveness is critical… but it also brings to question, what should we do instead?

I had an aha moment this week via a few conversations that crystalized for me something that has been a theme since college: learning builds trust.

I never put it quite so succinctly before though, but it came to me as I was reading “The First 90 Days” by Michael Watkins. I don’t usually read or recommend white guy business books these days, but my coach recommended this book as we transition some team members into new roles. This book is not about DEI or inclusion at all, but about how leaders can transition successfully into new companies and/or roles. I’ve only read the first couple of chapters, but one of the big messages is that the first order of business for a leader in a new role is to LEARN, and that this is the fastest path to being able to make good decisions.

In fact, Watkins proposes that the two priorities in a new role should be “focused learning” and “effective relationship building.” I would say that focused learning helps to build the trust necessary for effective relationship building.

Of course, this doesn’t meant that you leave your perspective and experience at the door - if you went to see a doctor and they explained that they were just learning how to be a doctor, that would not build trust. But if they started out by learning about you and what you were experiencing in order to know how to draw from their experience in order to meet your needs rather than jumping to conclusions? THAT would build trust.

It’s the listening and learning that allows you to direct your perspective and experience effectively.

This is not just the case when you are starting out in a new role. Learning builds trust in leaders at every level at any time. I would argue that it should build trust in anyone. And yes, listening is an important part of learning, but learning is when you demonstrate that you didn’t just hear but that you integrated what you learned into your approach. That doesn’t mean you have to follow every suggestion you get, but sharing takeaways helps to foster a culture of learning and a growth mindset, modeling that it is ok not to have the answer, not to be perfect, and that mistakes and “failure” provide important lessons from which to build towards success.

This builds inclusion, which builds trust (and vice versa).

And by the way, it’s not enough to just say that you’re not perfect and that you make mistakes and are learning - I’ve seen leaders do this and it can still come across as lip service if you don’t also share concretely and transparently about WHAT you are learning and HOW you are putting it into practice.

Learning builds trust.

And yes, it is counterintuitive to the way most of us are socialized to hide “weaknesses” like not knowing something, making mistakes, or evolving our thinking.

However, change requires that we do things differently. Are you in?

How could you operationalize learning into your business practices?

Banner photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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