The Welcome Wagon: Cultivating a Welcoming Environment

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Bob: Hi, and thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Bob. My co-host Jessica is here as well. In a little bit, we’ll be talking about practicing being more welcoming and inclusive. It might not be something that we think about practicing, but Jessica is going to share a practice with us to help us be a little bit better at that. Jessica, how are you today?

Jessica: I’m great. This has been a great week of inspiration. I’m going to break the fourth wall here for a second by saying that I looked ahead at your notes, and I had to say that because I’ve actually been inspired by very similar things. I intentionally wanted to bring it up in a different way than you plan to. I’ve been working on putting together a large project that has prompted many conversations and all kinds of connection inspiring. It’s been really fulfilling to even scratch the surface of how many people are interested in working together toward this common goal.

One of the most interesting things to me was that one agency thought to put out a survey asking if organizations were interested in collaborating on a particular topic. They wanted us to identify how we’d like to collaborate and what we hope to accomplish. This prompted a lot of ideas and emails and possible real agreements to collaborate where we all just would have gone off doing our own thing and we all still would have been working toward that same common goal. Now, what can we do together?

Bob: Yes, that’s awesome. As you mentioned, I’m thinking and been inspired along similar lines. I’ve been thinking a lot about Stephen B Johnson’s idea of the adjacent possible, which is this idea that there are possibilities, doorways, if you want to think of them as physical things, that exist, but that we can’t see alone. We need multiple perspectives to see them, more than one perspective to open up that adjacent possible. That’s been something I’ve been thinking about, just because I had a couple of opportunities, one to connect a couple of colleagues who are working in different states, but they’re doing very similar work.

One colleague was talking to me about their work, and I was like, that sounds similar to this person’s work. Maybe, if you’re not in the right mindset, you might let that just go. Like, “Oh, that’s interesting. I know somebody else who does similar work.” With the adjacent possible in mind, I took the time to introduce these two people to each other. It’s a pretty low risk, low effort thing to do, to just loop a couple of people together on an email and say, “This is why I think you guys would be interested in talking to each other, but I leave the rest to you.” You don’t have to facilitate it. You don’t have to tend the relationship for the rest of your life or anything like that.

Just make a connection and you can and let them take it where it’s going to lead. Hopefully, that has opened up some adjacent possibilities for those two colleagues. I had another opportunity where a funding opportunity I found out about, sparked in my head. Again, a couple of colleagues might be interested in this and taking the time to send that with some context. This is something that John Stepper has talked about.

We’ve talked about on the podcast before, Jessica, when we talked about working out loud and how to do introductions of people, that context is really important. It makes me think that part of this is opening up your aperture, to use a photography example. Jessica’s the photographer among the two of us, but I’ll borrow some words from her, to open up your aperture a little bit and include people beyond yourself and your own interests and think about possibilities that are beyond maybe what’s right in front of you, those adjacent possibilities that Stephen Johnson talks about.

Jessica: I love that. It also reminds me of applied improv concept of widening your awareness and being aware of what’s around you. I think that’s where those connections are possible. This might be the first time this has happened where we’re thinking pretty much around the same thing. We’ve been inspired by the same thing this week. We did not plan this. We didn’t call each other ahead of time.

Bob: Our outfits match but that we did arrange. This inspiration thing it’s just complete coincidence. We’d love to hear what is inspiring you. To share that with us, click “send us a text message” at the top of this episode’s description. Your text app will open with a seven-digit number. Please don’t remove it. Type your message after the number and click “send”. We won’t see your phone number or text you back to protect your privacy, but we will share your feedback in a future episode if you let us know what’s inspiring you right now. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at [email protected]. Let us know what’s inspiring you right now.

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Let’s learn more about how to be more welcoming and inclusive. Jessica, can you tell us a little bit more about the practice you’ll be sharing and why you chose it?

Jessica: Yes. I want to start by saying that like anything we do in these Practicasts, this is just one small thing that you can do. There’s definitely more things that you can and should think about doing to be more welcoming, but I think that this is a really great, simple start. It’s a very simple practice. I’m calling it the Welcome Wagon. At its core, it’s really a decision to work on being more welcoming. You can personally make this decision, or a group can discuss and decide together to employ some continuous improvement on becoming more welcoming. Basically, you’re deciding to establish a growth mindset about it, whether you’re doing that personally or in a group.

You’re deciding to get some grit about it and dig in and keep getting better at it. You’re deciding to be intentional about it. I chose this after reading about the principles of the liberating structures. Liberating structures are a series of activities online. It’s more than that. It’s so much deeper and so much better than that description gave it. Liberating structures as a facilitator, I’ve used them over and over again. The principle that I was looking at is called Include and Unleash Everyone, which also happens to be the website’s tagline. We’ll include a link to the website in our show notes. Include and Unleash Everyone.

We talk about this with some regularity on this podcast, maybe just using different words that if there’s a group effort, we need to be inclusive of the voices at the table and we need to lean into the strengths in the room. With all the voices and strengths and personalities and interests, things can get complex pretty fast. Reading a little about that principle reminded me of all the things we do, usually unintentionally, to silence people, even when our intention might be to encourage sharing and connection. I’ve seen, for example, a few members of a small group engage in a discussion about a sport they all play. Nothing wrong with that.

It turned out that they had been playing that sport together just the past weekend before the meeting and used that as an opportunity to make some decisions about the direction for that meeting. The other two people in the room sat there silently listening to the conversation about the sport, not having anything to contribute to that conversation, and then just went along with what had been decided. I’ll admit I was one of those two people in the room. I was much younger at the time. Now I probably would have said something, pushed back a little bit, invited some more discussion. I’ve also seen small groups, like at a networking event, maybe just a few people huddled around a small table.

Everyone’s feeling awkward and weird. I’ve seen them though, close their shoulders to others who are awkwardly trying to engage from the outside. Look, again, I want to say, I don’t think people are doing this intentionally. Then there’s the example of saying, let’s brainstorm. I love brainstorming, but just saying let’s brainstorm can silence some people for several reasons. Things like power differentials in the room, things like communication preferences in the same way, only allowing people to write in silence on Post-it notes without allowing any discussion can silence others. Again, I don’t think there’s any malicious intent in these examples.

The brainstorm example is clearly an attempt to honor the voices at the table. These are examples of things we do that can silence some people. One of the things that I like the most about the liberating structures activities, and I think there’s something like 33 of them and they’re freely available on their website. One of the things I like the most is that they come from a beautiful mix of insights from complexity theory, organizational development, applied improvisation, and user experience.

I have used them and adapted them frequently in my facilitation work because they shake things up a little and invite sharing and interaction in ways we aren’t used to. I also chose this practice because, should we choose this assignment, this can really make a difference in our personal lives. It can really make a difference within the groups we belong to and in the activities, we do in our daily lives, whether it’s a club like a Lions Club or a VFW meeting, a neighborhood group, a coalition we serve on, a meeting at work, bowling league night. It can really be employed everywhere.

Bob: That sounds awesome and I’m excited to hear more about the practice itself. Can you walk us through it now?

Jessica: Yes, absolutely. This is actually not one of the liberating structures that I was just talking about, but the liberating structures were my inspiration for choosing this activity. I got the idea for it from the Asset-Based Community Development Toolkit, ABCD Toolkit, called Creating Welcoming Places Workbook by Bruce Anderson from Community Activators. I’ve modified it for the Practicast and we’re going to give it to you in two ways. First, how you can practice this on your own, and second, how you can practice this in a group setting. First, on your own, like many of the things we do, you’re going to start with some reflection.

I want you to reflect on all the ways you think you already exhibit a welcoming attitude to anyone who crosses your path. Where are you already successful with this? What body language do you use when a new person approaches you? Is that one way that you’re already successful? What about your facial expressions? Do you ask people questions? Do you learn their name? Do you show interest in them? Do you share your interests with them? Then think of someone whose welcoming skills you admire. What do they do that’s similar to you? What do they do that’s different? What might you employ? What might you lean into more when you take a look at your list, if you decide to make this as a physical list?

When you think about your list and this list of someone whose welcoming skills you admire, what might you be able to employ and lean into more? Then, simply make a commitment to getting a fraction better at being a welcome wagon. Start small. Maybe just decide to make sure you’re going to ask a question of somebody, or maybe you’ll decide to just be aware of your surroundings and who’s in the room with you more. Remember that closing shoulders example I gave before. Maybe you’ll decide to open your shoulders to make sure that if there’s someone standing on the outskirts, you’re going to invite them in with your body language. That’s on your own. Two simple steps. Reflect. Make a small commitment.

In a group, the goal of the practice for the group is to formally decide to become more welcoming, to create an environment where all people feel valued and included, including newcomers. This is also a very simple process. It starts with someone in the group, probably you if you’re listening right now, initiating the discussion. Set aside time during a regular meeting to bring up the topic of welcoming. Encourage open dialogue about what being welcoming means to each member. Basically, define also what being welcoming means. Then vote on that commitment. After you discuss it and you’ve defined it as a group, what welcoming is going to mean for your group, hold a vote to formally decide.

This step can really help everyone in the group to feel empowered to contribute to the group’s culture, because that’s what you’re doing here. You’re trying to build a welcoming culture. The third thing is share personal experiences. Allow the members to share their stories about their first experiences with the group. This can deepen some understanding and empathy among the members. The next is planning for improvement. Knowing what the experiences of members have been and how you guys have defined a welcoming environment. What can you learn from those two things to create some specific actions the group can take to make small improvements and enhancements in your welcoming practices?

For instance, this is something I think that comes up a lot but consider adding welcoming initiatives to the group’s mission and strategic plan. Consider adding a welcome section and activities to every agenda or to an annual meeting agenda. Then the last step is regular check-ins. Make it a point to periodically revisit the topic, like I said, maybe at meetings or at an annual meeting. Really simply it’s someone needs to initiate the discussion. You need to define as a group what being more welcoming is going to mean to you. Allow people to share some of their personal experiences and then use your definition and the personal experiences to plan for improvement and then find a way to have regular check-ins about it.

Bob: Thanks so much for guiding us through that, Jessica. That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the “share” button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for cultivating deep respect for people and local solutions. Until then, keep practicing.

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Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense, under award number 2023-48770-41333.

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