All right, let's begin Part 2 of building trust and rapport. Now that we already recognize that you are going to be an outsider and you've put a plan together. Now, you have to present your team, present yourself. If you're going to play any role other than yourself, it's not necessarily going to work here. You have to be honest and you have to be consistent about how you are presenting your team and yourself, and whether it's the project goals, whether the reason that you are there, how long you're going to be staying, be authentic and be honest about what you're going to be there for. Again, in the back of your mind this is building a relationship here, and as a systems thinker you know that these relationships are important because you want to understand from a variety of different perspectives. Having that rapport, having that trust, knowing who the gatekeepers are will help you start to build that network, will help you start to build an understanding of what's happening, help you build that understanding that is bigger than yourself and bigger than that team. Now, as you're entering a place, it's important to be objective and neutral. Objective is a skill, I recognize that. You've got to become aware of your own experiences and your own opinions, and your own values. But you also have to be able to hold the observations up to when asked, are you seeing what is really out there? Now, everyone is going to be affected by the work they do. Everyone is going to be affected by the experiences that they have and so forth. Yes, to some degree, you have to recognize that. But some of the responses and things that you do are going to elicit some reaction, we know that. So whether you're participating, whether you're simply walking the street, whether you're observing, simply your presence there as a consultant, as a developer, as a non-profit organization, whatever capacity you are in, your presence is going to have some level of it is going to elicit some reaction. It's the simple fact of human nature. But you've got to remain objective and figure out how you're going to document that, figure out how you're going to be honest again not exaggerate why you're there, but being accurate. The most thing is try to control that reaction as best you can because you've planned, you've anticipated. So here's one example that I come across all the time when I'm working overseas. Someone's going to see you and talk to you and you're going to be seen as an outsider and therefore a willing participant or willing listener. Maybe they want to talk to you about all the terrible things one political party is doing, but you've got to control your reaction whether or not you agree with that assessment. But recognize that it's really hard often to do especially when you agree with their perspective and whether to tell them that you agree. If you did tell them you did agree how that might affect any future interactions with that person, that group, and so on. Part of that again is that planning for what type of interactions and be able to control that. Your work really is going to be inherently subjective. Objectivity really in its purest sense is really hard. So you've got to make that choice at the beginning of that project to figure out what role you're going to play, what role your team is going to play, and how you're going to portray that. How are you going to be honest about people. How you're going to be honest to people. How are you going to achieve that objectivity, but also not let it swallow you? You've got to be transparent. You've got to be fair and accurate. Those are all important, but also making sure that all of that doesn't just swallow you and you can't get any work done. So it's a fine balance and yes there are trade-offs and I want you to recognize that, but that is part of the planning process. Let's talk about learning language. Perhaps this can be taken as literally important, but often consulting projects will not have enough time. It's an important consideration here of figuring out how you're going to do this, how you're going to add team members. Is it good to add a team member that is familiar with the language, culture, customs, and so forth. We've talked about that before why legacy, culture, customs, and so forth, but getting that person out to approach people, to greet people, to enter a house, when to sit in a meeting, who sits where, and so forth. That's all really important to understand as you are starting to build that rapport, build that trust, and having that gatekeeper there is especially important because that person can help you with those cultural norms and what to do. Learning the language here what I mean is it's not necessarily about learning the specific language per se, but it's knowing how to act interact. So what happens if you go to a house or a community that doesn't speak English and your entire team speaks English only? How are you going to address that? Well, same thing here is thinking about how are you going to articulate what in fact you are going to do there. Try to avoid any jargon using simple plain English. Remember you're often meeting ordinary people or you're meeting employees that may not know all of the different technical jargon that you've been well-versed in or steeped in over long periods of time. You don't need to show off to anybody that you know that you're an expert. You've been invited in or you're coming in, and it's best here to start to build rapport. Showing that you know something more than Pete, than somebody else or that you have more knowledge doesn't help things necessarily to prove your point. You can easily talk about what you're doing there without jargon. Same thing is wedgie issues. Try to leave those at home. Things like in the United States, climate change is a wedge issue that might elicit some response, some emotion, or something that people won't want to work with you. So be sensitive to possible situations. Same with trigger words. Are you going into a place where there have been abusive relationships or abusive use of power? What kind of words might trigger some reaction? I want you to think about that very carefully. What is important? I always say it's important to employ local people. Remember you are building trust and rapport. Would I often work in Africa, that is especially important. It helps the local economy because the unemployment rate is so high, but I want you to think beyond that. It isn't just about working in international places or in developing countries, it is important to show that you are invested in place. As we saw in that first video and talking about why place matters in that rural America has many different facets and nuances. Of course, it does. It's the same for urban areas. It's the same for suburban areas. It's the same for here in the United States where I live or elsewhere. Employing the local people helps you guide, you're able to train, you're able to guide, your help is able to orient, to facilitate different meetings. It helps you watch out for possible pitfalls. For instance, people who lie or what we call the sucker by. Meaning your team gets accurate information and not just what information is presented to you, which is great. I work with this gentleman who's worked with me for about the last 15 years. He would always be such a canary in the coal mine when somebody would be lying to me and we'd have this great little hand signal. He just would tell me exactly when he knew somebody was lying to me for one reason or another, then we talk about it afterwards. But having that person there that is your advocate and gatekeeper is really important. The next thing to think about too is as you're building trust and rapport is whether to mimic or not mimic. Well, what does that mean? Is whether to mimic their actions or just whether to use your own intuition and your own cultural norms and so forth. So for instance, the keynote to understanding the culture of loggers, fishermen and women, bureaucrats, ranchers, and other groups is to become familiar with their vocabulary. That's important. How they present themselves, how they dress, and so forth. But you could also come off as what we call here a poser. You could come off as a person who is disingenuous. Person do doesn't really care, who's just really trying to make inroads. So really think about whether that's appropriate and your gatekeeper is going to help you with that. Same thing that words do matter, that's where the cultural action is. So whether you're studying an ethnic group or subgroup, or people are going to speak certain dialects, figure out how best you are going to work in their and whether that common vocabulary is useful and whether it's useful for you. So for instance, when I was working at an engineering firm, I was working with iron workers and I was working with engineers. There was a discussion about what hat color I was going to wear. Whether I was going to wear a brown one that would have me associated with iron workers and that might portray me in a certain way, or whether I was to wear a white construction helmet and that would mean that I was working with the engineers, and that might portray me a different way. You can imagine that there might be some overlap, but also some trade-offs would simply choosing which color of hat I had to work on. So building in those checks and figuring out how you're going to do that, building a way that you're going to be aware of how you are interacting with people and how you might be kept accountable. But this is really founded on a whole principle of do no harm. As an outsider coming in or whether you've lived in that area before and you're working on a new project, you're still engendering the trust of local people. You're still trying to build rapport for you, the project you're representing, the organization, client, whatever. You are trying to build up that trust and rapport, and at the heart of that is to make sure that you aren't doing any harm. One final thought here is you're going to need to slow down. Hanging out is certainly acceptable. When you're in a new place, the temptation is to go around and ask a bunch of questions, do a lot of stuff, look busy, especially because you have a lot of things to do and a lot of tasks, and you have a limited amount of time and you may want to show your boss that you're getting things done, or your funders and so forth, but take time to take a deep breath. Take that deep breath, slow down, take things in. Again, hanging out is totally acceptable. I often do that when I work with communities or clients and get whether that's going out to happy hour and simply getting to know them as a person, build and build that relationship. Sometimes we talk about work sometimes we don't. But it's really important to be able to do that. It's certainly as systems thinkers and as good communicators, you're not going to be able to work in all places at all times altogether. So coordinate that with your team. You're going to be able to observe and you're going to be able to see different things. You're going to be able to have your team or your people spread out across the organization so you can simply be visible and be present so that you're not portraying or you're not sending conflicting messages and that your appearances are coordinated. That's important. But again, be president of your time. You have a limited time, you have a limited amount of resources here. So you'll notice that I talk a lot about planning here. I talk about it a lot. How being intentional. It's important to take time and care to develop that thoughtful planning. This project is not so much about scoping and executing the project, then producing a final report, and then handing it off to the client, and then doing something else, and then getting quickly to the next project. But you haven't contracted in a way that you're working with the community in a real and meaningful way. You're coming alongside them and they have invested money often maybe it's from tax dollars. Maybe it's from from revenue. These are hard found dollars and they're trusting you with that. Either way, that community, whomever you're working with is prioritizing this project and your involvement. It's important to develop a plan at every step of the way of the project. It also shows your professionalism, your involvement, your genuine interests. It builds rapport and it builds trust in that community, and it demonstrates your commitment to detail and respect with the client and hopefully earning you future projects.
