That Background Hum of Worry in Every Important Conversation — Here's What It Is and How to Quiet It | Claude M. Steele

Why talking to your boss, your doctor, or anyone with power puts your brain on high alert — and what a Stanford psychologist says to do about it. Claude M. Steele https://profiles.stanford.edu/claude-steele is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the author of a new book, Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It https://www.amazon.com/Churn-Tension-That-Divides-Overcome/dp/1324093447. In this episode we talk about: Why talking across difference is so stressful, even when nobody's being bigoted What's actually happening in your brain during an awkward cross-cultural moment The surprisingly simple thing that makes critical feedback land or fall flat How to reduce tension when you're the one with power (and what to do when you're not) A three-part framework for building trust across any divide Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris This episode is sponsored by: Function Health: Join at functionhealth.com/happier http://functionhealth.com/ or use the gift code HAPPIER25 for a $25 credit toward your membership. BetterHelp: Online therapy, matched to your needs. Get 10% off your first month at https://www.betterhelp.com/happier Wix: Build a fully functional website with AI in minutes at https://www.wix.com/harmony Cash App: Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/oh9jnxlq #CashAppPod Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N. A., pursuant to a license from Visa U. S. A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement, Sutton debit flex card https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/debit-flex-card-agreement-sutton, and Bancorp debit flex card https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/debit-flex-card-agreement-bancorp. Discounts and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. IQBAR:   To get twenty percent off all IQBAR products, including the ultimate sampler pack, plus free shipping, text DAN to 64000. Gusto:  Try Gusto today at gusto.com/happier http://gusto.com/happier and get three months free when you run your first payroll.

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• 0:03Dan Harris?

  Hey everybody, it's Dan Harris. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. Today, we're talking about social anxiety. Whether you consider yourself to be socially anxious or not, we all interact with people pretty much every day who are different from us. The difference could be gender, it could be age, it could be position on the power hierarchy at work, it could be race, it could be political persuasion, on and on. And so, these differences, according to my guest today, create stress and even physical agitation. The term that my guest uses is churn. Said guest is Claude M. Steele, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the author of a new book, Churn. We're going

• 0:46Dan Harris?

  to talk about how to deal with churn and much more after this quick break. We'll see you soon. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I've got exciting news. If you love this show, but do not love listening to the advertisements, a subscription to my app, 10% with Dan Harris, now includes a private, ad-free feed of the 10% Happier Podcast, available on whatever platform you choose, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or right inside the app itself. Plus, along with an ad-free listening experience, the app also gives you a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers, exclusive live stream events with me and many of our incredible instructors, and robust and supportive

• 1:29Dan Harris?

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• 3:16Dan Harris?

  Claude M. Steele, welcome to the show.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Great pleasure to be here.

• 3:20Dan Harris?

  Let me start with a very basic question. What is churn?

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, churn is, you did a great job in the introduction. It's the tension we have in diverse settings of the sort that you described, where you're bringing people with different backgrounds and identities together in important settings. It's the tension we might have about, you know, what should we say? How should we say it? What should we do? How should we do it? A general concern about how our identity is going to affect our experience in the setting, whether we'll be accepted, whether we'll be valued, whether we better be on the lookout. Churn is that that thought, I think it's experienced, the everyday word for it, is just plain worry and trying to figure out how to cope with this, with this situation and the ambiguity it presents.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  That's what churn is. It is a tension of that sort. The more important the situation, it's important to stress, the more intense the churn can be. If we're just sitting in a, on a subway car, churn would be pretty light. There's no consequences. For us, there are no stakes involved. But if we're in an employment situation, or we're in a classroom, or we're in a traffic stop, the churn can be a pretty intense emotional experience. And that's what the book refers to, is that emotional experience.

• 4:45Dan Harris?

  Somebody like me, who have all the privileges, a straight, white male, born into an upper-middle-class family, on and on, all the advantages that one can have in this society. Does somebody like me experience less churn than somebody who's from a marginalized group?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  You can probably live comfortably and meet your needs without having to be in many situations that are diverse, where you have to, in order to get your needs met, deal with people from different backgrounds and different identities. So just given the organization of society, the privilege that you described may keep you from having to do that as much as other people might have to do. That is, let's say, an African American. In order to meet one's needs, they have to transact with the mainstream society on a regular basis, to buy clothes, get food, to go to school.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Because of that organizational fact, they may more often in their daily lives encounter the experience of churn.

• 5:58Dan Harris?

  What about in interactions with anybody who works for me? Or if I'm at a party and I'm talking to somebody who's from a different generation? Or if I'm interacting with a barista who's a different race? Like, it strikes me that talking across any of these forms of difference, it doesn't have to be race, it can be age, it can be

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 6:23Dan Harris?

  Hierarchical, there's always the fear of fucking it up, you know, like of saying

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Republicans, Democrats.

• 6:31Dan Harris?

  Yes, exactly, exactly.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. You could experience it in all those situations. You won't experience it very much if the stakes are low. In the case of the barista, for example. You know, it doesn't make too much difference to your life how that interaction goes, as long as you get your coffee. And but if it if the interaction is with coworkers in your, you know, in your office and in your workplace, or if it's with, you know, your doctor, or your lawyer, or with the police officer who pulls you over, then churn could get to be much more intense.

• 7:13Dan Harris?

  I would imagine one of the big theaters for churn, that everybody, no matter what your age, race, gender is, would be dealing with your boss.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  There's no doubt about that. For for most of us who have bosses, or colleagues that have some authority over us, depending on how you put it, churn can be significant there, because you don't want to, you know, you're worried, is my identity, is my political orientation, is my gender, is my sexual orientation, is that going to be a factor in my relationship with this person who has the authority over me? And you don't know for sure, you don't know that it will, it's not like you're jumping to conclusions, but the question is open, there's ambiguity there. And that's what churn is trying to wrestle with, is trying

• 8:06Speaker 03

  to get a sense of, of how can I feel in this, how much can I trust this situation? How comfortable can I be in this situation? I have a great example of, in the book, I opened the book with a story about a parent teacher conference. It's imagine a parent teacher conference, the student is a seventh grader, and he's African American, his parents are African American, and the teacher is white. And this is, as the, as the parents get ready to go to the conference, this is important to them. It's not a passing thing. This is their son's important school experience,

• 8:45Speaker 03

  and they know how their group can be stereotyped in society. They know how people might look at. They don't know for sure that they will, but they know that they might see, you know, not, not See him as having the greatest, strongest abilities, or maybe to take a a small transgression on his part as something indicative of a of an underlying, um, you know, aggressiveness problem. And this is such an important opportunity for them to talk to the teacher and thus the school and make sure that they don't see their, that these people are trying not to see their son through the lens of these stereotypes. So, so for, as they get in the car together to go to the meeting, they're talking, you know, let's don't jump to race right away.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  It may have nothing to do with that, but what kind of teacher is this? And you, do you think she, do you think these stereotypes would play a role for her? Do you think that she's colorblind? Do you think she's comfortable with the realities of race in the United States? Or, or what do you think? So as they arrive at the meeting, they're, they're in full churn. They're sitting on the edge of their seats. This is an important meeting and they're ready to sort of, you know, deal with the ghosts of history, so to speak, in this situation to, to make sure, to ensure as best they can that their son is given the benefit of the doubt. Uh, the teacher on her part has probably an equally strong form of a churn going on

• 10:14Speaker 03

  as she prepares for the, the meeting. She knows the stereotype of her identity, in this case, her racial identity. And she knows that, that she tries really hard to, uh, serve the interest of her students and, and to be sensitive to the needs of minority students. Um, but how can she convey that directly to the, to the parents? Uh, uh, and so she worries that even a slightly negative comment about the young man, uh, that may be intended to really foster his development, uh, could be, could be mistaken as, as racist, given the stereotypes about her identity that are relevant in that situation. That it raises that possibility.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  She doesn't know that she will be seen that way, but she knows she could be seen that way. And so the ambiguity, the tension that she faces getting ready for this meeting is, is that, oh my goodness, I, I, I don't want to be seen that way. It would be so painful to have them see me that way. So here's a, uh, she too is in churn, an intense form of, of churn. This is the analysis of what it, what can be uncomfortable about being in diverse settings is our vulnerability to being seen through the lens of negative stereotypes about one or another of our identities.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  When we come together in a, in a diverse way, as in this teacher, parent, teacher conference, that can happen. One thing I want to stress right at the outset, I'm going into the darkest part of the analyses here, but I want the listeners to know that, that the analysis gets very helpful in, in just a bit because there is a remedy for churn. Uh, and I, I would like to feel that the remedy for churn is manageable for, by all of us, available to all of us, much more so than we think, and has been an underappreciated pathway to, uh, low churn interactions, to trusting in a situation. Uh, it's, it's much something we haven't thought about as much, but it's something

• 12:20Speaker 03

  that I, I think can be very powerful and in these kinds of situations.

• 12:24Dan Harris?

  I want to emphasize your point about how we're going to get to churn mitigation strategies, uh, forthwith, but let's stay on the, um, let's stay on the level of the problem for a while. When we're in churn, what is happening to us psychologically and physiologically?

• 12:42Speaker 03

  So that's a very good question. What's, what's happening to us psychologically is that we've got, you know, kind of another motor running in the background of our thinking and processing, a motor that, that affects both our emotional reactions, the intensity of those reactions, blood pressure, skin conductances would be how we psychologists would measure that kind of thing. Uh, and, and cognitively at the level of thinking, it's like we're multitasking. We're doing two things. We're in addition to, to doing the, the, the task in front of us, talking about in that example, the, the performance and the, the promise and so on of the. Of the young student, we're also monitoring how we're seen and whether we are confirming

• 13:27Speaker 03

  stereotypes about our identity and we're busy kind of worrying about that. So it's as if you have a worry tape going on in the back of your thinking that's absorbing some of your mental energies and focus and can probably interfere right there in the immediate situation with how well you perform in it, how well you do, how natural you feel, how comfortable and authentic you feel in this situation.

• 13:52Dan Harris?

  I like to think about this on the level of the brain as well. And let me tell you the way I think about it and understand it, and then please fact check me. I've been very interested in the research around what's called psychological safety. I know you're familiar with this, but just for the audience, psychological safety is essentially in an organization, and it could be a professional organization or any group of humans, a family, a sports team, a volunteer organization, how comfortable do the people on the lowest end of the hierarchy feel speaking up and speaking their minds and telling the truth? And there's been some research that shows that organizations that have the, and even

• 14:33Dan Harris?

  teams within organizations that have the highest level of psychological safety perform the best. And I think about this through the way what we know about the brain. And again, I'm looking for you, Claude, to eventually fact check me here if I've run afoul of the facts. But what you want in an effective conversation and in an effective interaction is for the rational, logical, creative part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, the newest part of the human brain, to stay online, and the amygdala, the fear center, the lizard brain, the oldest part of our brain, to stay offline. Because when we're scared, when

• 15:16Dan Harris?

  we're stressed, the prefrontal cortex cannot fully flower and flourish. And so I think a lot about the, to the best of my ability, about keeping people's prefrontal cortex online and not activating the amygdala. It obviously is going to happen, and sometimes, you know, you just can't prevent it. But to the best of my ability, that's what I'm thinking about. So. How does all of that land with you?

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is a perfect description of what can happen when a person is under this kind of in churn, under the kind of threat of being seen through stereotypes, stereotype threat. In fact, there's research which shows exactly that pattern of of brain reaction for participants when they're under stereotype threat. Women performing very difficult math, they're very committed to being good at it, they are very good at it, but they're in a high-stakes situation and they're performing at the frontier of their skills compared to the men in exactly that same situation. Women, because of the stereotypes out there about their math abilities, their STEM abilities,

• 16:28Speaker 03

  they have a pattern, just as you describe it, there's a suppression of activity in the prefrontal cortex, the rational part of the brain, they need to do well on the on the task in front of them, and there's an increase in activation in the amygdala, which is sensitive to threat in the in the situation. So there is precisely that pattern of of a brain reaction when people are under this kind of identity threat and are in churn. Churn looks like that.

• 17:00Dan Harris?

  Why does this happen? Why does interacting across lines of difference? Why is it so fraught?

• 17:06Speaker 03

  That's a very central question in our work. I think the dominant feeling is that these kind of things, these kind of tensions reflect prejudices and biases and and the like. Again, while not diminishing the importance of those phenomenon, prejudices and biases, I'm pretty convinced at any rate that this is something different than that. I think what's threatening about it is that I just don't want to be seen in terms of and treated in terms of those stereotypes in in situations that are important to me. I just don't want that to happen. And I'm trying to cope with that as a threat in the situation that's important. It could be a classroom, a workplace, and so on, it could be.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  A doctor's office, a traffic stop. I'm trying to cope with with the the possibility that I could be seen and treated that way. And how do I respond to it? So I I think that that's what initiates it, triggers it. And I think it's often misinterpreted. We don't know how to interpret it. Does this reflect me being prejudiced and biased?

• 18:16Speaker 03

  No, I'm arguing it reflects a pretty rational reaction to a threat in a situation, a perceived threat in a situation based on on my identity. I'm a bit older and, you know, that's an identity. And there are circumstances where I'm with younger people and they might have views about older people. Maybe they think of older people as not being as up to date on issues and the like, or maybe not being as tech savvy as as other people. And and when in situations where those things are important, the possibility of being seen that way and treated that way is threatening.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  And and I'm I'm ensuring trying to cope with it. Well, how do I cope with this? How do I convince them I'm not this way? What what's the best way for me to proceed in this situation? When when I'm with just older people, I'm a lot less worried about that because we're all older. And, you know, and we're not going to, I'm pretty confident. We're not going to see each other in terms of these ageist stereotypes. So so I can relax a little bit more. But when the situation becomes diverse, that's where the threat enters the picture. And and part of my brain races into churn while I'm trying to deal with the the the task at hand.

• 19:38Dan Harris?

  I really resonate with what you said about

• 19:42Dan Harris?

  going into churn around age. I'm a little bit younger than you. I don't know your exact age. I'm 54 and I

• 19:49Speaker 03

  I'm considerably older than you.

• 19:51Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  You should feel no threat.

• 19:54Dan Harris?

  Okay. Well, I do feel threat because I work with and sometimes work out with a lot of younger people. And I is as soon as we get, you know, into a technical discussion or somebody's trying to show me how to do something on my phone, or I need to share a screen on Zoom, and then I I'm screwing it up. And then I'm in my mind's like, oh, everybody's thinking I'm old. I'm I'm the unc who can't, you know, function in in this setting. Uh, and then I I my I lose my ability to like, hold it together.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, to pay attention to what's what's right in front of you. Whereas if you were younger and that wasn't an issue, you know, you you just you just automatically without a second thought, so to speak, without any churn, you just pay attention to what they're telling. Oh, you should you do it this way, huh? Oh, okay. All right. But but when we older people are, this triggers a worry in us that, oh, my goodness, um, they're going to think the worst of me here, uh, based on those stereotypes I know that are out there about older people. Uh, and it puts us in churn and that interferes with with our functioning in that in that situation.

• 21:07Dan Harris?

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• 21:52Dan Harris?

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• 22:27Dan Harris?

  We've talked about the problem.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:29Dan Harris?

  I think we've given the problem a good airing. So let's pivot to what do we do about it? And I know you've written a whole book about that, but like, I'll start with a very broad question. What do we do about it?

• 22:42Speaker 03

  There's an approach that we can all take in our lives as individuals and even in larger situations, even in institutions, corporations, that an approach we can take that reduces this churn and gives us a way of responding. That's where the hopefulness comes in, is that there is a pathway to coping with it that can reduce our stress, our churn. And that pathway is trust building. That's the proposed answer in this line of thinking is that what that churn between the parents and the teacher, for example, is reflecting a kind of difficulty in trusting each other. Can I really trust that I won't be misread, mistreated in this situation?

• 23:27Speaker 03

  That's something I don't think we've appreciated as much as we should, should, is that it is fundamentally an issue of trust. It's one way of putting it, as I tried to in the book, is it gets conflict between remembering and forgetting. Both the parents and the teacher have this mental conflict. Do I, do I remember how my group can be seen in society and perhaps in this situation? Because that's relevant here. Or do I just forget that and trust that I won't be seen that way? I can just relax here in this situation. That's the kind of way of capturing the kind of trust that I'm talking about. If I can decide, if the teacher and the parents can decide, oh,

• 24:12Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be safe here. I know this person. I've seen her do this. There's sort of a reservoir of trust that has been built up between these parties. Then the conversation can go forward without all that churn. And it can, the information can be, and the thinking between them can be unobstructed. It can be quite calm and constructive, as I say. That's the pathway to the hopefulness here, is that there is an antidote to churn. And that antidote is trust and the ability to build trust.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  And that's what the book marches us through is, look at this at the, just between individuals, how trust building can reduce churn.

• 25:01Dan Harris?

  How do we operationalize this beyond that very specific example? There are so many other situations in which we're giving feedback that are not teacher-student and maybe not over a racial divide. It could be, I'm giving a feedback to anybody on my team and they're gonna be on the lookout for, you know, am I safe in my job? And how can I deliver feedback in that situation? Or to my son, who might feel like he's got a localized stereotype of not working hard enough on his homework and I'm not seeing him clearly because I'm looking at him through that lens. So how do we broaden what you call the wise feedback formula?

• 25:41Speaker 03

  A bit of a story about where the term wise comes from. It's, it's, there was an ethnography done by a very famous sociologist, Irving Goffman, of gay life in San Francisco in the 1950s, when that identity was heavily stigmatized, not just stereotype, but deeply stigmatized. Gay men of that era had a term for straight people who they knew they could trust. And they called them wise. Oh, man, he's wise. You don't have to worry about him. He sees our, our full humanity despite the stigma that we have to deal with in this. Society at this time.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  So that's where I come up with the term wise. It is behaving in some way that that people understand that you see their full humanity, even though they're different. And even though there are stereotypes about that difference. If I can manage somehow to convey that. So that becomes kind of the operational question that the book tries to develop. Well, how how do I how can I be wise with with people? Well, I think the focus should be on building trust. And there I think we humans have some good intuitions and we probably do it in a maybe

• 27:06Speaker 03

  without being aware of it as such, we probably do it quite commonly in our lives. We we we know how to build that trust. And I think that is a mode of functioning, as a way of behaving in our important settings. That is a general strategy for for being wise that allays this identity threat, enables churn to go very low and to make our interactions with each other more constructive. There are many examples in my life where I've experienced friendship like that across identities divide where people really just got to know me and figured out what I needed and tried to help me get it.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  I trust that person then. I trust them. I don't I don't worry that my identity is a problem in that situation. Some of the closest relationships I've ever had are are from friendships like that where people, you know, help me cope with a real life situation. We were colleagues together or we were students together. The book is full of examples of of that, where, you know, people in the same situation I'm in, you know, paid attention and and tried to get to know me and figure out what how to help me. And and they they when they as that process unfolded, it was very easy for me to trust them and feel real, real, unobstructed human affection for them.

• 28:38Dan Harris?

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• 29:23Dan Harris?

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• 30:05Dan Harris?

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• 31:29Dan Harris?

  Wayfair, every style, every home. The way you're talking about churn reduction thus far in the conversation really is from the side of the person who has power. What about if you're the employee or the student and you don't, you're not the one with the positional power? How can you reduce churn so you can perform more effectively no matter, no matter how wise your counterparty is?

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is something I thought a great deal is a whole chapter in the book is, as you know, focused on that question. Trust in the face of power. I think I summarized it. I do think the person with the power has to go first with, I do think that's a reality that it's a lot to expect somebody in the least, in the less powered situation to initiate trust. When, when the powerful person hasn't done anything to help you forget and not worry about how your identity is going to affect them, they haven't made any, it's a lot to

• 32:51Speaker 03

  expect the least powerful person to make the first step in that, in that kind of situation. So I just think that's a reality that needs to be, I need to be explicit about and have been. But having said that. I do think there is a form of power that arises from the least powerfully situated person offering trust. I think that's one of the most, going into some detail, always remembering, it's a lot to ask. But I think it is a form of of power in its own right. And the the big examples I I can think of are are some of the

• 33:33Speaker 03

  the early civil rights movements where where the marches on in Birmingham or in Selma, for example, where the least powerful people dressed up in their Sunday best and and took advantage and and simply lived, behaved in a way that, you know, defeated the segregation that was normative in those situations. That is, they violated the rules of segregation and just simply integrated. That that's that's at the core of what those demonstrations did. We're going to act like we are not, like we are full human beings and we're going to present ourselves as if we trust that the system will treat us like full human beings.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  So, put on your your coat and tie and let's let's march into this diner and we're going to sit down at the rest at the diner and and order food like it. So here's a here's an example in these sit-ins is what I'm referring to here, where people just took their rights. They asserted them as the least powerful people in the situation. And, you know, they did suffer accordingly. I mean, people are throwing hot coffee on them and sugar and all kinds of things. But their assertion of of this transformed American society and really, at least

• 35:00Speaker 03

  You know, led to the changes in the laws that had been in place that enabled this kind of segregation that had dominated our society to that point. These kinds of assertions of trusting the ultimately having faith in or trusting the ultimate fairness of this society led to changes that really did make this society a fairer society and more just society.

• 35:24Dan Harris?

  I think there's no question about that. You're correct that the onus should be on the people with power and we there will we'll talk in a moment about some more strategies that any of us can implement in in those situations where we do have the the power to create trust. But let me just stay with the idea of like, what can we do when we're, you know, on the the least powerful end of the equation, when we're sitting down with our boss, when we're interacting with a professor who's older and maybe of a different race or gender, et cetera, et cetera. One strategy that is just coming to mind for me, but I want to check it with you comes from a pair of communications coaches that I've worked with for a while and I really

• 36:06Dan Harris?

  admire their names are Mudita Nisker and Dan Clerman. And they often recommend that when you're struggling in an interaction, you trust that you can report to your conversation partner what's happening for you. You know, I'm struggling right now to speak coherently because I'm a little nervous. I just want to tell you what's going on for me. And if you're if you're if you're seeing that I'm having trouble giving you a straight answer, that's why this is a high stakes interaction for me. So can you give me a little grace? How does that land for you?

• 36:40Speaker 03

  That's pretty good. It kind of disarms the threat in the situation. I see you when you say that to me, I'm the powerful person, you're the least powerful person. I when you say that to me, I feel, oh, okay, he knows what's going on here. He's he he's trusting me making allowing himself to be vulnerable to to to me. And I, you know, there. There are going to be, I might, lack of a better term, mean spirited people for whom that wouldn't mean very much. I'm not denying that that exists in the world, but I think most many people, that's where my faith lies, is that there are many people who want these

• 37:25Speaker 03

  interactions to be effective and who want to function well in diverse environments and enjoy the diversity that is, as opposed to be threatening, threatened by the diversity of our, of our society. I think they, they would welcome that. That is, I think, an effective way of, of disarming this, this, the dynamic behind churn.

• 37:47Dan Harris?

  As you've said many times throughout this conversation, that the, the key antidote to churn is trust. In the book, you lay out a framework for building trust, and it has three aspects: seeing, welcoming, and supporting. Can you walk us through this?

• 38:03Speaker 03

  I tried as I was going along and then at the end to, you know, boil it down to some simple approaches and, and those were the, the ones that came to mind. I, you know, another person might, might do this differently, but this captures sort of the intuitions that I have and the research that I know of as the best way forward. Seeing is the first step, and I think maybe the most important step. I'll, I'll give you an example of what I actually mean by it, a simple, everyday example. If I'm running a research lab in my, with another colleague, and that colleague is always late to that research meeting, I could get irritated. And I'm, I,

• 38:46Speaker 03

  looking at them, I'm trying to understand why on earth are they late all the time? And in answering that question, things about them are going to dominate my thinking because they're in my, in my mind's eye, so to speak, that person, let's call him Fred, you know, and I could say things, well, Fred is, is just disorganized, or maybe Fred doesn't really care about this research. And I'm answering the question of what's wrong in terms of things about Fred, because I'm an observer, looking at this problem, and I'm seeing, and Fred is the problem. So I start to explain things naturally in terms of, of things about Fred. Well, but if we ask Fred, what he thinks?

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Why he thinks he's late all the time, I might get a very different set of answers. He's not seeing himself and things about himself. He's seeing the circumstances that he's dealing with in his life. The fact that maybe a class he's teaching doesn't get out, gets out just as the research meeting is starting and he doesn't have time to get across campus to get to it. Or maybe he's having trouble getting reliable nannies to take care of his children and so on. He's going to see the, or traffic jams. He's going to see the particulars of his life as the cause of his lateness. So the two perspectives, the observer's perspective and the actor's perspective, Fred being the

• 40:14Speaker 03

  actor, me being the observer, those difference in perspectives lead to very different answers of, for the same thing, very different explanations for the same thing. And seeing the first step, I think, in building trust is to as best as possible, try to take the actor's perspective, try to see what the other person is contending with in that situation. What is it like to be your student? What is it like to be your friend? What is it like to be your colleague or in that situation? What, what is that person responding to? That helps us understand how to help them, what they need in order to help them.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  My roommate in that college example had a good sense of, of what I was actually contending with. So he, he helped me deal with what I was contending with. I, I, he knew how to cope with, with college life and the academic side of it. And he could see that I didn't and that's what I needed. And so he gave me those things. And in the process of that, I, I could, you know, I, I trusted him implicitly and my churn slowed down and my outcomes in that situation improved dramatically. So what I'm stressing here, I guess, I don't want to get. Too far away from this term seeing.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  Seeing is, is trying to first really listen to what a person is telling you and what they, about themselves and as to what they need in a situation. That, that is the first step, I think, in, in being wise, is, is to see. It's so easy as observers to project what we think is the problem. The answer to the problem. That, that's, I'm asking for an extra step of, disciplined step here. Try to see what the, what the person you're trying to, you're dealing with. What are they dealing? What's the situation they're actually contending? So that's the first step, is try to take that perspective, the actor's perspective, as best as possible, as much as possible.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Then I think welcoming is the second step. People need to know as they come into a diverse situation, that they're welcomed there and valued there. That's the question that their identity poses to them, is that hmm, I know the stereotypes about my group and my identity, I know those stereotypes, and that might mean I'm not so welcome here. So they need, they really do need a signal that who they are is, is really just fine there and very welcome in that situation. If I'm a lower class, as I talked about this research, which shows kids who come from low-income homes coming into an elite university, for example, they could, they can, do I really, do I really belong here?

• 43:06Speaker 03

  Are people gonna really see me as somebody that, that belongs here? So they need a signal that there are a lot of ways of being successful in this university, and some of those ways, your background would be helpful in you achieving. And, and as opposed to, I'm not sure about you, maybe if you remediate your skills or something, maybe then you'd be welcome.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  That's a hard burden with to to assume as one takes on something like the the college experience or the experience in a new workplace, workplaces, schools, classrooms. It's it's very helpful to be like that wise feet gap back giver in that experiment that I described, where you you you you're given a signal that, you know, look, I I believe you can do okay here. I believe you can succeed here. You're welcome here. There are multiple ways of of contributing here, and I I think you can do that. That it's worth taking the time to do that. If you if we're in a completely homogeneous situation, again, that might be extraneous.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  It might not be so important, but what we do live in a diverse society, and and we're committed to its being a a fully, at least our opportunities, a fully integrated society. And so that's where I think these this this extra thinking comes into play. I think it's an evolution of our society to understand seeing and welcoming. And then the final one, I think, is maybe most powerful. I think I certainly can point to it. It's been powerful for me in many phases of my life. Help the person. You tend to trust the people that, you know, help you cope with the immediate situation you need help in.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  And, you know, I don't it's the the fact that that person has a very different identity to me. Let's say I'm African American. Let's say he's an older white guy from the South.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  Those are all factors, but if that person seems to be interested in helping me cope effectively in this situation and is giving is taking the time to listen to me and to really give me the things I need to cope effectively there, I don't care about that background. That's not something that people care as much about as as whether they can trust the person. And his help for me, listening to me and welcoming me and giving me concrete help in coping with the situation is more important. It's more important and it overrides, I think that. I begin to forget when he behaves like that with me. I begin to forget that I could be seen stereotypically and so on.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  I relax, the churn goes down to a low level and I can function more effectively in a less obstructed way in that, in that situation.

• 46:08Dan Harris?

  I share your optimism and I appreciate, I appreciate it and I appreciate your work and you taking the time to come chat with me and by extension, my listeners. I do want to remind everybody, Claude's book is called Churn, The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It. Claude M. Steele, pleasure to meet you. Thank you for, thank you again for coming on.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Well, thank you. It's a great pleasure to me. I enjoy your podcast in general and hope, and hope this one is useful to people. Thank you.

• 46:40Dan Harris?

  Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one last thing before I let you go here. Starting Sunday, July 12th at 4:00 PM Eastern, the Summer Sunday Live Series premieres. Join legendary teacher Sharon Salzberg for an eight-week deep dive into the Buddha's Cookbook for Human Happiness, The Eightfold Path. You'll experience live meditation and Q and A only on the 10% with Dan Harris app.

• 47:24Dan Harris?

  Go to danharris.com to start your free trial today.

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