Slow Down
She left a voice message that responded to some questions that I posed in an email. So, I called her back and after exchanging a quick hello, I jumped into business, explaining dates and costs and all the other related stuff. After I finished, she said, “Whoa. Thanks, but we can actually slow down?” I immediately realized that I dove head first into the ins and outs of our transaction and completely skipped over our humanity. So, I followed her advice, apologized, asked her, “How are you doing?” and then listened attentively. The few minutes we shared sharing our latest happenings and thoughts resulted in laughs and questions and allowed us to form a better connection. When we returned to our shared task, it went smoothly.
Slowing down makes communication better.
This week, I’ve found myself repeating, “At the core of equity work is relationships.” And all relationships hinge on trust, which is a must-have for any relationship to work and be meaningful, and healthy communication, another must-have. White supremacy, racism, sexism, homophobia and other -isms and -phobias disrupt communication because they speed us up to the point that we often just skip the conversation altogether. We already know the conclusions of these frameworks, which makes getting to know someone who we perceive to be different from us more challenging and undesirable. Thus, we don’t even engage with others who are different from us - divorced, disabled, queer, without kids, BIPOC, poor, etc. Why would we converse with them, especially since the stereotype and our prejudgments have “confirmed” everything about them.
I’ve written that these perceived, uncrossable canyons serve to maintain the distance between us and Bryan Stevenson reminds us to get proximate. I’ll add that we should slow down because it improves our communication.
